Today, Fulton Mall is a bustling shopping district in Downtown Brooklyn. During the late-Victorian / early-Edwardian eras (think 1880-1910), it was the preeminent thoroughfare for fashionable shopping in Brooklyn. With monumental department stores like Abraham & Straus and impeccable restaurants like Gage & Tollner, shoppers and window shoppers alike teamed Fulton Street to see everything from the latest wedding trousseau to mourning veils, and penny candy to soft clam bellies in Duxbury stew. While most of these businesses no longer exist, many of their architectural remains can be found behind and above their modern facades.

Abraham & Strauss ca. 1929 Abraham & Straus was a department store founded in 1865 by Abraham Abraham and Joseph Wechsler with a flagship location at Fulton and Hoyt Streets in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of Brooklyn. Abraham & Straus was originally a dry goods dealer under the name Wechsler & Abraham located at 285 Fulton Street. The store was so successful that the Wechslers were bought out by the Straus family, partners of Macy’s department stores, which led to the name change and the new store location on Fulton and Hoyt Streets. A New York Times article from 1893 reported on the business change. According to the article, the new store was an estimated 1,500,000 cubic feet, five stories, and roughly 40,000 daily shoppers. Also mentioned in the article was the list of goods sold in the new store, which included, “silks and dress goods, cloths, laces, embroideries, cloaks, shawls, linens, gloves, china and glass, sterling silver, bronzes, ribbons, house furnishings, upholsteries, art embroideries, books, furniture, carpets, and stationary.” By 1965, Abraham & Straus became the third largest department store in the United States. In 1995, the store became part of the Macy’s department stores which eliminated the Abraham & Straus branding. The original location at Fulton and Hoyt Streets continues to be operated as a Macy’s Department Store until March 2025.

While the fighting of World War II remained on the other side of the ocean, the effects of the war were deeply felt in New York City. Wartime ramifications included serious food shortages, as much American-grown food was being shipped overseas for troops and allies abroad. By 1943, the government had created a push for the cultivation of private lands for locally grown crops. These "victory gardens" sprouted up (pun intended) all over the city. The statistics for New York victory gardens were impressive: 400,000 victory gardens on 600 acres of private land which, over the course of the war, produced 200 million pounds of vegetables! Check out the bounty of New York's wartime farmers!

While Fulton Street has remained well-known throughout Brooklyn as a retail area, few may know that it was once home to the flagship of one of the largest department stores in America.