LORD & TAYLOR OFFICIALLY CLOSES ITS DOORS ON FIFTH AVENUE

Lord & Taylor’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue locked its doors forever after 104 years.

The venerable department store closed down Wednesday afternoon, ending a blowout sale that left whole floors empty. By the end, clothes that once sold for as much as $100 were going for $5.99.

The 11-story building has been sold to the WeWork space-leasing company for more than $850 million.

Forty-five other, smaller Lord & Taylor stores remain open, mostly on the East Coast. In addition, Lord & Taylor-branded merchandise is being sold online through the Walmart website.

Hudson’s Bay Co., the Canadian corporate behemoth that has owned the brand since 2012, said it was closing the flagship and some of its other stores due to an “increasing focus on its digital opportunity and commitment to improving profitability.”

Founded in 1826 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Lord & Taylor was one of the nation’s first big department stores, run by two English-born cousins, Samuel Lord and George Washington Taylor. The store occupied several locations before 1914, when it moved into the building that fills a whole Manhattan block on Fifth Avenue at 38th Street.