Charles Gimbel of Philadelphia, chairman of the board, vice president and one of the founders of the department store business of Gimbel Brothers, Inc., died of a cerebral hemorrhage early this morning at his Summer home here. He would have been 71 years old on Monday. Mr. Gimbel, who was one of the leading Americans in retail merchandising, was spending his vacation at his Adirondacks home with his wife. Their daughter, Mrs. Gertrude Dannenbaum of Philadelphia, and her husband, Edwin Dannenbaum, were visiting them.

Besides Mrs. Dannenbaum and his widow, Mrs. Ella Long Gimbel, he is survived by a son, Adam L. Gimbel, president of Saks & Co., New York; two brothers, Ellis A. and Daniel Gimbel of Philadelphia, and three grandchildren, Mrs. Edgar Rosin, Peggy Gimbel Dannenbaum and Sue Dannenbaum.

The funeral service will take place at noon on Sunday at Mount Sinai Cemetery, Philadelphia, and burial will be in the family vault there.

Began Career in Vincennes.

Third of the seven sons of Adam Gimbel, originator of the business which has developed into the great Gimbel department store organization, Charles Gimbel was born in Vincennes, Ind., on Sept. 12, 1861. In his boyhood his parents moved to Philadelphia, and Mr. Gimbel was educated in the public schools of that city. He began his working career in his father’s store in Vincennes.

The organization which Mr. Gimbel later headed grew from the little store—the Palace of Trade—which his father opened in one corner of the crossroads square in Vincennes in 1842. Adam was an immigrant from Bavaria who came to New Orleans in 1835 and for a few years went up and down the Mississippi River carrying a pack and selling small wares to residents of the towns along its banks.

Vincennes was then a fur trading post for Indians, trappers and frontiersmen. Adam Gimbel made friends easily. Money was scarce and much of the trade was carried on through barter, furs being taken in exchange for goods. He tried to give fair values and rapidly won a reputation for square dealing. It was not long before he had four stores around the square.

In the middle ’80s, after the family moved to Philadelphia, two of Charles’s brothers, Jacob and Isaac, went back to the store at Vincennes. The business there was eventually disposed of and, in 1887, the two brothers opened a store in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee store prospered, and in 1894 the brothers decided to try their fortune at retailing in Philadelphia. They purchased the Granville B. Hayes business. Charles Gimbel was made an executive of the family’s newest store.

Entered New York Field in 1910.

Adam Gimbel, the father, died in 1896 and Jacob, oldest of the brothers, took charge. In 1910 it was decided to enter the field in New York, despite the large number of department stores here. The old retail dry goods district in the vicinity of Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue was even then moving northward. A location was selected at Sixth Avenue between Thirty-second and Thirty-third Streets. While the store was actually on Sixth Avenue, it virtually had a Broadway frontage, because of the crossing of the two thoroughfares there. Five years after the new store opened it absorbed the Greenhut and Simpson & Crawford businesses, both of which had been prosperous. Jacob Gimbel died in 1922, to be succeeded by Isaac, who died at Greenwich, Conn., on April 11, 1931, when Charles Gimbel became chairman of the board.

In 1922 a considerable portion of a new stock issue was set aside to be acquired by employes who had aided in making the business a success. The organization developed a foreign service with resident managers in Paris and London and with purchasing staffs in China, Japan and the Philippines. There are twenty-seven acres of floor space in the New York store, twenty-four in Philadelphia and seventeen in Milwaukee. About 15,000 persons are employed in the various store

At 97, a Holocaust Survivor’s Life on the Upper West Side

Acquired Pittsburgh Store in 1925.

Gimbel Brothers acquired a Pittsburgh store through the purchase of 100 per cent of the stock of Kaufman & Baer in December, 1925. In November, 1926, a new twelve-story building adjoining the Philadelphia store was opened. The Milwaukee store is still controlled by the family.

Charles Gimbel had been active in the management of the Philadelphia branch of the business. It was said that he knew by name every employe in the Gimbel store in that city. That establishment was closed yesterday, it was learned here, on the receipt of the news of his death. The three Gimbel stores in New York—Gimbel Brothers, Saks Thirty-fourth Street and Saks Fifth Avenue—remained open.

Mr. Gimbel was a director of the Jewish Hospital, a member of the board of the Federation of Jewish Charities, executive of the United Campaign and vice president of Gimbel Brothers Bank, all of Philadelphia. He also was a member of the Locust, Downtown, Mercantile, Midway and Manufacturers’ Clubs of Philadelphia and a director of the Philmont Country Club there.