Macy's Herald Square and the Parade That Outgrew a Publicity Stunt

The sprawling department store on your right, covering nearly a full city block, is Macy's Herald Square, a store so large the company began calling it the world's largest store, and its holiday publicity stunt from nineteen twenty four is still running today.

Macy's expanded its Herald Square building over several decades until it swelled to more than two million square feet of retail space. In nineteen twenty four, Macy's employees organized a Christmas parade through the streets near the store, marching in costumes alongside floats and live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo, including camels, elephants, and bears. It was meant as a one time publicity event, but crowds loved it, and Macy's ran it again the following year. The animals disappeared from the parade in nineteen twenty seven, replaced by the first oversized balloon, a Felix the Cat figure propped up on sticks, and by nineteen twenty eight the balloons were filled with helium so they could actually float above the crowd.

The parade kept growing through the nineteen thirties, drawing crowds estimated over a million people even in the depths of the Great Depression. It was not, however, continuous. During the Second World War, the parade was suspended for three years, from nineteen forty two through nineteen forty four, because the rubber and helium used for the balloons were needed for the war effort. It returned in nineteen forty five and has run every year since, now watched by tens of millions on television.

What began as a one time stunt by department store employees, meant to sell coats and toys before Christmas, outgrew its own publicity and became one of the most watched events in the country, still ending right here, on the sidewalk outside the store that invented it.