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McFarlin’s was one of Rochester’s oldest men’s clothing stores and a mainstay of Main Street for more than a century.
The store catered to mid-to-high-end clientele, outfitting nattily attired gents and boys in suits, sport coats, dress shirts and slacks and more. Business executives were regular customers, and McFarlin’s was closely associated with noted Rochester suit-maker Hickey Freeman. McFarlin’s competed with contemporaries like Sibley’s, McCurdy’s and National Clothing but predated all of them.
Suburban stores were added later and McFarlin’s eventually moved from its five-story Main Street home to Midtown Plaza. A hubbub led Midtown officials to try to evict McFarlin’s at one point, and the business closed shortly after.
McFarlin’s was founded in 1860 by Francis M. McFarlin and Robert Roy with a shop on State Street.
It began as a small men’s furnishings store near the Four Corners. “It was a dozen years before George Eastman began the experiments in photography that led to the founding of this city’s largest industry,” Don Record wrote in a 1960 Democrat and Chronicle story detailing the 100th anniversary of McFarlin’s.
Roy left the business after a few years but McFarlin remained until his death in 1905. The new boss, Howard A. Barrows, was followed by his son, William P. Barrows, under whose direction “the ‘modern store’ evolved,” Record wrote, with “a reputation for fine quality goods…and wide appeal to men of good taste.”
Ads from the early 1900s touted “Corliss-Coon collars” for men and apparel for boys like chinchilla coats. McFarlin’s soon moved to 110 E. Main and then in 1925 to its longtime home at 195 E. Main, near Spring Street.
The new Italian Renaissance-style building included a “boy’s store” occupying the entire third floor as well as a barber shop, a hat department and a shoe department. Excellence and class were always paramount; a McFarlin’s president years later spoke of “the days when limousines delivered customers to the front entrance to be greeted by a uniformed doorman.”
After Barrows died in 1951, his daughters operated the business for five years before selling to Timely Clothes, a Rochester clothing manufacturer and retailer. The store was extensively renovated in 1959 and new departments were added. The merchandise included sports clothing “so popular today for leisure time pursuits” along with “quality American-made” lines and fine imports, “particularly from Britain.”
McFarlin’s opened a store in the Syracuse suburb of Camillus in 1965 and another in the brand-new Greece Towne Mall two years later. Extensive lines of “fashionable” women’s clothing and sportswear also were featured at the Greece store.
Timely Clothes sold McFarlin’s in 1968 to Genesco Inc., a Nashville-based manufacturer and retailer of shoes and clothing. Another new McFarlin’s store debuted in 1971 in the just-opened Eastview Mall in Victor.
McFarlin’s moved to Midtown Plaza’s Seneca Office Building wing the following year. Its building at 195 E. Main was set to be demolished as part of the Lincoln First Square project, news accounts stated. Fixtures were auctioned off, including marble paneling, brass banisters and “vintage 1925 model” elevators.
By the mid-’70s, McFarlin’s introduced more contemporary lines and looks to revitalize the company. Its deep-rooted, somewhat-stuffy image “drew conservative well-to-do persons, but didn’t attract the affluent younger executives in Rochester,” McFarlin’s then-president Peter Zucker said in a 1978 Democrat and Chronicle story. National Clothing stores (featured in a previous “Whatever Happened to…” installment) had closed by then, and McFarlin’s had “the responsibility of being the only large men’s store in town, as far as the volume and image are concerned,” Zucker added.
McFarlin’s was sold again in 1978, this time to a corporation headed by former Genesco executive Robert C. Green. McFarlin’s continued to draw regular customers from throughout western New York and into Toronto. “It also has an extensive loyal following of Eastman Kodak Co., Xerox Corp. and Sybron Corp. customers outside the greater Rochester area who periodically return to their headquarter operations,” Bruce Fraser wrote in a 1979 Democrat & Chronicle story.
A new (short-lived) store opened in Pittsford Plaza in 1981. McFarlin’s continued expanding into the leisure-ware market, beefing up its selection of sportswear brands like Jack Nicklaus and Izod.
The end was coming soon. The Midtown McFarlin’s store started a months-long sale in late 1981 that was described as “splashy, controversial (and) cash-raising.” That drew the ire of Midtown officials, who said the effort conflicted with the mall’s “quality image” and talked of evicting McFarlin’s. In 1982, McFarlin’s filed for bankruptcy protection and closed, first, the Greece and Eastview stores and then the one in Pittsford.
Later that year, creditors asked a bankruptcy judge to shut down the business and sell the assets, rather than wait for McFarlin’s to improve its position. A liquidation sale was held. McFarlin’s closed its Midtown store, the last remaining one, in January 1983.
The fashion bastion that had started before the Civil War and enhanced so many stylish wardrobes for so long was gone forever.
Alan Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.
About this feature
“Whatever Happened To? ...” is a feature that explores favorite haunts of the past and revisits the headlines of yesteryear.
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