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Peress of Madison Avenue, the Upper East Side fixture “stocked with all the basics that madame knows,” is shutting its doors for good next week.
“That’s the story, morning glory,” owner Herbert Peress told Patch this week. “I’m 88 and it’s time.”
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An employee reached by phone on Thursday told East Side Feed that Peress will close for good in a week on August 15. They could not, however, provide any other details about what led to the store closing its doors.
Peress sold items including “robes, socks, nightgowns, pajamas, and slippers,” and currently, all of its merchandise is 50 percent off, Patch reported. Any inventory that isn’t sold will be transferred to Lingerie & Company at 1217 Third Avenue (between 70th and 71st streets), which is owned by Herbert’s son Mark.
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Henry Peress landed in the Bronx in 1926 after emigrating from Baghdad, according to Avenue Magazine. He would meet his wife Elise, a fellow Jewish immigrant from Poland, in their adopted home of New York.
After moving from the Bronx to Washington Heights in 1934, the Peress family opened its first store in the upper Manhattan neighborhood, according to a 1996 article in The New Yorker. Peress sold merchandise such as girdles and camisoles at first, but as the business grew, so too did its selection and inventory.
Throughout the years, Peress would move around quite a bit. Eventually, in the late 1970s, Henry’s son, Herbert, a former engineer, made a career transition and returned to run the family business.
“I decided I’d had enough and my mom was ready to retire, my dad had passed away, and I knew the business,” Herbert said. “All the excitement of running a real mom-and-pop retail establishment was in my bones.”
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At that point, Peress was located on 64th and Madison, a location Herbert was very excited about. However, changes to the neighborhood in the 1990s and other pressures eventually led to Peress moving to 78th and Madison.
“We used to be where Chanel is now,” Peress told Avenue Magazine in 2020. “But what Chanel wants, Chanel gets. So, we moved.”
Still, the business thrived and continued to grow despite continuing to move around. The current location, at 1070 Madison Avenue (between 80th and 81st streets), is the boutique’s fifth and final.
Despite Peress’ closure marking the end of an era, Herbert told Patch that he is very much looking forward to retirement.
“I got a library of books a mile long,” he said. “I got the Y, I got the Metropolitan Museum and the Metropolitan Opera, and I have Carnegie Hall.”
