Site of Sanger Brothers Department Store

The Sangers ran their stores by records. In 1868 the firm opened the first buying office in Texas, in New York, and sent it detailed sales logs by size, color, fabric and price to guide reorders. By 1875 each department kept its own books and competed with the rest, and free home delivery in Dallas began in 1879. The Handbook of Texas lists gas fixtures, electricity, telephones and passenger elevators among the firm's firsts in the state. Some scholars blamed its later decline on keeping the company in family hands too long. St. Louis investors bought it in 1926.

What the plaque says

Site of Sanger Brothers Department Store This retail establishment traces its history to 1857, when German native Isaac Sanger opened a small dry goods store in McKinney. Sanger later was joined by his brothers Lehman, Philip, Alex, and Sam. The first store to bear the name Sanger Bros. opened in 1867 in Bryan. New stores were established as the railroad line moved north to Dallas, where the Sangers opened a store in 1872. Sanger Bros. became nationally known for its innovative marketing and merchandising techniques and played a major role in the city's commercial development. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 0.2 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 0.6 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.1 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 2.3 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Dallas County — steps away
• Log Cabin Pioneers of Dallas County — steps away
• First Juries to Sit Women in Dallas County — steps away
• Women's Suffrage in Dallas County — steps away