Rising

From the amazing www.theskint.com

A brief history of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from our friends at Manhattan User’s Guide

The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was in 1924, a long route that started at 145th and Convent and stretched to 34th Street. They borrowed some animals from the Central Park Zoo to liven things up. The giraffe had to stay home because it wouldn’t fit under the elevated tracks.

After the first couple of parades, when it became apparent that the animals weren’t as kid-friendly as Macy’s might have liked, they asked theatrical designer Tony Sarg to come up with some animal-shaped balloons. Felix the Cat, one of the first, was made at the Goodyear Tire company in Akron, Ohio in 1927.

For a few years the balloons were released after the parade and anyone who found one was entitled to a reward at Macy’s. But this was stopped in 1933 after a student pilot stalled her engine over Jamaica Bay trying to snag a cat balloon and two tugboats in the East River tore the dachshund balloon apart.

By 1934, Walt Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse and Pluto joined the parade. During WWII, the rubber balloons were donated to the war effort and the parade didn’t resume until 1947. It then began to develop as we know it: floats, celebrities, bigger and better balloons, and national TV coverage.

More Macy’s Trivia:

• The first Macy’s store was built in 1851 and was at 14th and 6th before moving to its current location on 34th St.
• Macy’s received the first post-Prohibition liquor license in all of New York City.
• #3 most visited spot in NYC 
• Isidor and Ida Strauss were the owners of Macy’s in 1912 and died on the Titanic. Being wealthy, they were offered seats on a lifeboat but stayed aboard to let younger people go instead.