Jordan Marsh To Take Macy’s Name New England Chain Will Lose Its Identity After 145 Years

Jordan Marsh, the department store familiar to New Englanders for 145 years, will vanish this spring and be replaced by Macy’s, the name made famous in New York.

Macy’s East, a division of Federated Department Stores Inc. which also owns the Bon Marche, announced the name change Tuesday.

“When a beautiful woman gets married, she takes a new name. And that’s all Jordan Marsh is doing, taking the family’s name,” Hal Kahn, chairman of Macy’s East, was quoted as saying in Wednesday’s Boston Herald.

Cincinnati-based Federated merged with the R.H. Macy & Co. in 1994 and combined its Abraham & Straus-Jordan Marsh unit with Macy’s to create Macy’s East. The Abraham & Straus name also was dropped.

There are 18 Jordan Marsh department stores, which are all in New England except for one in Albany, N.Y.

The store’s roots go back to 1841, when Eben Jordan sold a yard of cherry-colored ribbon to a woman at his first drygoods store on Hanover Street in Boston. The company was started in Boston on Jan. 20, 1851.

Shoppers’ reaction to the name change was mixed.

“Macy’s is New York, not Boston,” Cheryl Leonard’thee of Boston told the Globe on Tuesday outside the Jordan Marsh store in downtown Boston. “Do what you want with the store, but leave the name.”

However, Maureen Magalldi said, “It doesn’t bother me. I like Macy’s. It’s always been one of my favorite stores.”

A Macy’s spokesman said no layoffs will result from dropping the Jordan Marsh name.

Macy’s East said several times last year there were no immediate plans to drop the Jordan Marsh name.