Eddie Gindi, heir to Strawbridge and Wanamaker
"Philadelphia is the right spot," says Century 21 boss
John Wanamaker, first among the department store moguls whose palaces once lined Philadelphia's Market Street and spread to New York and across the Northeast, survives only as a green metal statue outside City Hall, facing the city's faded retail district.
But Eddie Gindi, co-owner of New York's Century 21 department stores and scion of a family of Brooklyn retailers, still believes "Philadelphia is the right spot for us." And he's chosen the former Strawbridge's at 8th and Market (downstairs from this newsroom) for the chain's first location outside the New York area.
Gindi tells his story -- and how the 9/11 attacks that wrecked Century 21's flagship store gave him new purposes -- in my column in the Aug. 4 Inquirer here.