Liberty House (department store)
Liberty House was a department store and specialty-store chain in Hawaii, Guam, and parts of the U.S. mainland. It began as Hackfeld's Dry Goods, started by Heinrich Hackfeld in 1849. In 1852 the store was renamed for Hackfeld's nephew, B. F. Ehlers. Hackfeld remained involved while focusing on trading and real estate, and Paul Isenberg became a partner in 1881. In 1898 the business reorganized as H. Hackfeld & Co.
In 1918, during World War I, the U.S. government seized the company as alien property and sold it to American Factors. At the same time, the B. F. Ehlers store was renamed The Liberty House amid anti-German sentiment. American Factors later became Amfac, one of Hawaii’s big landowners.
In 1969 Liberty House expanded to the mainland when Amfac bought Rhodes Western department stores; those stores were renamed Liberty House between 1971 and 1974. The mainland operation spread to several western states and opened a San Francisco flagship in 1974. By 1984 most California stores were closed, with the San Mateo store remaining until 1986.
In 1988 Amfac was bought by JMB Realty. Liberty House opened a store in Guam in 1994. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998, closing many stores. In 2001 Federated Department Stores bought Liberty House and merged it into Macy’s West. Macy’s later used the LibertyHouse.com domain to direct shoppers to Macy’s site. The San Francisco Liberty House became the Macy’s Union Square Men’s Store until 2017, when it closed and was redeveloped for mixed use.
At its peak, Liberty House operated about 45–50 locations with around 4,200 employees and was headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii. The brand was defunct in 2001.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:29 (CET).