Liberty House (department store)

Liberty House

File:Liberty House Department Store HI Final Logo.png
Formerly	Hackfeld's Dry Goods (1849-1852) B. F. Ehlers (1852-1898) H. Hackfeld & Co. (1898-1918)
Industry	Department store
Founded	1849 (1849)
Founder	Heinrich Hackfeld
Defunct	Template:End date and age
Fate	Purchased by Federated Department Stores; integrated into Macy's West
Headquarters	Honolulu, Hawaii , United States
Number of locations	45-50 (at its peak)
Number of employees	4,200 (at its peak)
Parent	Amfac (1918-1988) JMB Realty (1988-2001)

Liberty House, based in Honolulu, Hawaii, operated as a department and specialty store chain with outlets across the Hawaiian Islands, on Guam, and several locations on the U.S. mainland.

History

The origins of Liberty House trace back to 1849 when German merchant Heinrich Hackfeld established Hackfeld's Dry Goods. In 1852, the store was renamed after Hackfeld's nephew, B. F. Ehlers, although Hackfeld still retained ownership interest while focusing on his ventures in trade, shipping, and real estate. By 1881, Paul Isenberg (1837–1903) became a fifty percent partner in the enterprise. The family businesses of Hackfeld and Isenberg in Hawaii were officially consolidated under the name H. Hackfeld & Co. in 1898.

During World War I in 1918, the U.S. government confiscated H. Hackfeld & Co., labeling it alien property due to many heirs residing in Germany. The company was then sold to a newly formed group called American Factors. Concurrently, the B.F. Ehlers store was rebranded as The Liberty House to reflect the prevailing anti-German sentiment. With extensive sugarcane plantations and landholdings inherited from Hackfeld, American Factors—later known as Amfac—emerged as one of Hawaii's influential Big Five landowners.

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Liberty House mainland division final logo

In 1969, Liberty House extended its operations to the continental United States following Amfac's acquisition of Rhodes Western department stores, a well-established consolidator of retail outlets. Between 1971 and 1974, these Rhodes stores were rebranded under the Liberty House name. The mainland presence eventually encompassed locations in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, New Mexico, and Washington. This expansion peaked with the inauguration of a flagship store in San Francisco in 1974 at Stockton and O'Farrell streets. However, due to underwhelming performance and a fragmented market presence, Liberty House began retracting its mainland operations in 1978, divesting its remaining ten stores by 1984.

In 1984, nine out of ten California-based Liberty House stores were shuttered owing to unsatisfactory sales figures. The sole exception was the San Mateo Fashion Island location in San Mateo, California, which remained operational until 1986.

Following Amfac's leveraged buyout by Chicago real estate firm JMB Realty Corp. in 1988, Liberty House expanded its footprint to include a store within Guam’s Micronesia Mall in 1994. By 1998, Liberty House filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, resulting in the closure of most of its resort-oriented stores—once numbering over forty locations. After emerging from bankruptcy proceedings in 2001, the company was acquired by Federated Department Stores and subsequently merged into Macy's West. Macy’s continues to hold a common law trademark by operating the LibertyHouse.com website domain redirecting visitors to Macy’s main site. The San Francisco Liberty House location was converted into Macy’s Union Square Men's Store until its closure in 2017; afterward, it underwent redevelopment for mixed-use purposes.

See also

• List of department stores converted to Macy's

External links

• Historical Overview of Liberty House in Hawaii