Woolworth stores in New York and Pennsylvania were opened by Frank Winfield Woolworth in 1879, and the company grew to be one of the largest retail chains in the 20th century with branches across the United States and in other parts of the world.

These five-and-ten cent variety stores helped set the trend of allowing customers to handle and select merchandise without the assistance of a sales clerk. Previously, merchandise was kept behind counters and customers had to ask for what they wanted.

In 1910, with business booming, Frank Woolworth (1852-1919) commissioned the design and construction of the Woolworth Building in New York City that served among other uses as company headquarters. The 792-foot-tall (241 m) building designed by Cass Gilbert was one of the early skyscrapers and was the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1929.  The Tribeca structure remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the United States.

Lunch counters were introduced as part of the company’s strategy to make shopping at the so-called ‘five and dime’ stores a leisurely experience. They offered simple and inexpensive meals, as this 1930s menu shows. encouraging customers to stay longer and shop.

Woolworth lunch counters soon became popular social gathering places.

A Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, was the setting for the Greensboro sit-ins. On February 1,1960, four African American students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NSA&T) protested the company's racial segregation policies in the South by sitting at the ‘whites only’ lunch counter.

The historic store is now a museum and a portion of the original lunch counter is on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.  

By the company’s 100th anniversary in 1979, Woolworth’s had become the largest department store chain in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

As Woolworth’s stores became widely imitated, the company experimented with a specialty stores format – selling shoes or jewelry or women’s clothing, for example – in a bid to stay ahead of the competition.

This expansion – and the move away from its roots as a cheap shopping experience - contributed to its decline in the 1980s and 90s. Woolworth’s changed its corporate name to Venator and then to Foot Locker.

In 2025, Dick’s Sporting Goods bought Foot Locker and the Woolworth’s name was finally consigned to history and to people’s memories