Emporium Capwell

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Emporium Capwell Co. was the Bay Area department-store heavyweight created in 1927 when San Francisco’s Emporium joined Oakland’s H.C. Capwell Co. The Emporium’s lineage reached back to the Davis Brothers’ Golden Rule Bazaar of 1872 and its 1896 Emporium name; H.C. Capwell began in Oakland in 1889. Two local retail titans, one very large bag.

The combined company retained the separate Emporium and Capwell identities for decades while building out across the growing Bay Area. Its downtown San Francisco flagship stood at 835 Market Street, while Capwell’s Oakland presence gave the enterprise a formidable East Bay counterpart. For generations, the stores supplied the practical ritual of department-store life: clothes, cosmetics, housewares, holiday spectacle, and a lot of escalator mileage.

Broadway-Hale Stores acquired Emporium Capwell in 1970; the parent later became Carter Hawley Hale. The separate banners were brought together as Emporium-Capwell in 1980, then simplified to Emporium in 1990. Corporate naming committees: always ready to remove a perfectly good hyphenated haunting.

Federated Department Stores acquired the parent company in 1995. The remaining Emporium stores converted to Macy’s in 1996, closing the chapter on a locally rooted retail institution whose family tree ran through San Francisco and Oakland.

Our Emporium Capwell collection celebrates Bay Area shopping palaces, big-city window displays, and the stubbornly glamorous age when a trip for socks could become an afternoon expedition.