When this post card was made in 1909, the Woolf Brothers Furnishing Goods Co. had recently moved to new quarters at 1020-26 Walnut street. A large freshly painted white sign covers a former occupant's name. But Woolf Brothers was not a new firm in Kansas City or Leavenworth, where the two merchants had started business in 1866. When the young brothers, Alfred S. and Samuel Woolf of New York state stepped off the Missouri river steamboat in the bustling frontier town of Leavenworth, they carried several bolts of men's shirting with them, and immediately set up a business making shirts to measure for officers at Ft. Leavenworth. Alfred tended shop, solicited business at the fort and took measurements. Samuel cut the material to individual measurements and had local seamstresses sew them together under his watchful eye. At the time, shirt-makers furnished their own needles and were paid 15 cents an hour. Fancy stitching brought 20 cents an hour and white shirt bosom-making, 25 cents.The brothers' establishment in Leavenworth proved highly successful, and eventually each owned fine houses there. Then the excitement of the Hannibal bridge being built at Kansas City led the Woolfs to decide on Kansas City as a new location. Future growth was inevitable, and Kansas City would eventually surpass Leavenworth, they rightly reasoned. The firm's first location here was at 557 Main street (for a dozen years), then 710 Main, 1118 Main and, in 1897, 927 Main. It moved to the present downtown location on Walnut in 1909. (Samuel Woolf died in 1895, and Alfred's son, Herbert M. Woolf, came into the firm before the turn of the century). The drugstore of William M. Federman occupied the corner, and his overhead sign advertises ice-cream sodas at the left of the post-card scene. This corner is now part of the Woolf Brothers store. Farther north on Walnut the street signs of Olney Music Co., Tafts' Dental Rooms, John G. Kling, Billiards and The Household Fair, Furniture & Carpets are visible. The lady with skirts sweeping the sidewalk does not pause to glance into Woolfs window, for at this time the store was strictly a male emporium, with men's custom made shirts still a leading item. Today the firm, with men's and women's wear, is headed by Alfred Lighton a grandson of Alfred S. Woolf. There are now 10 stores, three in the local area, three in Dallas, two in Tulsa, one in Memphis, Tenn., and one in Columbia, Mo. Kansas City Times, Ocrober 10, 1970.
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