By the start of the twentieth century, A. Hamburger & Sons had outgrown their Spring Street location, which had 520 employees working on five floors. The Hamburger family decided to build a much larger store at the southeast corner of Broadway and Eighth, a location that was outside of the then current retail district. Construction started in 1905 with a grand opening held in 1908. This location, which was also known as The Great White Store, was the largest department store building west of Chicago at that time and would eventually became the flagship location for the May Company California. At the time that the Great White Store was opened, the store could boast of having one of the first escalators on the West Coast, several restaurants, a drug store with an 80-foot-long soda fountain, grocery store, bakery, fruit store, meat market, U.S. post office, telegraph office, barber shop, a dentist, a chiropractor, a physician's office with a fully equipped operating room, a 1,000-seat auditorium, an electricity and steam power plant in the basement that was large enough to support a city of 50,000 inhabitants, a private volunteer 120 men fire brigade,13 acres of retail space, and 1200 employees.The Los Angeles Public Library was also located on the third floor from 1908 until it was forced to move to a larger location when it outgrew the Hamburger space by 1913. For a short time, Woodbury Business College briefly was also located on the fifth floor.