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1902

JCPenney founded, evolved from a single dry goods store to a major American retail chain, facing numerous challenges and transformations along the way.

JCPenney was founded in 1902 as a group of dry goods stores that James Cash Penney managed as part of the Golden Rule chain.

First JCPenney store Kemmerer, WY

The stores were initially located in downtown areas but shifted to shopping malls during the 1960s.

James Cash Penney was born in Hamilton, Missouri. After graduating from high school, Penney worked for a local retailer. He relocated to Colorado at the advice of a doctor, hoping that a better climate would improve his health.

In 1898, Penney went to work for Thomas Callahan and Guy Johnson, who owned dry goods stores called Golden Rule stores in Colorado and Wyoming. In 1899, Callahan sent Penney to Evanston, Wyoming, to work with Johnson in another Golden Rule store. Callahan and Johnson asked Penney to join them in opening a new Golden Rule store. Using money from savings and a loan, Penney joined the partnership and moved with his wife and infant son to Kemmerer, Wyoming, to start his own store. Penney opened the store on April 14, 1902. He participated in the creation of two more stores and purchased full interest in all three locations when Callahan and Johnson dissolved their partnership in 1907. In 1909, Penney moved his company headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, to be closer to banks and railroads. By 1912, Penney had 34 stores in the Rocky Mountain States.

In 1913, the company was incorporated under the new name, J. C. Penney Company, with William Henry McManus as a co-founder. In 1914, the headquarters was moved to New York City to simplify buying, financing, and transportation of goods.

JCPenney offices in New York city

By 1917, the company operated 175 stores in 22 states in the United States. J. C. Penney acquired The Crescent Corset Company in 1920, the company's first wholly owned subsidiary. In 1922, the company's oldest active private brand, Big Mac work clothes, was launched. The company opened its 500th store in 1924 in Hamilton, Missouri, James Cash Penney's hometown. By the opening of the 1,000th store in 1928, gross business had reached $190 million (equivalent to $3.48 billion in 2024).

In 1940, Sam Walton began working at a J. C. Penney in Des Moines, Iowa. Walton subsequently founded retailer Walmart in 1962. By 1941, J. C. Penney operated 1,600 stores in all 48 states. In 1956, J. C. Penney started national advertising with a series of advertisements in Life magazine. J. C. Penney credit cards were first issued in 1959.

The company dedicated its first full-line shopping-center department store in 1961. This store was located at Black Horse Pike Center in Audubon, New Jersey. The second full-line shopping center store was dedicated, at King of Prussia Plaza in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania in late 1962. Those stores expanded the lines of merchandise and services that an average J. C. Penney carried to include appliances (manufactured by General Electric), sporting goods, tools, garden\lawn merchandise, restaurants, beauty salons, portrait studios, auto parts, and auto centers.

In 1962, J. C. Penney entered discount merchandising with the acquisition of General Merchandise Company which gave them The Treasury stores. Treasure Island was founded as GMC's discount store division, with stores that measured 200,000 square feet and a conveyor belt that took purchased items outside to be placed in customer’s cars. Its first location opened in Appleton, Wisconsin, on November 24, 1961.

Treasure Island store

These discount operations proved unsuccessful and were shuttered in 1981.

In 1963, J. C. Penney issued its first catalog.

The company operated in-store catalog desks in eight states. The catalogs were distributed by the Milwaukee Catalog distribution center.

In 1969, the company acquired Thrift Drug, a chain of drugstores headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It also acquired Supermarkets Interstate, an Omaha-based food retailer which operated leased departments in J. C. Penney stores, The Treasury stores, and Thrift Drug stores.

In the 1960s, JCPenney expanded to include Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Stores were opened in Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska in 1962, followed by Honolulu, Hawaii in 1966, and Puerto Rico in 1968. The Penney Building in Anchorage partially collapsed and was damaged beyond repair in the 1964 Alaska earthquake. The company rebuilt the store as a shorter building on a larger footprint and followed up by building Anchorage's first public parking garage, which opened in 1968. The Honolulu store was located at Ala Moana Center, and closed in 2003, along with all remaining locations in the state, making Hawaii the only U.S. state to not currently have a JCPenney store. The Penney store at Plaza Las Américas mall in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which opened in 1968, featured three levels and 261,500 square feet. It was the largest JCPenney until a 300,000-square-foot store was dedicated at Greater Chicago's Woodfield Mall in 1971. The Woodfield Mall store served as the largest in the chain until a replacement store opened at Plaza Las Américas in 1998, which is 350,000 square feet in size.

On February 12, 1971, James Cash Penney died at the age of 95; the company's stores were closed the morning of his funeral on February 16.

That year, the company adopted the JCPenney style in advertising. and its revenues reached $5 billion (equivalent to $38.8 billion in 2024) for the first time and catalog business made a profit for the first time.

JCPenney reached its peak number of stores in 1973, with 2,053 stores, 300 of which were full-line establishments. However, the company was hard hit by the 1974 recession with its stock price declining by two-thirds.

In 1977, J. C. Penney sold its four stores in Italy to Italian department store chain La Rinascente; Penneys had opened in Italy in 1970 but left due to difficulties encountered when trying to expand in Italy and had only ever opened stores in the Lombardy region. In the same year they also closed down their unprofitable Supermarkets Interstate supermarket brand, which operated in Treasury discount stores; however, the stores that were not in Treasury locations remained open.

In 1978, the J. C. Penney Historic District in Kemmerer, Wyoming, was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark. In 1979, JCPenney stores started accepting Visa cards. MasterCard was accepted the following year.

In 1980, the company closed the unprofitable Treasury discount stores to focus resources on its core retail stores.

In 1983, JCPenney discontinued its appliance, hardware, outdoor equipment, and auto center departments, the store attached auto centers became additional store and warehouse space, the free-standing automotive centers were sold to Firestone. Also in 1983, it began selling goods online through the Viewtron videotex service. That same year, fashion designer Roy Halston, signed a six-year, $1 billion deal with JCPenney to sell a line of affordable clothing, accessories, cosmetics, and perfumes ranging in price from $24 to $200. The move was considered controversial then as no other high-end designer up to that point in time had licensed their designs to a mid-price retailer. The line, named Halston III, would not last long, as it would be poorly received and discontinued after about a year. However, the business move paved the way for other such high-end designers to sell their products at stores of varying price ranges in the future.

In 1984, JCPenney acquired the First National Bank of Harrington, Delaware, and renamed it J. C. Penney National Bank. No physical “JCPenney bank” ever existed, it was not a real bank, had no tellers or public banking services, existed purely as a credit-card issuing bank on paper.

With the acquisition of the bank, the company became able to issue its own Mastercard and Visa Inc. cards. The company also began accepting American Express cards. Also that year, Thrift Drug began co-locating stores with Weis Markets, and acquired many former Pantry Pride properties. In April 1987, the company announced that it was moving its headquarters to Plano, Texas.

Construction on the new company headquarters in Plano, Texas, broke ground in 1990 and was completed in 1992.

A signature feature of the Plano HQ is its multi‑story glass atrium, which brings natural light deep into the building. Built on a massive multi‑acre site in the Legacy business district. Designed as a single integrated headquarters for all corporate functions. The original Plano headquarters (occupied from 1992 until the pandemic) was 1.8 million square feet, but JCPenney now leases a 320,000‑sq‑ft portion of that campus.

After several years of development, the JCPenney Television Shopping Channel appeared on cable systems beginning in 1989. By the mid-1980s, all JCPenney stores had discontinued sales of firearms. Before this point, JCPenney carried rifles and shotguns branded as JCPenney but produced by numerous established firearms manufacturers. In the 1980s JCPenney's also stopped selling outdoor equipment and hardware such as lawn mowers and tools.

When Sears closed its catalog business in 1993, JCPenney became the largest catalog retailer in the United States. In 1995 the chain expanded to Chile with a store in the capital, Santiago. In 1995, the drug store business was expanded with the acquisition of Kerr Drug and again in 1996 with the purchase of Fay's Drug. Then in November 1996 they acquired the Eckerd chain. Fay's, Kerr, and Eckerd merged into J. C. Penney's drug store subsidiary Thrift Drug. Fay's, most Kerr, and Thrift drug stores were re-branded Eckerd in 1997. (Kerr Drug stores in The Carolinas remained branded as such because they were part of a group of stores that were divested because of trade competition issues raised during the merger.

On January 24, 2011, JCPenney shut down its catalog business and 19 outlet stores. Seven additional stores and two call centers also closed.

On May 15, 2020, JCPenney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced that there would be an additional 242 store closings, blaming the COVID-19 pandemic for its action. By June 17, JCPenney reopened approximately 827 stores; most of the 154 scheduled for permanent closure in 2020 were among those reopened, with final closing sales in progress. On June 22, JCPenney identified an additional 13 stores that would be permanently closed.

On June 4, 2020, JCPenney released a list of 148 stores slated to close starting in late June 2020, with eleven additional store closures announced on June 22 and two additional stores on July 7, with the previously announced store closing locations remaining on hold pending further review, for a planned closing a total of 242 stores

On September 9, 2020, Brookfield Property Partners and Simon Property Group agreed to purchase JCPenney for about $800 million, including $300 million in cash and assuming $500 million of debt, which was later approved by the court on November 10, 2020. It had been established that once the company emerges from bankruptcy it is poised to save nearly 60,000 jobs, according to various independent studies. The company was paying $2.45 million in monthly rent at the time it sold its headquarters offices in Plano, Texas in 2017; the location was vacated in November 2020.

Bronze statue of JCP founder James Cash Penney was unveiled at its new permanent home

in Kemmerer, Wyoming, by three of his grandchildren during the community’s

first annual Golden Rule Days celebration (2021)

In April 2022, JCPenney's owners—Simon and Brookfield—offered $8.6 billion to purchase Kohl's. Sephora had already announced plans to contract exclusively with Kohl's by 2023, and had piloted Sephora Inside Kohls at select store locations. With this deal, Sephora would remain affiliated with, and under control of, the Simon and Brookfield retail portfolio, therefore superseding and annulling previous agreements for Sephora to leave JCPenney in favor of Kohl's.

The company returned to its Plano, Texas, headquarters in July 2023. The reopened headquarters contains over 2,000 workers and occupies three floors.

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I joined JCPenney in 1983, at the General Merchandise Company Distribution Center at 11800 W Burleigh St in Wauwatosa WI.

A year later I was transferred to Atlanta, GA working at 730 Peachtree St NE (not sure of exact address).

About September 1989 I was transferred to the Dallas TX JCPenney data center.

Upper right red arrow is where I lived

Lower left red arrow is where I walked to work

My retirement, April 1998

John Burns, Stan Mann, and me