B. Altman and Company was a luxury department store and chain, founded in 1865 in New York City, New York, by Benjamin Altman. Its flagship store, the B. Altman and Company Building at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan, operated from 1906 until the company closed the store at the end of 1989. Branch stores were all shuttered by the end of January 1990.
One of the first American department stores to open out-of-town branches, Altman's eventually opened locations in Pennsylvania (St. Davids in 1965 and Willow Grove in 1983), New Jersey (Short Hills in 1958—replacing an earlier nearby East Orange store—and Ridgewood/Paramus in 1967); and New York state (Manhasset in 1947 and White Plains in 1930). A short-lived location in Cincinnati, Ohio, opened during the L.J. Hooker ownership period (1987–1989), and two mall locations in Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, were physically completed but never occupied by Altman's during that same time.
