Shopping: Where it all began

This past quarter I took a course on the year 1848 in France. A lot happened that year--class conflict, rise of the bourgeoisie, the beginning of a modern, technologically-advanced society--so much that there was not only an entire seminar devoted to it at Chicago, but also an exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt museum in New York. The show, "Faster, Cheaper, Newer, More: The Revolutions of 1848," focused on how design changed in the U.S. and in Europe. From rubber to daguerreotypes to buildings made largely of glass, 1848 and the years just before and after, the material world, like the political one, moved forward and started looking more or less like, well, now.

Shopping as an activity, whether buying or just looking, also began around 1848 with the advent of the department store. It turns out that the first department store in New York, coming onto the global shopping scene before even Paris's Bon Marche and Harrods in London, was the A.T. Stewart Store, located on Chambers Street, just a few blocks east of Stuyvesant High School.

Today, Stuyvesant students looking to check out department stores may head over to lower Broadway, to the Bloomingdales in the former Canal Jeans space or, better yet, world-famous Century 21, both within easy walking distance. Meanwhile, University of Chicago students may study the surprisingly fascinating history of shopping but may not, in fact, shop, for fear of seeming too much like, God forbid, Princeton students.