David Louis Freedlander and the Founding of the Store
The original Freedlander’s was well known for men’s clothing, including hats, jackets, and pants.
Herman Freedlander, far right, grew up helping his father at the store and began working there at the age of twelve.
The original name of the store reflects D.L. Freedlander’s hometown, which both he and his son, Herman worked to make a viable business.
D.L. Freedlander would have been on a similar wagon to this when he first set his sights on Wooster and decided to establish a store.
Freedlander’s went through many name changes, including D.L. Freedlander’s One Price Clothier, named after David Louis Freedlander, the original owner.
In this rare letter from D.L. Freedlander, he celebrates the continued prosperity of the store and cites his decision to establish fixed prices as a reason for its success.
The Freedlander’s Department Store, an anchor of downtown Wooster for over 100 years, was created by an ambitious traveling pack peddler originally from Friedland in Bavaria.1 When David Louis Freedlander came to Wooster, he saw an economic opportunity and opened the Buffalo One-Price Clothing Store in 1884 in a small space on South Market Street.2 The name came from Freedlander’s hometown of Buffalo, New York, while the latter part represented the guiding economic principle of the store. At a time when bartering was still common, Freedlander was one of the first business owners to adopt fixed prices in Wooster.3 Business was slow at first, because most people only went into town once a week and snow and rain often made roads too treacherous for travel. Despite some initial struggles, David Freedlander’s store expanded and moved several times to increasingly bigger locations in 1888 and again in 1891. In 1898, David and his wife journeyed to Europe to get David medical treatment, but he died aboard the ship at age forty-two.4 After the unexpected tragedy, the future of the store was uncertain, but this was only the beginning of the store’s long tenure in downtown Wooster.
1 Ann Freedlander Hunt, Gone but not Forgotten: A Freedlander Legacy (Minnepolis, MN: Two Harbors Press, 2012), 4.
2 “Freedlander Story Had Humble Beginning,” The Daily Record, April 12, 1982.
3 Hunt, Gone, 6.
4 “On their 100th Anniversary and for their Many Contributions to Wooster and Wayne County,” 84th Annual Meeting of Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce, March 22, 1984, Wayne County Public Library, Wooster Main Branch, Genealogy Department.