Plaque Commemorating A&S inside the Macy's in Downtown Brooklyn, May 2008

Abraham & Straus (or A&S), now defunct, was a major New York City department store, based in Brooklyn, New York. Federated Department Stores eliminated the A&S brand shortly after its 1994 acquisition of R.H. Macy & Company. Most A&S stores took the Macy's name, although a few became part of Stern's, a Federated division that was based in Paramus, New Jersey, and offered lower-end goods than did Macy's or A&S.

The first Brooklyn store, opened in 1865, was 25 feet by 90 feet, and was at 285 Fulton Street, which Abraham Abraham, age 22, opened with Joseph Wechsler with $5,000 contributions each.

After the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, Abraham studied a store nicknamed Wheeler's Folly at 422 Fulton Street and bought it.

On April 1, 1893, Nathan Straus, Isidor Straus and Simon F. Rothschild as partners bought out Wechsler and Wechsler & Abraham dry goods firm became Abraham & Straus (with the Straus brothers providing the financing but Rothschild being the active partner).

The Strauses had run the leased china department; the brothers later gained control of Macy's. The company that year had 2,000 employees, and that year A&S also made Abraham's son-in-law, Simon F. Rothschild, son-in-law Edward Charles Blum and son Lawrence Abraham into partners. By 1900, the company had 4,650 employees. From the 1890s to the 1920s, A&S utilized a system of catalog store agencies across Long Island to serve customers.

In 1912, Isidor Straus, along with his wife Ida, perished in the sinking of the Titanic.

Around 1915, after Abraham's daughter married Isidor's son Percy Selden Straus, the Straus family divided up the empire with Nathan's family running A&S and Isidor's family running Macy's.

Beginning in 1928, the company embarked on a $7.8 million expansion of the Fulton Street Store, which included excavating a new basement without disturbing customers above. The renovated store opened October 10, just days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. In 1929, the company also joined Filene's, Lazarus and Bloomingdale's to form Federated Department Stores. To economize during the Depression, the company began scheduling employees according to hourly sales. In addition, all employees took a 10 percent pay cut. No employees were laid off.

In 1937, Walter N. Rothschild led the company, and would be president and chairman until 1955. Following Rothschild, Sidney L. Solomon became the company's first non-family president. At the time, the company had 12,000 employees. The company grew after World War II. Its first new branch store opened in 1952 in Hempstead, following the 1950 purchase of Loeser's Garden City store. In the following decades, the company expanded throughout the New York metropolitan area.

From the beginning, the company had high aspirations. In 1885, the company hired architect George L. Morse to work on the Fulton Street store. For their 1928 to 1930 renovations and additions, the company hired architects Starrett & van Vleck to build an Art Deco addition that faces Fulton, Hoyt and Livingston Streets. In 2003, the Brooklyn Heights Association and the Municipal Art Society put the building on a list of 28 historic buildings in downtown Brooklyn that needed to be protected.

In the mid 1970s, Abraham & Straus Flagship Store, which was located in Downtown Brooklyn, made Mannequin Modeling famous. Linda Timmins, head of the division, selected one juvenile and ingénue with "The Editorial Look" from each of the High Schools across the Brooklyn and Manhattan area. The schools and its students were also selected for high academic standing; Manhattan's Performing Arts High School Yvette Post and Metropolitan Opera Juvenile Star Robert Westin and Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School's Alan Jay Kahm and its Head Cheerleader Paula Gallo were some of the few selected to represent the youth of New York. These "Mannequin Models" would pose for up to an hour at a time in the windows of the store as "Living Mannequins" wearing Classic Designer Clothes to