--- description: For 30 years San Francisco's Hale Bros., one of the city's oldest and biggest department stores, did business in a six-story Market Street building. For only ten years the J. C. Penney Co.... title: REAL ESTATE: San Francisco's Lurie image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # REAL ESTATE: San Francisco's Lurie by [TIME](/author/time/) Oct 4, 1943 4:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Oct 4, 1943 4:00 AM CUT For 30 years San Francisco’s Hale Bros., one of the city’s oldest and biggest department stores, did business in a six-story Market Street building. For only ten years the J. C. Penney Co. has operated one of its 1,600 stores half a block down Market Street towards the Bay. Last week Hale’s and Penney’s were switching stores. But most San Franciscans were mystified about the reasons. Behind the Hale-Penney swap was an object lesson: “How To Get On in the Real-Estate Business.” How Not To Do It. Hale Bros.’ building was built on land leased from an estate (the rent: $90,000 a year), on a deal wherein the store would revert to the landowners, upon payment to Hale’s of $350,000 when the lease ran out in 1944\. Once Hale’s almost bought the site for $1,500,000, but stalled for a better bargain. Then someone else snapped up the whole works: San Francisco’s famed real-estate operator, Louis R. Lurie. Dumpy, 55-year-old Louie Lurie made a fine bargain—even for him. He paid $1,525,000 for the land, took up the estate’s debt to Hale’s at its $350,000 face value and, as he puts it, “The building itself is worth a million dollars today.” Then he offered Hale Bros.: 1) a for-the-duration lease at their old rental, or 2) a 50-year lease at $106,000\. Hale’s management stalled again. The next thing they knew he had leased it out from under them to J. C. Penney for a cool minimum guarantee of $180,000 a year. Hale Bros, found itself stuck. With San Francisco jammed with war work, it had to move into Penney’s old quarters at a still higher rental ($120,000) than Lurie’s top price to them. To add insult to injury, Penney’s nondescript store site was hard by San Francisco’s largest department store, The Emporium. Hale’s only consolation: the hope (and expense) of building a brand-new store on another Market Street corner after the war. How To Do It. The Hale-Penney operation was atypical Louie Lurie coup. Lurie, born on Chicago’s tough West Side, quit school in the third grade to sell papers, did so well with the brand-new Chicago American. (“Whatever the customer gave us, we’d take and run away”) that Hearst had to run page-one notices calling attention to the paper’s official 1¢ price. Then he drifted out to Vancouver, made and lost several small fortunes learning the real-estate business. By the end of World War I Louie Lurie had settled in San Francisco. As he tells it now, his formula was beautifully simple: “I’d buy lots south of Market Street for $5,000, put up a $10,000 building and sell the deal for $18,000-$20,000.” In that way he 1) put up 259 buildings, including a score of San Francisco’s cinemas; 2) kept his own growing fortune strictly liquid. The Hale-Penney deal did nothing to harm his finances. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6865322/real-estate-san-franciscos-lurie/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6865322/real-estate-san-franciscos-lurie/"},"headline":"REAL ESTATE: San Francisco's Lurie","datePublished":"1943-10-04T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-13T19:26:48.984Z","description":"For 30 years San Francisco's Hale Bros., one of the city's oldest and biggest department stores, did business in a six-story Market Street building. For only ten years the J. C. Penney Co....","url":"https://time.com/archive/6865322/real-estate-san-franciscos-lurie/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6865322/real-estate-san-franciscos-lurie/","name":"REAL ESTATE: San Francisco's Lurie"}}]}] ```