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Department stores

Feldheim, Gotthelf & Co. : merchants and general importers of British, Continental and American merchandise, Clarence and Barrack Streets, Sydney. On sale: American chairs, American hardware, Austrian furniture, bedsteads, books, cigarettes, cigars, clocks, cricketing and other sporting goods, crockery, cutlery, firerarms, furniture, glassware, ironmongery, jewellery, leather goods, musical instruments, optical goods, organs, Palmer's vestas, patent medicines, perfumery, pianos, plated ware, saddlery, stationery, tobacconists' goods, tobaccos, toys, watches, fancy goods of every description [trade catalogue]
Department stores

Feldheim, Gotthelf & Co

Feldheim, Gotthelf & Co’s new warehouse invited Sydney shoppers to step into a world assembled from every reach of the global trade routes that furnished the late-Victorian home

Black and white photo of a painting
On This Day

24 May 1838 - David Jones department store opened

On 24 May 1838 David Jones opened a department store on the corner of George Street and Barrack Lane in Sydney

The home beautiful / by Mark Foys Ltd. [trade catalogue]
Department stores

Sydney’s department stores and furniture emporia, 1890-1960

This online exhibition has been inspired by the trade literature from Sydney’s furniture and furnishing retailers, with all the illustrations sourced from the Caroline Simpson Library

Australian Home Furnishers / A.C.O. Limited, complete home furnishers [trade catalogue]
Department stores

Australian Home Furnishers (ACO)

In 1948, Australian Home Furnishers was the retail arm of the home furnishing and credit business called Australian Cash Orders

Home and Christmas, 1950 / Morley Johnsons [trade catalogue]
Department stores

Morley Johnsons

Morley Johnson Ltd was a firm of furnishing retailers and furniture manufacturers

Department stores

Grace Bros

From its location just outside Sydney’s main business district, Grace Bros grew to become one of the city’s largest department stores

Art furnishers, upholsterers & decorators / David Jones & Co. [trade catalogue]
Department stores

David Jones

The David Jones name has long been synonymous with retailing of fine merchandise

Receipt from McDowell & Hughes, Drapers & Costumiers, Sydney, 1903, paper

Let's go shopping

For most of us the only receipts we keep are for appliances that may need repairs under warranty, or for the end of year tax return. For curators and historians however, documents like these are worth their weight in gold

Illustration of stores in colour.
Department stores

Mark Foyʼs

Most Sydneysiders associate Mark Foy’s with its impressive former home, now used as the District Court, but the first retail outlet in Sydney was a short stroll up the road in Oxford Street