Emporium Department Store
An evening with author Anne Evers Hitz

The Emporium—"California’s Largest, America's Grandest Store"—was a major shopping destination on San Francisco’s Market Street for a century, from 1896 to 1996. Shoppers flocked to the mid-price store with its beautiful dome and bandstand. Patrons could find anything at the Emporium, from jewelry to stoves, and it was a meeting place for friends to enjoy tea while listening to the Emporium Orchestra. Founded in 1897 as the Emporium and Golden Rule Bazaar, the store flourished until the disastrous 1906 earthquake. Once it re-opened in 1908, it dominated shopping downtown until mid-century. Today it is the site of the Westfield Mall.

Anne Evers Hitz is a fifth-generation San Franciscan, and a great-great granddaughter of one of the Emporium's founders, F. W. Dohrmann. She fondly remembers the old store, the""grand dame" of Market Street. Anne has had her own communications consulting firm in San Francisco for over 20 years. She also worked as publicity director for the University of California Press and as editorial assistant at publishers Oxford University Press and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York.