Albert Leo Stevens opened the first private airfield in the nation in 1909.

On July 8, 1911, aviation pioneer Albert Leo Stevens climbed into a balloon atop the roof of Manhattan’s Wanamaker’s store and attempted a passage to Philadelphia. Things didn’t go so well, and the voyage had to be aborted in West Nyack, New York. It’s a shame, because it was an ideal stunt for Wanamaker’s, a legendary retailer that then had two humongous locations, one in Philadelphia and one in Manhattan.

In 1876, John Wanamaker opened his namesake store in Philadelphia’s decommissioned Pennsylvania Railroad station. It may or may not have been the first real department store in the country, but Wanamaker’s was the grandest of them all. He opened a second mega-outlet in New York in 1896.

In addition to having an astounding number of items for sale, Wanamaker’s was a revolutionary retailer for the way it conducted business, allowing money-back guarantees and inventing the price tag. And the stores were always on the technological cutting edge, being the first shop to have a telephone (in 1879) and having its own wireless radio station.

John Wanamaker died in 1922, and by the middle of century the stores had lost their luster and were bought and sold several times. The location of the original Wanamaker’s was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978.