Bainbridge’s department store was founded in Newcastle Upon Tyne by Emerson Muschamp Bainbrige in 1838.  Arguably, Bainbridge's was the first store of its kind in Britain and one of the earliest examples in Europe. This pioneering store remained on its original site at Nos. 29-37 Market Street from its inception until 1976, when it moved into the new Eldon Square shopping centre. The store was located in close proximity to the Grainger Market, the beacon of Newcastle’s ascendant culture of consumption. As a result, the new store benefited from the custom already circulating within this space. The hallmarks of Bainbridge’s success were marked prices and cash payments, which dispelled the anxiety associated with the shopping experience. Lancaster identifies these as crucial factors in the rise of consumer culture and its transformative effects on class structure.

At the beginning of the period, Bainbridge’s was established as the epicentre of Newcastle retail, but it continued to develop over the following decades in terms of the organisation of the business and the internal division of space. It has been argued that large stores favoured island sites, enabling them to encompass an entire street block, and Bainbridge’s certainly fits this model. From a relatively small outlet on Market Street, the firm gradually expanded by acquiring neighbouring premises. Lancaster states that the store was able to do little more than ‘burrow’ through to the Bigg Market. In fact, the store continued to subsume neighbouring properties until it occupied virtually the entire block between Market Street and the Bigg Market, with only the premises fronting Grainger Street remaining inviolate.

Externally, the store was represented by the powerful colonnaded Market Street elevation designed c.1837 by Walker and Wardle for Richard Grainger. While the firm undeniably benefited from the prestige of this Tyneside Classical façade, it had the disadvantage of making remodelling difficult. As an imperfect solution, Bainbridge erected large signs on the exterior. This was part of a trend that had a severe, if temporary, impact on Newcastle. Signs and hoardings were affixed to façades throughout the city, and many of them were large enough to interfere with the architectural lines. This was a cause of contention for many architects at the time, including Frank W. Rich, who denounced the tendency as vulgar commercialism and expressed concern over its long term implications for architecture: ‘The imperative demands of trade are often antagonistic to the precedents in Architecture . . . Architecture will presently be “behind the scenes” – in other words, it will be covered by huge letters of the alphabet.’

The business strategy pursued by department stores was to closely monitor developments within elite fashionable circles and to make approximations of haute couture garments available to the middle classes and upper working class. Key to Bainbridge’s success was its ability to keep up with public tastes. Bainbridge’s established a ‘French Room’ in 1846 to fulfil the demand for Parisian fashions. Likewise, the stock in the Ladies’ and Misses’ department included ‘some of the best models of Berlin and Paris manufacture.’ The firm opened a manufacturing facility in Leeds, which employed over 1000 people. This was vital for coping with the notoriously transient fashions of the Victorian era. According to The Gentleman’s Journal and Gentlewoman’s Court Review, ‘The public taste is constantly altering, and Messrs. Bainbridge are able to do more than meet this demand – they anticipate it in the cutting room.’