In the 1930s, Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller came to her husband's department store as a housewife tasked with attracting more shoppers like herself, and she wound up running the company. Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor championed American designers during World War II --- before which US fashions were almost exclusively Parisian copies --- becoming the first businesswoman to earn a $1 million salary. And in the 1960s, Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel reinvented the look of the modern department store. With a preternatural sense for trends, she inspired a devoted following of ultra-chic shoppers as well as decades of copycats. In WHEN WOMEN RAN FIFTH AVENUE, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps.

From the moment in 1907 when New York millionaire Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt strode through the Plaza Hotel's revolving doors to become its first guest, to the afternoon in 2007 when a mysterious Russian oligarch paid a record price for the hotel's largest penthouse, the 18-story white marble edifice at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street has radiated wealth and luxury. In this definitive history, award-winning journalist Julie Satow reveals how a handful of rich, dowager widows were the financial lifeline that saved the hotel during the Great Depression, and how, today, foreign money and anonymous shell companies have transformed iconic guest rooms into condominiums that shield ill-gotten gains.