Woolworth, Frank Winfield (1852–1919)
US entrepreneur. He opened his first successful ‘five and dime’ store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1879, and, together with his brother C S Woolworth (1856–1947), built up a chain of similar stores throughout the USA, Canada, the UK, and Europe.
| In 1997 the Woolworth Corporation in the USA announced that it was closing all of its remaining F W Woolworth ‘five and dime’ stores. |
| Woolworth was born at Rodman, New York, and studied at a nearby business college. In 1879 he opened a ‘five cent’ store in Utica, New York, that failed. When he died, the company had more than 1000 stores in the USA and Canada. The limitation of store prices to five or ten cents was abandoned during World War II. Woolworth left a fortune estimated at $65 million, which in time descended to his granddaughter, Barbara Hutton. |
