The increase in land rentals in the neighborhood and the fact that the firm could hardly hope ever to acquire an actual title to the valuable site of its main store, coupled with the steadily increasing trek uptown, caused the Macy management to consider seriously whether it would join in the northward movement. It soon would have to do one thing or the other. The old store was growing very old and very overcrowded. Moreover, it was, at the best, a makeshift, a jumbling together of one separate store after another in order to accommodate a business which forever refused to stay put. Under such conditions a scientific or efficient planning of the building had been quite out of the question. The real wonder was that the business had been conducted so well, against such a handicap. [Illustration: THE HERALD SQUARE OF ANTE-MACY DAYS In 1900, before the coming of the present store, Broadway at 34th Street gave but faint promise of its present importance] The move once considered was quickly determined upon. No other course seemingly would have been possible. To have erected a new store building upon a leasehold in a quarter of the town which presently might begin to slide backward--would have been a precarious experiment, to put it mildly. It must go uptown. The only question that really confronted the store was just where to go uptown. A site large enough for a huge department-store is not usually acquired overnight. Moreover, the necessity for secrecy in so important a step was obvious--the dangers of the mere suggestion of its becoming known were multifold.