Crowley, Milner and Company

Product Details

Historical Context

Crowley, Milner and Company was created in 1909 when Joseph J. Crowley, his brothers William and Daniel, and William L. Milner joined together to save a struggling department store in Detroit called Partridge and Blackwell. Joseph Crowley had spent the previous few years working as a credit manager for Detroit wholesaler Burnham Stoepel, a job which often required that he help reorganize struggling ventures. His brothers had joined him in 1902 to form the Crowley Brothers Wholesale Dry Goods Company. Meanwhile, Milner was operating the W.L. Milner Department Store in Toledo, Ohio, a company that was a regular customer of the Crowley Brothers' enterprise.

After leaving Burnham Stoepel to fully focus his energy on Crowley Brothers, Joseph Crowley was approached by an executive of the Central Savings Bank of Detroit about the Partridge and Blackwell opportunity. The company was a specialty retailer teetering on the edge of bankruptcy due to organizational problems that were exacerbated by the recession in 1907. Crowley agreed to take over the struggling company on the condition that his two brothers and Milner join him in the endeavor. They all agreed, and in 1909 Crowley, Milner and Company was incorporated as the successor to Partridge and Blackwell.

Crowley, Milner & Co. immediately set about the task of positioning itself as one of Detroit's highest quality retail operations. In the early 1900s, Detroit was regarded as one of the country's most beautiful and affluent cities, and Crowley, Milner & Co. catered to this image. The store was stocked with luxurious clothing and gifts, much of which was imported from Europe, as well as a fancy full-service restaurant and one of Detroit's best grocery stores. In less than ten years, the Crowley, Milner & Co. store had been expanded in size and was the largest department store in Michigan.

Unfortunately, the company's success was marred when Milner was killed in an automobile accident while traveling to his Toledo store in 1923. Not only did the company lose its president and merchandising expert, but his 42 percent interest in the store was sold by his family. Without Milner, the store eventually came to be known as Crowley's, but the company retained its full name to the end. Joseph Crowley succeeded his friend and partner as the company's president, but the loss of full control of its holdings hit the company hard for many years thereafter.

In the late 1990’s, the company’s Macomb mall store was under renovation, as was the Livonia mall store. Issues with asbestos lead to a delay in fully opening the stores for the back-to-school and pre-thanksgiving season. These were Crowley’s largest stores and its largest revenue. With most retailers hit by a recession and revenue severely down, Crowley’s looked for a merger partner. Schottenstein Stores interceded to alleviate its credit issues after Christmas 1998. However, the new board opted for liquidation and the Crowley’s was history.

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