Apartments, Sixth Floor

In Philadelphia's Gimbel Bros, department store last week, a customer asked a salesclerk: "Where do you sell apartments?" Without batting an eye, the clerk directed her to the sixth floor, where Gimbels did indeed have apartments for sale, the first department store in the U.S. to pull such a merchandising stunt. They were in a 14-story, $3,200,000 cooperative housing project to be built by the Peoples Bond & Mortgage Co. with FHA assistance, near Rittenhouse Square.

Gimbels had on display full-scale models of apartment layouts, two-room kitchenettes to four rooms. The first day, the store took deposits on 65 apartments priced from $13,000 to $32,350, and by week's end it had sold 250 out of the 299 in the proposed building. Said Gimbels' boss Arthur Kaufmann: "One of the most amazing responses . . . in the history of merchandising . . ."

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