Saks Fifth Avenue was the brainchild of Horace Saks and Bernard Gimbel, who operated independent retail stores on New York s 34th Street at Herald Square in the early 1900s. Their dream was to construct a unique specialty store that would become synonymous with fashionable, gracious living. The combined financial input of these great merchant families led to the purchase of a site between 49th and 50th Streets on upper Fifth Avenue, then jointly occupied by the Democratic Club and the Buckingham Hotel. With the opening of its founders.