The iconic Neiman Marcus flagship store in downtown Dallas, which first opened its doors in 1907, will close on March 31, 2025, after the company failed to come to an agreement with its landlord following a decade of negotiations. For over a century, Neiman Marcus has been an integral part of Texas' beauty and fashion culture, influencing everything from big hair and glamorous outfits to a love for all things that sparkle and shine.
The surprising news comes just two months after Saks Global acquired Neiman Marcus Group in a $2.7 billion deal, which brought Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off Fifth, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman under the Saks Global umbrella. In the same week, Saks Global confirmed the closure of Neiman's offices at CityPlace in uptown Dallas in an effort to consolidate corporate office space, opting to maintain a single corporate headquarters in New York.
For Texans like myself, the loss of Neiman Marcus’ flagship store feels like watching an iconic building collapse into rubble. Even though the building itself is still standing, the magic is gone, and it doesn’t matter what they decide to replace it with; it’ll never be the same again. New Yorkers who mourned the loss of Barneys New York can, unfortunately, very much relate.
The downtown Dallas location may have started as a luxury department store way back in 1907, but over the last hundred years, it has become so much more. It was a place where multiple generations came together to celebrate special occasions. Neiman Marcus’ 71-year-old restaurant The Zodiac was an equally iconic institution, a hub for “ladies who lunch,” where donning an elegant outfit complete with a matching hat and gloves at 11 in the morning was the norm, long after the rest of the country had moved on from such formal accessories.
The bridal department, where brides-to-be tried on wedding dresses, was the same place where their mothers and grandmothers had once shopped for their own gowns. Texans from near and far would travel to Dallas every holiday season to get a glimpse of the famous Christmas displays. The store elevated Dallas (and Texas as a whole) into a premier shopping destination, a perfect place for wealthy Texans to spend the oil money that was burning a hole in their pockets—a place where new-money elites got the old-money treatment.
It was our little slice of luxury amidst thousands of miles of dirt roads and rolling plains, setting the standard for a level of service and elegance that many department stores have since attempted to emulate, but never replicated. Walking into the store felt like stepping back in time to an era when shopping was considered the main event, not just another errand. The attentive Neiman Marcus staff ensured that every purchase, regardless of its size, felt like a special occasion worthy of celebrating. With its impeccable service and unparalleled level of taste and quality, Neiman Marcus’ flagship store was a bastion of Texas elegance.
If you want to know what makes Neiman Marcus unique, no one says it better than Stanley Marcus, the son of co-founder Herbert Marcus and nephew of his sister and co-founder Carrie Neiman, who took over the store in the 1950s and went on to become one of the most innovative leaders in the retail industry.
“Very frequently I am asked, ‘Why is Neiman Marcus so different from other stores? What is the mystique of Neiman Marcus?’” Marcus writes in his 1974 autobiography Minding the Store. “The best answer I can give is that stores are, in a way, similar to newspapers, which all have access to the same news sources. They subscribe to the same domestic and foreign wire services, and while some may have more reporters in various parts of the world than others, they all use approximately the same grade of newsprint and similar types of presses. The quality that makes one paper stand out like the New York Times and another like the New York Daily News lies in the editing.”
“One paper features its foreign news on the front page, the other buries it in condensed form inside; one plays up violence in its headlines, the other relegates such stories to its local news section. So it goes with stores. Essentially, all of us buy in the same market, but we select differently… A customer of ours once described what she discerned as the difference between our store and others when she said, ‘What I like about your store is what it doesn't have. I don't have to wade through dozens of articles to find what I want.’ She was complimenting our selectivity, another word for editing. This process starts with the head of the store, who must lay down certain guidelines as to standards of taste and quality for which he wants his store to stand.”
The closure of Neiman Marcus feels like the final nail in the coffin for the upscale department store shopping experience. This experience has gone by the wayside in favor of optimizing the online shopping experience for the new luxury consumer who prioritizes convenience. Since this is the end of an era, it’s only fitting that we take a look back in time at the history of Neiman Marcus’ iconic downtown Dallas department store and the recent circumstances that contributed to its abrupt closure.
September 10, 1907: Herbert Marcus Sr., his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman, and her husband Abraham Lincoln (Al) Neiman found the Neiman Marcus company with the goal of offering high-quality, ready-to-wear clothing to wealthy Texans. The first store, built later that year in downtown Dallas at the intersection of Elm Street and North Field Street, was lavishly furnished and stocked with clothing rarely found in Texas at the time. The store's initial inventory, primarily acquired by Carrie on a buying trip to New York, sold out within a few weeks.
“Tuesday, September tenth, marks the advent of a new shopping place in Dallas,” read the full-page ad in The Dallas Morning News. “We will be known as the Store of Quality and Superior Values. We shall be hypercritical in our selections.”
1913: A fire destroys the original Neiman Marcus store and all its merchandise.
1914: The flagship Neiman Marcus store that shoppers are familiar with today first opened its doors in 1914. Situated at the intersection of Main and Ervay Streets and constructed with red brick and white stone, the building was designed to be fireproof and allow for future expansion. Initially opening with four floors, the store has since expanded and now boasts more than 100,000 square feet of selling space. Due to its historical significance, the building has since been designated a historic landmark.
The new, larger store enabled Neiman Marcus to broaden its product offerings, leading to a significant sales increase. The expanded product selection now included accessories, lingerie, children's clothing, and an expanded women's apparel department.
January 13, 1926: Neiman and Marcus sign a lease with C.C. Slaughter for a 99-year lease of a 25-foot-long plot of dirt sitting under the iconic downtown Dallas department store’s escalators, according to a document filed with Dallas County. (The 99-year lease is set to expire in 2025, and this portion of the property is reportedly why Neiman Marcus is being forced to close its iconic flagship location.)
1929: Neiman Marcus begins offering menswear.
1930s–1940s: Neiman Marcus starts to diversify its offerings by incorporating more affordable clothing lines alongside its luxury items to adapt to the changing economic landscape following the Great Depression and the war years.
1950s: This decade marked an era of change and expansion for the luxury retailer. Herbert Marcus Sr. died in 1950, and Carrie Neiman died two years later, leaving Stanley Marcus in charge of the company's operations. Stanley Marcus went on to serve as President and Chairman of the Board for the company. 1952, Stanley Marcus introduced a new tradition of having extravagant and unusual gifts in each year's Christmas catalog, The Christmas Book. Neiman's fantasy gifts in the Christmas Book have included items like a $20 million submarine, mummy cases that contained an actual mummy, and even a Boeing Business Jet, on sale for $35 million.
1957: The first Fortnight, one of the most anticipated events in Dallas, is held in 1957. This event, an annual presentation of fashions and culture from a specific country, was held in the downtown store for 29 years during late October and early November, bringing fashion, dignitaries, celebrities, exotic food, and extravagant celebrations to the city of Dallas.
1964: A fire destroys $5–10 million in merchandise, art objects, and antique furniture. Remarkably, the building was not destroyed, and it reopens just 27 days later.
1968: The company merges with Broadway-Hale Stores, Inc. (later known as Carter Hawley Hale Stores), which allows Neiman Marcus to expand at a rate that would not have been possible if it had remained independent.
1971: The first Neiman Marcus outside Texas opens in Bal Harbour, Florida. In subsequent years, stores open in over 30 cities across the United States, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Beverly Hills, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and St. Louis.
1987: The Neiman Marcus Group is created as a publicly listed company when Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman are spun off from Carter Hawley Hale Stores.
1999: Neiman Marcus is the first retailer to bring luxury merchandise to the internet.
January 22, 2002: Stanley Marcus, the retail executive who turned Neiman Marcus into one of the world's best-known specialty department stores, dies at the age of 96.
May 2, 2005: The Neiman Marcus Group is the subject of a leveraged buyout, selling itself to two private equity firms, Texas Pacific Group and Warburg Pincus.
October 2013: The Neiman Marcus Group is sold again, this time for $6 billion to Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
2014: Neiman Marcus acquires German luxury fashion e-commerce platform mytheresa.com and its flagship store Theresa from its founders Christoph and Susanne Botschen and venture capital firm Acton Capital Partners.
April 2019: Neiman Marcus acquires a minority stake in Fashionphile, an online resale platform for handbags, jewelry, and accessories.
May 2020: Neiman Marcus Group, Ltd. LLC and 23 affiliated debtors file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
September 2020: Neiman Marcus exits Chapter 11 bankruptcy and turns over ownership to a consortium of investment firms: Davidson Kempner Capital Management, Sixth Street Partners, and Pacific Investment Management.
July 2021: Mytheresa is spun off and files for an IPO on the NYSE. Its valuation was $2.2 billion, which increased to $3 billion during the first day of trading.
June 2022: Neiman Marcus Group reports its highest sales volume in almost half of its stores, and sales of its 20 best-selling brands grow by 70% above pre-COVID levels in 2019. The company also begins to attract younger customers, with the average age falling by seven years from pre-pandemic levels, from the mid-40s to the high-30s.
December 2024: Neiman Marcus is acquired as part of the $2.7 billion Neiman Marcus Group acquisition by Saks Global.
February 2025: Neiman Marcus announces it will close its flagship store in Downtown Dallas on March 31, 2025, after nearly 120 years. Saks Global blamed the store closure on a landlord, saying it received a notice from the landlord to terminate occupancy “after more than a decade of negotiations.” “This location has been a beloved institution in the community for more than a century, and we are disappointed to be losing a piece of Neiman Marcus history,” the Saks spokesperson stated. The company said it will invest $100 million to renovate the Neiman Marcus anchor store at the NorthPark Center mall.
“Dallas is an important market for us, and we remain highly committed to upholding Neiman Marcus’ legacy there,” a Saks Global spokesperson stated. “We see a long-term opportunity to invest in our Dallas shopping experience, and look forward to serving customers at our other locations.”
“We are disappointed the years long negotiations between Neiman Marcus and its downtown Dallas landlord failed to reach an agreement to keep the store open,” Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said in a statement to D Magazine. “This iconic brand has been part of the downtown landscape for over 100 years, and we will miss its presence. However, Saks Global’s commitment to upgrading Neiman Marcus’ NorthPark Center location allows for the Dallas born brand to maintain its significant local presence and ongoing contribution to our City’s economic growth.”
