Construction of flagship store
Ten years later, the store erected an adjacent annex of 130 x, ten stories above the street, with two basements, making it the tallest store in the Pacific Northwest and Portland's lone skyscraper. Designed by architect A. E. Doyle, its white terra-cotta exterior set a design trend in downtown Portland, leading to the famed "wall of white" on S.W. Alder Street. Upon Sigmund Frank's death, Aaron Meier's elder son Abe Meier (1868–1930) became president, serving as the store's greeter, while his younger son, Julius (1874–1937), became vice president and general manager—running the store. The store's green delivery wagons (later its delivery trucks) were ubiquitous in Portland, with the company willing to deliver purchases of any size—even a spool of thread.
The company provided the furnishings for the Fairmount Hotel, constructed to serve out-of-town visitors to the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.[2]
In 1913, the five-story building on 5th Street was demolished, and construction began on a new sixteen-story building, which opened in 1915, giving the store 11 acre of retail space. Early on, Meier & Frank was one of the few stores to maintain a buying office in New York. Sales representatives there would joke that there were four major markets on the West Coast: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Meier & Frank. In 1920, a full square-block garage and stockroom facility, four stories high, opened on N.W. 14th and 15th between Everett and Flanders. The Retail Reserve Building, eight stories high, opened at N.W. Irving Street between 14th and 15th in 1923. A year earlier, Meier & Frank's radio station KFEC, with its antenna atop the 16-story building, began broadcasting from its studio on the fifth floor. The station's slogan was "KFEC--The Meier & Frank Station". Meanwhile, Clark Gable worked at Meier & Frank selling neckties.
The president of Meier & Frank, Julius L. Meier, was elected governor of Oregon as an independent, and served from 1931 to 1935.
Combining the 1909 and 1915 buildings with construction on the final quarter-block and topping the consolidated building off at 17 stories, Meier & Frank now filled the entire block bounded by S.W. Alder, Morrison, 5th, and 6th. Locals jocularly referred to the store as "Murphy & Finnigan's". For a time, Meier & Frank reigned as the largest retail outlet west of the Mississippi and one of the largest stores in the nation in the early 1930s. When President Roosevelt closed banks country-wide, Meier & Frank took out a full-page newspaper ad with a single word: "Confidence". Hundreds of people brought their savings to the store for safekeeping. The store canceled interest charges on all customers' credit accounts.
When Julius Meier died in 1937, his nephew, Aaron (Bud) Meier Frank (1891–1968) became president of the store, a position he would hold for nearly 30 years, becoming the most important businessman in Portland for decades.
Effects of World War II
During World War II, Meier & Frank supported the Allied forces: Federal officials cited the store's efforts in support of the war 1941 to 1945 as the most outstanding of any department store in the United States. Meier & Frank devoted all of its newspaper advertising space to bond sales; for 1,207 continuous days the back page of the first section of The Oregonian ran ads—not to sell merchandise but to support the war effort. The store conducted the largest single sale of war bonds in the nation, a $32-million sale that lasted two weeks in the store's auditorium.
After the war, the company completed the installation of the longest continuous up/down escalator system in the world, serving all selling floors of the store and costing $1.5 million. Two years later, Meier & Frank demolished the Portland Hotel and built a two-level parking facility on a full block southwest of the store, between S.W. 6th, Broadway, Morrison, and Yamhill. In the late 1960s, Meier & Frank proposed an 11-story parking garage on the block, which the city denied after a series of heated public hearings. This proposal helped prompt the downtown business community and the city to undertake a comprehensive downtown planning program. The lot became Pioneer Courthouse Square in 1984.
Expansion and acquisition by May
Meier & Frank's first branch store, with 185000 sqft, opened in Salem, Oregon, under the direction and management of Aaron Frank's son Gerry Frank (1923–2022) in 1955. It had store-side parking for 1,000 cars. Five years later Meier & Frank opened Oregon's second-largest department store (exceeded only by its own downtown store) in Northeast Portland in the new Lloyd Center, at the time the world's largest shopping center. The crown prince of Japan (later Emperor Akihito) joined the dignitaries attending the opening festivities.
From 1964 to 1966, a bitter intra-family battle erupted as stockholders considered two potential buyout offers for the store—one, supported by Aaron Frank, to sell to Carter Hawley Hale Stores for cash, and the other, supported by Jack Meier (Julius Meier's son) (1912–1988), to sell to May Department Stores for stock. Members of the Meier, Frank, and Hirsch families owned most company stock. After a lengthy and acrimonious struggle, the families eventually chose to sell to May in 1966 and Jack Meier became the store's president. Aaron Frank retired, and Gerry Frank became chief of staff to newly elected U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield, eventually earning the nickname "Oregon's Third Senator".
From 1969 to 2004, Meier & Frank opened stores at Valley River Center in Eugene (1969), Washington Square in Progress (now part of Tigard) (1973), Vancouver Mall in Vancouver, Washington (1977), Clackamas Town Center
