Overview

The story of Foley's began in Ireland in the late 1800s when William L. Foley set sail for America. Ambition led him to Houston, where he opened a store and hired his two nephews, Pat C. and James. The nephews quickly felt an entrepreneurial urge to run their own store, so their uncle gave them $2,000 to get started. On February 12, 1900, the Foley Brothers Dry Goods Company at 507 Main Street opened for business. Approximately 44,000 residents visited the store that day, and sales of $128.29 were tabulated. Soon after Spindletop was discovered, Robert I. Cohen of Galveston bought the Foley Brothers company for his son George S. Cohen to operate. Cohen, along with the aid of six of the eight Meyer brothers from Galveston, built it into the largest store in Texas. In 1945, Fred Lazarus, from the department store clan in Ohio, came to Houston to visit his son at Ellington Field. He saw Houston's potential, and in 1946, Foley Brothers became Foley's, owned by Federated Department Stores.

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Author Lasker M. Meyer, the son of one of Foley's owners, grew up holding summer jobs in the store and joined Foley's as a buyer in 1959. When the first branch store was built, he became the manager. After a series of promotions, he became president in 1979 and chairman and chief executive officer in 1982. At the time of Meyer's retirement in 1987, Foley's had merged with Sanger-Harris in Dallas and was the largest division in Federated Department Stores.

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