Gimbel, Adam Long (1893-1969)

Dates

• Existence: 1893-1969

Biography

Adam Gimbel was born in 1893 and named for his grandfather who founded the Gimbel retail empire. His cousin, Isaac Gimbel, was responsible for the merger of the Herald Square locations of Gimbel's and Sak's, and renaming the chain Sak's Fifth Avenue. The youngest member of the third generation of the Gimbel family, Adam Gimbel was reluctant at first to join the family business. Asked by his father to work for the store in 1916, Gimbel dropped out of Yale to work in introductory positions for the store. After serving in WWI, Gimbel helped his father set up manufacturing locations in Japan and the Philipines. By 1924, Gimbel had become Vice President of the Philadelphia store and by the end of the year had been made VP of the Fifth Avenue location. In 1927, he bought a storefront location on Michigan Avenue in Chicago on an impulse. Which was the instigation of many impulse decisions which made him quite reputable within the store's upper management until his retirement in 1975.

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