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| Company type | Discount department store |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1874 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois |
| Products | Apparel, fabrics, furniture, sewing machines, baby buggies, toys and games for adults, inexpensive household items |
The Fair was a discount department store founded in 1874 in Chicago, Illinois. [1]
Founder Ernst J. Lehmann named the store "The Fair", saying "the store was like a fair, because it offered many different things for sale at a cheap price." [1] Lehmann bought and sold goods on a cash-only basis; he offered odd prices (i. e., prices not in multiples of five cents) to save customers a few pennies on every purchase. The flagship store moved to the corner of State and Adams Streets in 1875; a modern twelve-story building for the store designed by William Le Baron Jenney would be completed on that site in 1891. [2]
The Fair promoted itself as a discount department store in the early 1900s. In 1915, a booklet published by the store stated it "always has been and undoubtedly always will be, the store of the people, the down-town shopping center for the Savers, the market place for the Thrifty." In 1925 the business was sold to a syndicate headed by S.S. Kresge (predecessor firm of Kmart). Under its management, branches were opened on Milwaukee Avenue (1929), in Oak Park, Illinois (1929), at the Evergreen Plaza Shopping Center (1952), and at the Old Orchard Shopping Center (1956). [3]
In 1957, Montgomery Ward purchased the State Street flagship store, as well as the Oak Park, Evergreen Plaza, and Old Orchard locations, from the Kresge syndicate in a bid to expand its Chicago operations; unlike many other retailers, Montgomery Ward had not joined in the construction of branch stores immediately following World War II. Initially, these stores retained The Fair nameplate, and one more The Fair store would open, at Randhurst Mall in 1962. However, the Randhurst store would also be the first converted to the Montgomery Ward nameplate, in August 1963; the other locations would convert to the parent company's name plate in 1964. The flagship building on State Street was closed in 1984 and demolished in 1985. [4] [5] Though a new building was planned for the valuable real estate, none was constructed until 2001. [3]
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appearance in the middle of the 19th century, and permanently reshaped shopping habits, and the definition of service and luxury. Similar developments were under way in London, in Paris and in New York City (Stewart's).
Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a mail-order business and later a department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The current Montgomery Ward Inc. is an online shopping and mail-order catalog retailer that started several years after the original Montgomery Ward shut down.
Discount stores offer a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down costs.
Marshall Field & Company was an upscale department store in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in the 19th century, it grew to become a large chain before Macy's, Inc, acquired it in 2005. Its founder, Marshall Field, was a pioneering retail magnate.
Carson Pirie Scott & Co. is an American department store that was founded in 1854, which grew to over 50 locations, primarily in the Midwestern United States. It was sold to the holding company of Bon-Ton in 2006, but still operated under the Carson name. The entire Bon-Ton collection of stores, including Carson's, went into bankruptcy and closed in 2018. Bon-Ton's intellectual property was quickly sold while in bankruptcy, and the new owners reopened shortly afterwards as a BrandX virtual retailer.
Northland Center was an enclosed shopping mall on an approximately 159-acre (64 ha) site located near the intersection of M-10 and Greenfield Road in Southfield, Michigan, an inner-ring suburb of Detroit, Michigan, United States. Construction began in 1952 and the mall opened on March 22, 1954. Northland was a milestone for regional shopping centers in the United States. Designed by Victor Gruen, the mall initially included a four-level Hudson's with a ring of stores surrounding it. As originally built, it was an open air pedestrian mall with arrayed structures. The mall was enclosed in 1975 and expanded several times in its history. Additions included five other department store anchors: J. C. Penney in 1975, MainStreet in 1985, and TJ Maxx, Target, and Montgomery Ward in the 1990s. Managed by Spinoso Real Estate Group, Northland Center featured approximately 100 stores. Macy's, the last anchor, closed on March 22, 2015, exactly 61 years to the date of the mall's opening. The mall was partially demolished in September 2021, and is currently being redeveloped as Northland City Center.
River Oaks Center is a shopping mall in Calumet City, Illinois, a suburb south of Chicago. River Oaks Center is the seventh largest mall in the Chicago metropolitan area totaling 1,379,824 square feet (128,190 m2). Today, there are over 60 stores and two anchors including JCPenney and Macy's with two vacant anchors last occupied by Carson's and Sears. Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management manages and owns River Oaks Center.
May Company California was an American chain of department stores operating in Southern California and Nevada, with headquarters at its flagship Downtown Los Angeles store until 1983 when it moved them to North Hollywood. It was a subsidiary of May Department Stores and merged with May's other Southern California subsidiary, J. W. Robinson's, in 1993 to form Robinsons-May.
Westfield Old Orchard, formerly Old Orchard Shopping Center, is a shopping center in the Chicago metropolitan area. It is located in Skokie, Illinois. The shopping center features the traditional retailers Macy's and Nordstrom, in addition to a CMX luxury cinema. The mall features prominent specialty retailers such as Vineyard Vines, Madewell, Anthropologie, Fabletics, Kendra Scott, Tory Burch, and Warby Parker.
Southgate Shopping Center is a shopping center located at the southeast corner of Eureka and Trenton Roads in Southgate, Michigan. Completed by 1958, it was one of the first major strip malls in the southern Detroit suburbs until the nearby Southland Center opened in 1970. At its peak, the center housed over thirty stores.
Wieboldt Stores, Inc., also known as Wieboldt's, did business as a Chicago general retailer between 1883 and 1987. It was founded in 1883 by storekeeper William A. Wieboldt. The flagship location was at One North State Street Store in Chicago.
Springdale Mall is a shopping center located in Mobile, Alabama, United States, directly across from The Shoppes at Bel Air. Opened in 1959 as an open-air shopping center, Springdale Mall was later redeveloped as an enclosed shopping center. Facing competition from larger shopping centers in the area, Springdale was demolished in stages in the 2000s, with most of the former enclosed mall being replaced with big-box stores.
The Plaza, formerly known as Evergreen Plaza, was a shopping mall in Evergreen Park, Illinois, United States. It was legally organized by Arthur Rubloff, who is also credited with coining the phrase "Magnificent Mile" describing the upscale section of Michigan Avenue north of the Chicago River to Oak Street. Rubloff secured the funding for the Evergreen Plaza from the Walgreen family who lived nearby in Beverly, Chicago. The Evergreen Plaza operated from 1952 to 2013. It featured over 120 stores, as well as a food court. The mall closed in 2013 and became an outdoor shopping center. Anchors include Whole Foods Market, and Burlington Coat Factory.
Randhurst Village is a shopping center located at the corner of Rand Road and Elmhurst Road in Mount Prospect, Illinois. The shopping center took its name from combining the names of these two roads.
Century Mall was an indoor shopping mall located on the southeast corner of Broadway and US 30 in Merrillville, Indiana, United States. The mall opened in 1979 with anchor stores Goldblatt's and Montgomery Ward. Competitive and economic factors sent the mall into steady decline and national retail chains left throughout the 1990s until the mall was ultimately sold for redevelopment in 2001 then closed and largely demolished in 2002. The mall's interior stores also suffered following Montgomery Ward's remodeling. Montgomery Ward removed their mall entrance and told customers that no stores remained, when in reality close to a dozen stores were still open. A strip mall development named Century Plaza now occupies the land and some of the former anchor store buildings.
Tiedtke's was a former grocery and department store chain based in Toledo, Ohio. At its peak, the store, which began life as a grocery, occupied a huge building at Summit Street and Adams downtown, maintained an annex store two blocks away, and a branch store in north Toledo. It was a unique Toledo experience, and a community center. The family-founded store changed hands several times before all locations closed by 1973. The original store building was destroyed by fire two years later.
Rogers Plaza also referred to as Rogers Plaza Town Center since 2002 is an enclosed shopping mall in Wyoming, Michigan, United States, a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Opened in 1961, it was the first shopping mall in Western Michigan and the first enclosed one in the state of Michigan. The center features Ross Dress For Less, Ollie's Bargain Outlet and B2 Outlet among its major stores.
Panorama Mall is a mall in Panorama City, San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, California. It is an enclosed mall anchored by two large discount stores, Walmart and Curacao, aimed primarily at a Hispanic customer base.
Edens Plaza is a strip mall in the town of Wilmette, Illinois. It was built by Carson Pirie Scott & Co. (Carson's) in 1956, and, until 2018, was anchored by one of their stores. It is located on a triangular parcel of land between Lake Avenue, Skokie Boulevard and the Edens Expressway.