making it the tallest store in the Pacific Northwest and Portland's lone skyscraper. Designed by architect A. E. Doyle, its white terra-cotta exterior set a design trend in downtown Portland, leading to the famed "wall of white" on S.W. Alder Street. Upon Sigmund Frank's death, Aaron Meier's elder son Abe Meier (1868–1930) became president, serving as the store's greeter, while his younger son, Julius (1874–1937), became vice president and general manager—running the store. The store's green delivery wagons (later its delivery trucks) were ubiquitous in Portland, with the company willing to deliver purchases of any size—even a spool of thread. The company provided the furnishings for the Fairmount Hotel, constructed to serve out-of-town visitors to the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. In 1913, the five-story building on 5th Street was demolished, and construction began on a new sixteen-story building, which opened in 1915, giving the store of retail space. Early on, Meier & Frank was one of the few stores to maintain a buying office in New York. Sales representatives there would joke that there were four major markets on the West Coast: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Meier & Frank. In 1920, a full square-block garage and stockroom facility, four stories high, opened on N.W. 14th and 15th between Everett and Flanders. The Retail Reserve Building, eight stories high, opened at N.W. Irving Street between 14th and 15th in 1923. A year earlier, Meier & Frank's radio station KFEC, with its antenna atop the 16-story building, began broadcasting from its studio on the fifth floor. The station's slogan was "KFEC--The Meier & Frank Station". Meanwhile, Clark Gable worked at Meier & Frank selling neckties. The president of Meier & Frank, Julius L. Meier, was elected governor of Oregon as an independent, and served from 1931 to 1935. Combining the 1909 and 1915 buildings with construction on the final quarter-block and topping the consolidated building off at 17 stories, Meier & Frank now filled the entire block bounded by S.W. Alder, Morrison, 5th, and 6th. Locals jocularly referred to the store as "Murphy & Finnigan's". For a time, Meier & Frank reigned as the largest retail outlet west of the Mississippi and one of the largest stores in the nation in the early 1930s. When President Roosevelt closed banks country-wide, Meier & Frank took out a full-page newspaper ad with a single word: "Confidence". Hundreds of people brought