Million Dollar Corner

The Million Dollar Corner is a small plot adjacent to Macy's at 34th Street and Broadway in New York City which sold for a then record million dollars on December 6, 1911.

The five-story building on that corner had been purchased by Robert H. Smith in 1900 for $375,000—an enormous sum at the time, equivalent to $10.8 million in 2017. The idea had been to obstruct Macy's from becoming the largest store in the world. It is largely supposed that Smith, who was a neighbor of the Macy's store on 14th Street, was acting on behalf of Siegel-Cooper, which had built what they thought was the world's largest store on Sixth Avenue in 1896. Macy's ignored the tactic and built around the building, which now carries Macy's "shopping bag" sign (proclaiming Macy's the "world's largest store") by lease arrangement.