Kaufmann’s

During the great era of Pittsburgh innovation and industry, one of the most intriguing families to find prosperity in Pittsburgh was the Kaufmanns. Famous for their hugely successful department store, and for commissioning the great architectural triumph of Fallingwater, the Kaufmanns achieved great success and endured a series of family tragedies, including antisemitism in their native Germany and here in America. This rich, highly detailed narrative is written by two of Pittsburgh’s finest journalists. Anyone captured by Pittsburgh history will want to know the Kaufmann saga.

Marylynne Pitz and Laura Malt Schneiderman may have written a book about the Kaufmann family, but they really have written the story of a time, a country, and a way of life that today exists only in memory but that deserves to be remembered and celebrated. It is a Pittsburgh story, to be sure, but it really is an American story—of triumph and tragedy, of striving and achieving.

What do you get when two award-winning journalists team up to combine finely honed storytelling skills with high-tech modern research techniques? You get first-rate history. This remarkable book is at once a family history and a biography of their city—Pittsburgh. The authors trace the Kaufmanns’ American journey from fresh-off-the-boat, luggageless immigrants to spectacularly successful merchants who pioneered the modern department store and became philanthropists of the first rank. Pittsburghers will delight in the details behind the famous clock at Fifth & Forbes, Kaufmann’s holiday windows, and Wright’s legendary Fallingwater. Readers will also be intrigued by stories of family feuds, infidelities, tragedy, lavish lifestyles, and business deals and missteps.

This popular history . . . is as pleasingly dense with fact, incident, and anecdote as its namesake store was with shirts, handbags, and housewares. Even old-timers will learn something about the store and the fractious—and even tragic—family behind it.