Paul Bonwit. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Bonwit, Paul J. (29 Sept. 1862-11 Dec. 1939), retail merchant, was born Paul Joseph (or Josef) Bonwit near Hanover, Germany, the son of Bernard Bonwit. His father's occupation and mother's name are unknown. He attended the local Gymnasium before moving to Paris at age sixteen, where he found work with a local export house as a clerk while continuing his academic studies at night. In 1883 Bonwit came to the United States. After a brief stay in New York City, he moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he worked in a department store. By now determined to enter the retail business world, he returned to New York and became affiliated with Rothschild & Company. Bonwit eventually became a partner in the firm, which was renamed Bonwit, Rothschild & Company. He married Sarah Woolf in 1893. The couple had two sons.

Eager to establish his own retail operation, Bonwit opened a store at Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street in 1895. Two years later he entered a partnership with Edmund D. Teller, and the two men relocated their establishment (now known as Bonwit Teller) to Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. The partners incorporated their firm in 1907 as Bonwit Teller & Company and in 1911 relocated yet again, this time to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street. They announced that this new location would provide consumers with "an uncommon display of wearing apparel from foreign and domestic sources . . . which will appeal to those who desire the unusual and exclusive at moderate prices." The firm continued to specialize in high-end women's apparel at a time when many of its competitors were diversifying their product lines, and Bonwit Teller became noted within the trade for the quality of its merchandise as well as the above-average salaries paid to both buyers and executives.

In 1930, sensing that the retail trade in New York City was moving uptown, Bonwit chose a new address farther up Fifth Avenue--the former Stewart & Company building at Fifty-sixth Street. Although the building had been remodeled as recently as 1929--with a "daringly modern" interior that consisted of separate, highly individualistic salons--Bonwit felt that the layout detracted from his merchandise, and he contracted with Ely Jacques Kahn for a complete overhaul. As the economic depression affecting the nation grew, such expenses did not add luster to the firm's bottom line. In 1931 the company attracted the attention of noted financier Floyd Odlum, who had shrewdly cashed in his stock holdings just prior to the stock market crash of 1929 and was creating a career for himself out of acquiring and turning around otherwise solid firms that were in financial distress. Bonwit agreed to let Odlum's wife Hortense serve as a consultant to the company in 1932, and two years later--dogged by poor health and saddened by the death of his wife--he sold the firm to Odlum's Atlas Corporation. Odlum promptly named his wife as the new president (she became in the process the first woman to hold such a position in New York), with Bonwit's son Walter staying on as vice president and general manager.

During his business career, Bonwit sat on the boards of both Harriman National Bank and A. Sulka & Company, while he also maintained an interest in philanthropies and the arts. He died in Manhattan after a brief illness. The firm bearing his name enjoyed something of a revival under the direction of the Odlums. Sold to the Hoving Corporation in 1946, the store underwent several changes of ownership, beginning with Genesco in 1956, then Allied Stores Corporation in 1979, and finally the Hooker Corporation in 1987. In May 1990 the developer Donald Trump demolished the Fifth Avenue store in order to make room for the Trump Tower, and the firm of Bonwit Teller no longer was in business.

In the history of retail trade, the name Bonwit Teller has remained synonymous with high quality in women's apparel, and through that association Paul Bonwit secured his niche in the annals of New York business.

No collection of Bonwit's papers has been located, and secondary information on his life and career is scarce. Hortense M. Odlum's A Woman's Place: The Autobiography (1939) paints a grim picture of conditions at Bonwit Teller at the time of the Atlas Corporation takeover, while Robert Hendrickson's The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America's Great Department Stores (1979) gives a brief overview of the company's history. An obituary is in the New York Times, 11 Dec. 1939.