Between 1820 and 1860, Chestnut Street became the most fashionable shopping district Philadelphia had ever seen. This paper helps to complicate our current understanding of the trajectory of the development of consumer society in America by analyzing the ways in which cultural institutions, gender, the streetscape, advertising, store interiors, and social activities contributed to the development of the consumer environment that emerged on Chestnut Street.

Women figured prominently in this emerging consumer culture. As both potential customers and as store clerks, women learned to negotiate the developing commercial spaces of Chestnut Street. Etiquette manuals instructed women on how to behave in a respectable public space in which they could actively engage both with one another and with some of the finest merchandise Philadelphia had to offer. Advertising played a significant role in drawing customers to Chestnut Street, and women’s periodicals, particularly Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine, were central in the promotion of Chestnut Street stores to a national audience. In addition, shopkeepers increasingly sought to both manipulate and instruct customers by experimenting with the arrangement of store interiors, signage, the use of awnings, and shop window displays.

The attempts made by shopkeepers and advertisers to attract customers, combined with the mix of cultural attractions, hotels and wide sidewalks found on Chestnut Street were central to the success of the shopping district, and enabled the street to function as a new kind of complex public space: a shopping destination.