They wanted to be interviewed for this piece, the current employees of the downtown Neiman Marcus who will become former employees of the downtown Neiman Marcus once it closes forever this very Wednesday. Lifers, veterans and relative newcomers alike, each with warm memories of lives spent toiling with pride, satisfaction and joy at what was once, and for a long time, known only as The Store.
But on Monday, during my of-late daily wanderings through the store built for Dallas by Herbert Marcus Sr., his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman and her husband Al Neiman and sold to the rest of the world by Stanley Marcus, I was told time and again that I was to pocket my notepad and put away my pen. Employees, no matter how glowing their reminiscences, were instructed by corporate — New York-based Exemplar Luxury Group — not to offer their fond-farewells to media.
Nor is there a scheduled valediction — no last toasts nor send-off speeches to the family that brought Dallas to the world and the world to Dallas. Just the clicking of locks and lights.
Another reminder, as though one were needed, that Neiman Marcus — “The Proud Dallas Store,” as this newspaper’s great columnist Frank X. Tolbert once called it — is no longer a Dallas store. Nor a store come Wednesday. Nor, it would seem, very proud, either.
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“Personally, I am very sad,” said photographer Allison V. Smith, granddaughter of Stanley Marcus and co-editor and co-publisher, with her mother Jerrie, of Reflection of a Man: The Photographs of Stanley Marcus. “It’s a loss to the history of our lives. I am very grateful that my mom, Uncle Dick and Aunt Wendy are not here to witness this.”
On third floor, where men’s and women’s clothing has been merged into a single sale section during The Store’s final says, Helen Corbitt’s original recipe binder sits beneath old Fortnight posters.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
In recent weeks I’ve watched The Store, spared the executioner’s dispatch in May 2025, slowly fill with the grieving lined up over the still-open casket. One employee I’ve come to know told me the sadness has become overwhelming, that there would be tears enough come Wednesday. The worker had hoped for a wake — a joyful celebration of what had been, not the ceaseless lamentations for what would no longer be.
What are your memories of the downtown Dallas Neiman Marcus?
The iconic Neiman Marcus store on Main Street in Dallas is ending its run that dates back to the early 1900s.
Most RecentTop Responses
John S
Rowlett, TX
09/30/26
My wife has talked for decades about her mother taking her there to buy clothes and eat at the Zodiac Room in the 1950s and early 60s.
Carol A
Hot Springs Village, AR
09/30/26
I fondly recall being taken to the Zodiac Room by my beloved teacher Gladys Morrison during a school trip to Dallas in the 1970s. As a teenager growing up in a Ft Worth suburb I had never been to such an elegant place…and it was where I first discovered broccoli!
As an adult I worked much of my career on Commerce St just a few blocks from NM and I ate lunch many times at the NM cafe downstairs and the Zodiac Room upstairs. And as an expat living and working in Mexico City I was home for my 40th birthday and went downtown to NM to treat myself to a “special” birthday present….a red leather jacket that I still wear to this day!
Some of my earliest memories of Downtown Neiman Marcus are of going to the Zodiac Room with my grandparents in the late Sixties and early Seventies. The NM Fortnights were a chance to see products and sample food from Great Britain, France, Japan, and other exotic places. On some visits, my grandmother would “ooh” and “ahh” as models in stylish outfits staged a fashion show between the tables. I felt so grown up and sophisticated!
Melissa J
Plano, TX
09/30/26
Even as an infant (in 1965) some of my first special clothes were from Neimans. As a resident of Plano, we only ventured to the downtown store for Fortnights, but we did those every single year. My mother, her mother and I would spend hours there; stopping by for a popover and lunch at the Zodiac Room. Always treated like royalty even with my mother in a wheelchair. The graciousness of the sales personnel was unmatched. Somehow NorthPark staff never quite matched the downtown welcome and attention. With Fortnights long gone, I will admit to not having visited the downtown store in a long time. Once I knew they were closing, I just could not make myself go.
Candace S
Frisco, TX
09/29/26
What a shame that another Texas dept store is closed and no one helped to save it. I remember watching the movie “Giant” and Luz “Carole Baker” talking about going to Neimans to buy a gown for the opening of the Jett Rink Hotel “Shamrock Hilton” also goine.
Former employees, old regulars and the simply curious summoned by the last call announced in June made their farewell reservations at the Zodiac Room, then stayed at their tables for as long as they could while anxious diners paced next to the elevators, awaiting turns for a cup of hot broth and One Last Popover. They’ve wandered the first floor, aiming cell-phone cameras at gleaming cases filled with shiny baubles still out of reach even with the friends-and-family discount.
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They’ve clogged the Commerce Street entrance, waiting for the valets to bring their cars around whilst their arms sag with heavy gowns from the second-floor Bridal Salon. And they’ve come just to wander the floors and gaze upon the Fortnight posters and the steel binder containing Helen Corbitt’s recipes and the portraits of Mr. Stanley, some with Coco Chanel and Sophia Loren and other icons seldom more famous and rarely more influential than he.
Monday afternoon I called Anne Peterson, the longtime caretaker of Mr. Stanley’s archives at SMU’s DeGolyer Library, to see if anyone from corporate had reached out about storing some of these historic gems alongside other keepsakes on the Hilltop. She said no, though she would be interested — “for sure.”
Stanley Marcus, left, and his father, Herbert Marcus, in the offices of the downtown Dallas Neiman Marcus that will close its doors for good on Wednesday.
Courtesy the Marcus family
But she said she was less inclined to make one last pilgrimage to the building that would be “the last word in modern store structure,” as Neiman’s told Dallas in a 1914 newspaper ad, “filled with a stock of merchandise that would reflect credit on the largest city in the land.”
“I just can’t make myself go,” said the woman tasked with overseeing 300 boxes overfilled with Marcus’ documents and correspondence and a room filled with his library. “People say it’s really depressing.”
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Yes, I said. Mourners at a funeral.
“That’s what I’ve heard,” Peterson said. “I am just afraid for the building.”
The structure, at least its exterior, isn’t imperiled: At the beginning of August, the Landmark Commission initiated the long-overdue process of rendering the downtown flagship a local monument worthy of legal protections. (It’s already on the National Register of Historic Places.) The commission did so with the blessings of Andrew Woodworth, Exemplar’s chief legal counsel, and local zoning and land use attorney Tommy Mann.
Mann mentioned that Saks Global — by which Exemplar was known before emerging at July’s end from Chapter 11 bankruptcy — had previously gone to City Hall to ask for tax increment financing funds, worked with historic architects and presented designs for a reimagined Neiman’s to city officials. But Saks’ bankruptcy sidelined those plans.
The bridal salon at the downtown Neiman Marcus has been a destination for decades. But on Monday, it was as still as a museum exhibition.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
As a result, Mann said, “We are going to be searching for a new program, a new partner, maybe a buyer for this building.” None of which would be easy, he said, given that there are “a lot of headwinds downtown.”
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Woodward, who flew in from New York City for the meeting, said they were taking this seriously, that they “want to preserve that history that truly becomes a part of the tapestry of the city.” He pointed out, too, that Dallas City Hall now owns a piece of the ground lease, as do others, and that “we are all aligned in making sure this is handled respectfully and appropriately for the city.”
Over the last year, locals in the art and fashion world have talked of converting the building into a fashion institute and museum and an exhibition space — “a new cultural hub in the heart of the city,” said Paige McCoy Smith, a reporter-producer for WFAA-Channel 8’s Good Morning Texas.
Every developer I spoke to for this column suggested I call Smith, who said she’s in the early stages of gathering support for such an endeavor. She said Monday that it could involve bringing at least a piece of the Texas Fashion Collection, now at the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas, back to the downtown Neiman’s, where the collection was conceived in the 1930s.
Fortnight posters decorate hallways throughout The Store, some of them from the earliest days.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
“The idea of a museum predates the announcement of Neiman’s closing,” Smith said. “It seems like such a logical fit. And I am not willing to say goodbye.”
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She’s visited with several people, among them real estate developer and Dallas Art Fair co-founder John Sughrue, who has long pitched the idea of a museum. In recent months, the nearly empty store already had the feel of one.
“Times change, and things don’t last forever,” Sughrue told me last week. “But the legacy of Neiman’s, its imprint on style and culture and hospitality and Dallas, is a living, breathing influence on all of us.”