Then & Now: Sears, Roebuck & Company Complex – Chicago

In the mid-19th century, a series of events gave birth to a new and highly successful American industry – the mail-order catalog.

The construction of railroad lines across the United States, the introduction of new consumer goods after the Civil War, and the advances of new printing technology all drew the industry to Chicago, which soon would become the hub of mail-order commerce.

Mail-order retailing became a big business in Chicago during the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the city became the headquarters for Montgomery Ward and Co., Sears, Roebuck & Co., and other smaller companies.

Montgomery Ward and Co., the world’s first giant mail-order enterprise, started in Chicago in 1872, just shortly after the fire of 1871. Ward’s company tried to convince rural consumers to buy a variety of goods through the mail. By 1893, Ward’s was receiving 15,000 mail orders a day.

Richard Warren Sears, a stationmaster in a small Minnesota town, got his retailing start in the 1886 when a shipment of gold watches went unclaimed. At first, Sears sold the watches for the company that shipped them, but within a year started his own company, the R.W. Sears Watch Co.

Sears joined forces with watch repairman Alvah C. Roebuck in 1887 and ultimately moved the business to Chicago because of its central location in the country and its access to an adequate transportation network.

By 1893, Sears had changed the name of his company to Sears, Roebuck and Co. and began to offer a much wider range of merchandise, to complete with Montgomery Ward.

By 1895, Sears and Roebuck relocated their company in Chicago and established their headquarters on West Adams Street. Due to its rapid growth, the company was forced to move again to the corner of Fulton and Desplaines Streets.

Within 10 years, Sears had about nine thousand employees, and its annual sales were nearly $50 million. Much of the success of the business during this period was due to Julius Rosenwald, who became a partner in the business in 1895 and who help to transform the company into the world’s largest mail-order house.

In 1904, Sears, Roebuck and Co. bought 41.6 acres on Chicago west side and hired the architectural firm of Nimmons and Fellows to design a new distribution plant.

Ground was broken on the new complex on Jan. 24, 1905, and nearly seven thousand workers were hired for the project. Most of the construction material was brought to the site by freight car, and it was estimated that 23 million bricks and nearly 15 million feet of lumber were used in the project.

In January 1906, the company transferred its entire operations into the new facility. The entire mail order plant was finally completed by October 1906 and included a five-story Administration Building, a six-story Merchandise Development and Laboratory Building, a nine-story Mail Order Plant, and a one-story Power Plant.

The L-shaped, six-story Merchandise Development and Laboratory Building served as the printing plant for the famous Sears catalogue.

Like Wards, Sears issued giant catalogs and succeeded in attracting orders for a variety of goods from hundreds of thousands of rural customers.

The most notable exterior feature of the Mail Order Plant is the centrally located square-shaped, 14-story entrance tower. The tower was used chiefly for office space, but also included an observation deck. On the first floor, near the tower, was the location of the original Sears retail store, which opened in 1925.

Today, the tower is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now the John D. and Alexandra C. Nicholas Tower. The Nicholas’ generosity supported substantial renovation of the old tower.

Until the 110-story Sears Tower was built in 1973, the world’s tallest building at the time, the Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex on South Homan Avenue served as the firm’s headquarters.

In 1978, 16 acres of the original 41.6-acre complex was declared a National Historic Landmark. The Mail Order Plant was demolished except for the tower to make way for the Homan Square Community Center Campus.