Frankly speaking

• The store he knew is changing; the future, he thinks, is bright

By Jeanie Senior

The Portland Tribune, Aug 3, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

It’s been almost 40 years since Gerry Frank worked in retail management, but he still can recite the departments at Meier & Frank Co.’s downtown flagship, floor by floor.

“First floor,” he begins, “men’s furnishings, jewelry, handbags, cosmetics, stationery, notions, gloves.” He continues through all 10 floors, listing the amazing variety of merchandise that made Meier & Frank a major force in retailing.

He recalls a popular saying that there were four major cities on the West Coast: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Meier & Frank and Seattle.

This week, Frank Ñ a fourth-generation member of the family that founded Meier & Frank in 1857 and ran it for more than a century until the retailer was sold to St. Louis-based May Department Stores Co. in 1966 Ñ will bid a nostalgic farewell to the Southwest Morrison Street store.

The glazed terra-cotta behemoth in the center of Portland isn’t shutting down, but it’s about to change forever: The May Co. announced recently that the first five floors will be remodeled into an up-to-date department store, and the top nine floors transformed into a Marriott Renaissance hotel.

Frank is excited about the changes to come. “I understand the store is going to be first-class. É Meier & Frank is the anchor of downtown, the No. 1 block, and it’s important it remains.”

Among other things, the change signals an end to the Georgian Room, the genteel tearoom on the 10th floor. Frank is marking its demise, expected to happen sometime in the next year, with Gerry Frank’s Private Bite of Oregon, an invitation-only event on Thursday called “Meet Me Under the Clock.”

Life melds retail, politics

In the early 1950s, a veteran of World War II and a college graduate, Frank came back to work for his father, Aaron.

At the time, Meier & Frank also had a grocery store, bakery and a delicatessen, all in the basement. “And, we delivered Ñ if you bought $1 worth of groceries or a thimble.” The store had a fleet of 120 trucks, which made free deliveries throughout the city.

Frank, who lives in Salem, was managing Meier & Frank’s Salem location at the time of its sale to May Department Stores. He next spent 26 years as an aide and chief of staff to former U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., whom he’d gotten to know while the Salem store was under construction.

These days, Frank writes a column for The Oregonian; looks after Gerry Frank’s Konditorei, a Viennese-style cake shop and cafe in Salem; and spends a week a month in New York, working on updates to his popular guide book, “Gerry Frank’s Where to Find It, Buy It, Eat It in New York.”

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