In the autumn of 1924, New York City found itself on the verge of a new seasonal spectacle. The celebrated department store Macy’s, having gone public in 1922 and rapidly expanded by acquiring rivals and opening regional branches, had just completed a major expansion of its flagship Herald Square store.
The new “World’s Largest Store” now spanned an entire city block from Broadway to Seventh Avenue along 34th Street — a bold architectural and commercial statement.
Driven by the desire to introduce shoppers to the holiday season, Macy’s elected to stage a parade on Thanksgiving morning — though its true aim was less about turkey and gratitude, and more about ushering in the busy Christmas shopping period.
On Thursday, November 27, 1924, the inaugural event kicked off at 145th Street and Convent Avenue, with a police escort setting the scene for a parade route that stretched six miles — a considerable length for participants but shorter for eager spectators who gathered four and five deep along the sidewalks.
The spectacle was filled with playful whimsy. In keeping with the store’s holiday window theme of nursery rhymes, floats depicted scenes like “Little Miss Muffet”, “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe”, and “Little Red Riding Hood”. Employees appeared dressed as clowns, cowboys, and sword-wielding knights. A menagerie of live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo — elephants, bears, camels, monkeys — lent a circus-like air to the procession, accompanied by four marching bands. At the parade’s climax stood Santa Claus, atop a sleigh on an icy mountain, waving to the crowds and signaling the arrival of the holiday season.
The parade reached its final stretch in front of Macy’s Herald Square store, where some 10,000 spectators cheered as Santa was crowned “King of the Kiddies” and ascended a ladder to take his throne atop the store’s 34th Street marquee. From there, he unveiled the window display “The Fair Frolics of Wondertown,” a fantastical marionette and puppet scene tied to the parade’s theme and produced by artist & puppeteer Tony Sarg.
Although newspaper coverage the next day was modest — just two sentences in the NY Herald — Macy’s themselves announced the parade would return the following Thanksgiving, admitting they “did not dare dream its success would be so great.” The parade’s runaway appeal soon led to the substitution of helium-filled character balloons (beginning with a Felix the Cat in 1927), replacing the live zoo animals that had worn out on the long march.
Over the decades, the route has been shortened to about two and a half miles, yet the parade itself has grown enormously, featuring dozens of giant balloons, marching bands, celebrity appearances, and the ever-present Santa at Herald Square, marking the official start of the Christmas shopping season in New York City.
Watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV has been a tradition in my family. Nice to know how it all began, and why. Perhaps it should have adhered to the original purpose.
I remember the Beautiful Bullocks store on 7 and Hill to 7 and Broadway. It was so beautiful and Bullocks had the best Santa clause ever. We could stand and look at that window display for a hour. Then my Nana would take my brothers and I to Clifton’s or Pig and Whistle. What a wonderful childhood that was.