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It all began in 1897 when Sam Weinrib, a newly-arrived Austrian immigrant began to sell used carpet and unusual fabrics in a pushcart on the crowded streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Sam’s son, Max, turned the mobile business into a discount carpet store and Max’s son, Jerome, now Chairman of ABC, moved that store to its current location at Broadway and East 19th Street in 1961 and began to transform his family’s modest floorcovering business into the largest rug and carpet store in the world.
In the early 1980s, the fourth generation, Jerome’s daughter, Paulette joined the company. Together, father and daughter are now responsible for the present incarnation of carpet and home fashions. This “first family of home stuff,” so anointed by New York Magazine, now leads a revolution for the home.
ABC Carpet & Home occupies two landmark buildings in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, allowing for almost 350,000 square feet of retail space. At 888 Broadway in the old W. & J. Sloane building, ABC presents a six-floor emporium of rugs, furniture, antiques, home textiles and accessories- a dynamic mixture of old and new, East meets West, formal and country, traditional and modern, classic to funky. Across the street at 881 Broadway houses majority of the rug and carpet business. As a whole, ABC is a bustling bazaar of goods and personalized services that have become the premier source for interior inspiration. ABC’s presence and growth has been a catalyst in the renaissance of the Flatiron neighborhood which, in the nineteenth century, had been New York’s exclusive shopping district known as the Ladies’ Mile.
In the mid to late 90s ABC expanded beyond Manhattan, opening stores in the Bronx, South Hackensack in New Jersey, Delray Beach, Florida and at Harrods’ in London. Addittionally, ABC has now taken its retail space onto the world wide web and offers customers the opportunity for the ABC experience online. Customers can shop for their home's floor covering needs at their own convinience. Area Rugs, Padding and Carpet cleaner can be shipped anywhere within the Continental United States.
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