Decision to change Marshall Field's name to Macy's met with bitterness

CHICAGO -- It has always been much more than a department store. It's the magical place where parents brought their children to see the windows at Christmastime, where those children grew and did the same with their kids -- stopping, of course, to visit the one true Santa Claus.\nIt is Marshall Field's. Or simply "Field's" to everybody in Chicago.\nFor longer than anyone can remember, Marshall Field's has been one of the few constants in an ever-changing city. With its famous clock, the store that was built in stages between 1892 and 1914 is as much a part of the city's landscape as Wrigley Field and the Sears Tower.\nLast Tuesday, Federated Department Stores Inc., said it is planning to change to Macy's the name of all 62 Marshall Field's, including the one on State Street that dates back to 1892. And if it seems like just another merger or name change that happens all the time with very little fuss -- even in Chicago, there wasn't much noise when the White Sox's Comiskey Park became U.S. Cellular Field -- to those who grew up with Marshall Field's, this is different.\n"It's so awful I can't even believe it," said Tracy Kepler, a 37-year-old attorney who can recall in vivid detail time spent at the store as a child, including the trip to see the windows every Christmas Eve day, followed by a meal in the Walnut Room.\nKepler said she e-mailed the news to all sorts of people, including ex-Chicagoans who live all over the country.\n"Everybody is outraged," she said. "I e-mailed my girlfriend who lives in Colorado and she had a conference call with her parents who now live in Omaha, (Neb.), and her sister who's in Shreveport, (La.), and they're all commiserating about it."\nMarshall Field, the man who worked as a salesman in 1852 when Potter Palmer opened his original dry goods store, is just as synonymous with the city as the retailing giant.\nHe was a charter member of the corporation that founded what became the Art Institute of Chicago and donated the original tract of land for the University of Chicago. In 1905, the Columbian Museum of Chicago changed its name to the Field Museum of Natural History to honor the man who donated millions of dollars to construct its sprawling lakefront home.\n"Marshall Field's is Chicago," Carol Kuhn of Lake Zurich said of the store. Her memories about the retailer start with visits she made as a child with her parents, dates who brought her there as a teenager and returning as an adult with her own children.\n"It has such a warm feeling, a special feeling," she said.\nJeanne Bedon of Park Ridge has her own memories of the store, starting with the Christmas parties that were closed to the public that she got to attend because her mom worked there every year. "It was so glamorous," she said.\nIt also was something that was uniquely Chicago. Despite being the template for stores such as Filene's in Boston and Gimbel's in New York, Marshall Field's belonged to just one place.\nAs Bedon got older, for example, she said the store became a key stop on a tour of the city for her out-of-town visitors -- a practice she said will stop.\n"I won't bring them here because it won't be Chicago," she said. "It feels like we're losing everything that was Chicago."\nChicago's biggest cheerleader, Mayor Richard Daley, took a different view.\n"Things change. If you aren't willing to accept change, then you stay in the past and we're never going to stay in the past in this city," he said. "The thing that I like is that they're gonna reinforce that store as a destination, just like Macy's in New York."\nThat's fine, said Michael Braun, a Chicago attorney who was walking through the State Street store Tuesday -- if you live in New York.\n"I like the Macy's in New York, but I'm not in New York," he said. "I'm in Chicago"