Herbert Marcus and his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman, with her husband A. L. Neiman, started the eponymous department store in 1907 in competition with the Sanger Brothers store, Herbert’s previous employer. After their first store was destroyed by fire in 1914, this new facility was in operation by the end of the year, filling a full city block along S. Ervay Street. The nine-story structure, clad in cream-colored terra-cotta, has lean and minimal classical moldings around windows and small foliate rondels and lintels on lower floors. Still in operation, this is Neiman Marcus’s “flagship” store.
An 826-room hotel by Frank Lloyd Wright was planned in 1946 for the block across Ervay Street from Neiman Marcus. The tapered and folded tower was not built when its client, oilman Rogers Lacy, died in 1947.