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The name still conjures up memories of what was once Tucson's most elegant department store:

Steinfeld's, known for its chandelier lighting, red-carpeted stairway and those pneumatic tubes that whisked money and receipts hither and yon.

But even more remarkable than the store was the family behind it — one that arrived in Tucson little more than a decade past the Gadsden Purchase and began making its mark.

A century later, the family store — and the hotel it owned across the street — were the hub of Downtown Tucson.

But a disastrous fire and changing demographics would soon bring all that to an end.

"The family doesn't own anything today," says Bettina Lyons, granddaughter of Albert Steinfeld, the man who built the store many of us remember.

Still, the legacy remains, one Lyons has captured in her new book, "Zeckendorfs and Steinfelds, Merchant Princes of the American Southwest."

Armed with research techniques learned while serving as curator of the Tucson Museum of Art's historic houses, Lyons spent years poring over old manuscripts and letters, sometimes from as far away as Germany.

"I felt if I had not told the story it would be lost forever," says Lyons, who will sign her book Nov. 21 at the Arizona Historical Society.

Originally from Germany, the family began putting down roots in America during the mid-1850s with the arrival of brothers Aaron, Louis and William Zeckendorf.

In 1854, Aaron and Louis opened a store in Santa Fe, later closing it in favor of a new store in Albuquerque.

When the brothers got the mail contract for Arizona, they soon discovered a dearth of stores in Tucson. In 1866, Louis Zeckendorf hauled a dozen wagonloads of merchandise into town. Unable to unload it all, the brothers were forced to open a small store here, with William soon in charge.

Alas, William appeared to favor pursuits such as gambling and setting off fireworks over minding the store.

In 1872, the same year Aaron died unexpectedly, Albert Steinfeld, the brothers' 17-year-old nephew, arrived in Tucson to help out.

Though so distressed at the sight of this sun-baked village that he cried himself to sleep his first night, young Albert soon threw himself into remaking the store — and the town.

"He was just a total optimist. He decided to look on the bright side of things," says Lyons, who was born in 1936 — a year past Albert's death — to Viola Steinfeld O'Neil, Albert's daughter.

In 1883 Albert married Bettina Donau in Denver. Among the gifts: a solid silver tea service — no doubt handy for the newlyweds, who started life in Tucson in a two-room adobe house with dirt floors.

Nonetheless, Bettina, along with Julia Zeckendorf, William's wife, soon became the belles of Tucson.

"These were educated young women who had grown up in New York from very wealthy families," says Lyons. "These young women had never seen or heard of Tucson, Arizona. These Jewish pioneers' business philosophy was to have arranged marriages with Jewish women of good families."

Already described at age 28 as a millionaire, Albert continued to prosper, buying up property all around town. "When my grandfather died, he owned more property than anyone else in Arizona," says Lyons.

After Louis Zeckendorf filed suit in 1904 against his nephew over ownership of the Silver Bell Mine northwest of Tucson, the partnership between the two was dissolved and Steinfeld purchased the store's interest.

Two years later, he opened his grand department store — said to be the finest between San Francisco and Denver — at the corner of Stone Avenue and Pennington Street.

During the Depression, the store could have folded, says Lyons. "The bankers were going to call in their loans." Instead, they asked and received preferred stock in the store.

Meanwhile, Albert Steinfeld also got into the hotel business — inadvertently. "These fellows from Texas wanted to build a hotel on his property," says Lyons. "He never intended to be the owner. He was going to build it and sell it."

But when the would-be buyer backed out, says Lyons, Albert's son, Harold — who liked to race around town in his Stutz Runabout and fish for marlin — told the architect to proceed, then informed his father, "You're in the hotel business." Albert's retort: "This is your baby."

In fact, Albert did become the owner of the landmark Pioneer Hotel, with Harold and his wife, Peggy, making it their home.

"Peggy desperately wanted a real home where she could grow flowers and entertain, but there was no moving Harold across from the store," says Lyons. "Harold dedicated himself to that store."

In 1955, Lyons, who grew up in New York, came to Tucson to attend the University of Arizona. There, she met her future husband, Dan Lyons, and earned a degree in art history.

She and her family were living in Tucson on the night of Dec. 19, 1970, when a fire broke out at the Pioneer Hotel that took the lives of 28 people, including Harold and Peggy.

In heartbreaking detail, Lyons recounts how the couple looked down from their 11th-floor window as firefighters scurried about, certain they would be rescued.

"That building was supposed to be fireproof, but they had open stairwells and the air went down to feed the fire," says Lyons.

The demise of the Pioneer Hotel and the rise of the suburban malls would become a death knell both for Downtown and for Steinfeld's, which closed its Downtown store in 1973. Eleven years later, Steinfeld's at El Con Mall also shut down.

As for her book, Lyons says, "I just thought I needed to do this." And now she has.