It's a Mad Mad Mad Shoppers World

Pandemonium has broken out in this 1962 grand opening view of a brand new Shoppers World discount store, which was located at 6211 North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. Shoppers World had a fairly fleeting tenure on the Chicago retailing scene, but in that time they managed to establish a decent presence in the city and select suburbs.

Shoppers World was founded in March 1956 with a single store by two ex-New Englanders, Alvin D. Star and Jerome Spier, both of whom worked as buyers for Boston’s legendary Filene’s department store chain. Eager to go into business on their own, they first considered opening a chain of ladies’ specialty stores, according to Robert Drew-Bear’s book Mass Merchandising. Upon visiting the super-successful Ann and Hope discount outlet in Cumberland, Rhode Island, they reset their sights on the world of discounting.

After scouting a number of locations in the greater Boston area, Star and Spier decided to pull up stakes and plant their flag in Chicago instead, where Star’s brother lived. The first store was opened at the intersection of Milwaukee, Foster and Central Avenues. Some months later, Shoppers World number two opened in Cicero, followed by a third store in 1958 in Melrose Park. By 1960, a Highland, Indiana store had been added along with two more Chicago locations.

The stores sold a mix of clothing, housewares and small appliances. In their early years, like a number of discount chains, including Korvettes, Shoppers World ran afoul of the era’s “fair trade” laws, which allowed manufacturers to set a floor below which prices of certain items could not be set. The company found itself blacklisted by a number of well-known vendors, but seemed to find a creative way around that, by setting up a special “wholesale” organization under a different name to buy from those vendors, then putting the items on sale in the Shoppers World stores. Fortunately for Shoppers World and the rest of the discount store chains, most fair trade laws went the way of the dinosaur by the early sixties.

In 1961, Star and Spier sold their six-store chain to Chicago-based Aldens, which was at the time the fourth largest catalog retailer in the United States. The new parent company invested heavily in Shoppers World, growing the chain to 14 stores (ranging from 40,000 to 120,000 square feet each). There were now stores in these Chicago suburbs as well - Mount Prospect, Niles, Oak Lawn, Chicago Heights and also in Gary, Indiana as well as downstate Decatur, Illinois and one store in more distant St. Paul, Minnesota.

Aldens itself was acquired at the close of 1964 by Gamble-Skogmo, Inc., owner of several retail chains -Gambles, Skogmos and Tempo, among others with most of their locations in America’s heartland, and Clark’s and Maclean’s in Canada.

The Shoppers World story wound down pretty quickly from there, with Gamble-Skogmo’s sale of the still 14-store strong chain in 1967 to Community Discount Stores, whose name the stores took on. The Lincoln Avenue store became a Zayre after Community’s demise, then a Kmart, according to my friend Chicago history blogger Didi. A Home Depot now sits on the site. I’m not sure where the second store pictured was located, but it might possibly be the last Shoppers World store, which opened at the corner of Fullerton and Narragansett Avenues in February 1965.

Osco Drug - Out of the Past

This late 40’s scene from downtown Rockford, Illinois looks like it could have come straight out of a film noir classic. The photo is part of an intriguing series of night shots taken by Rockford native Bob Anderson, who now resides in Beijing, China.

The store pictured is very typical of Osco Drug stores opened during the first twenty-odd years of the company’s existence. Founded as Pay-Less Drug in Rochester, Minnesota in 1937 by Lorenzo L. Skaggs, scion of one of the Safeway Stores founding families, the company was dubbed Owners Service Company (later shortened to “Osco”) following mergers with a few other small drug chains.

By 1960, Osco had 30 drugstores operating in six Midwestern states – Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota and Iowa. Their success (and favorable geographic locations) had caught the attention of Chicago-based Jewel Tea Company, which was about to embark on a series of diversification moves.

On February 16, 1961 through an exchange of stock, Osco became a wholly owned subsidiary of Jewel Tea. The most obvious advantage that Jewel gained from the merger was the fact that they now had both pharmacy experience and a well-known regional drugstore nameplate in-house, which enabled Jewel to implement its long planned “combination store” strategy, the key to Jewel’s success in the both the sixties and the decades that followed. Jewel was one of the early adopters of the “combination store” format, essentially a supermarket and drugstore under one roof, with or without shared checkstands. Jewel-Osco would prove to be a powerful brand combination, enduring to this day.

Jewel would initially split Osco into two separate operating groups – the first known as the “Main Street” Osco stores, those stores located near the outside limits of the Chicago area (in the downtown areas of such cities as Elgin, Joliet, Waukegan and Rockford, for example), along with downstate cities such as Bloomington. The Main Street group also included all Osco stores outside of Illinois. The second group was known as the “Chicago Osco Drug” group, which of course was made up of the Chicago metropolitan area stores, including those combined with Jewel Food Stores.

Pictured below in a scene of very different character from the first one (but still pretty cool looking) is Rockford’s “new” Osco store in an early 1960’s postcard view. The store had moved some years earlier to a new location directly across the street from the original Osco, the edge of which can be seen to the far right of the photo. Also of interest is the Carson Pirie Scott store, which had replaced the original Block & Kuhl store in that location.

Jewel - Downers Grove, IL Early 1960's

These superb photos from Downers Grove, Illinois, apparently a two-Jewel town in the early 1960’s, were taken by Donald Hodges and come to us through the courtesy of his son Paul. These photos have a lot of detail, so you'll want to click on them to see the enlarged versions. Downers Grove is 19 miles west of Chicago in DuPage County. In the early 60’s, “Downers” (as many residents lovingly refer to it) was well along in transition from a once-rural area with a quaint downtown to a full-blown suburb. Today Downers Grove, along with DuPage cities Naperville, Lisle and Wheaton (among others) form an affluent suburban corridor that is home to a growing number of corporate headquarters and has long been considered the “hottest” part of the Chicago area in terms of growth. Many of my near west suburban peers from high school and college days have migrated to DuPage in the last 25 years. Despite the area’s tremendous growth, Downers Grove has done an admirable job of preserving a “small town feel” in its thriving downtown area.

The first photo, from June 1962, shows the Downers Market Shopping Center, which was located at the intersection of Ogden Avenue (US 34) and Saratoga Avenue. In addition to the Jewel, the center featured a Woolworth’s and the locally owned E-G Home Center among other stores. Barely readable at the corner of the Jewel store is an oval “Burny Bros.” sign, a popular Chicago bakery that had departments in many Jewel stores of the era. As a kid, I can remember riding with my parents as they drove on I-294 and passing the Burny Bros. bakery plant in Northlake with its pink sign glowing at night. The plant later was later operated as an Entenmann’s facility and is now something else, I believe. Maybe the most interesting aspect of this photo for those who grew up in the area is the sign for Texas Tommy’s Silver Dollar Coffee House (Yee-ha!). I’ve never seen any interior photos of this long gone restaurant, but I have to think it sported wagon-wheel chandeliers. Or should have, at least.

Not long ago, the original shopping center was razed and a modern (and massive, by comparison) Jewel-Osco now sits on the entire site. One other note about this photo – behind Texas Tommy’s sat another supermarket. I’d love to know what it was.

The second and third photos are wonderful February 1961 views of Main Street (you expected some other name?), and in addition to the tiny, porcelain fronted Jewel there can be seen a Walgreens (back when soda fountains were a given at these) and a tiny Sears store that would have been either a Type “C” store or catalog desk store, in addition to many other local favorites.
To provide a bit more detail, below is a close-up (cropped from the second photo) of the Main St. store along with a line drawing of the same early 1950's prototype.

Update: I happened to find a newspaper article about the downtown store's grand opening in my files after I posted this. From the Chicago Tribune, dated August 23, 1951: GALA CROWD OF 6,500 HELPS OPEN STORE IN DOWNERS GROVE - "A gala square dance jamboree was held in Downers Grove last week at the opening of a new Jewel Food store in the village. Downers Grove Police Chief O.A. Springborn estimated the crowd at 6,500, more than half the village population. Some 14,020 hot dogs, ice cream bars, soft drinks and sacks of popcorn were consumed. Thousands of gas filled balloons added to the merriment. A 7 foot helium filled balloon belonging to Oscar Mayer broke away from its mooring. A $50 reward is being offered for it return. Six groups from Downers Grove, Lombard, and Oak Park gave square dance exhibitions and instruction."

Those were the days. And that hot dog-shaped balloon must still be floating around up there somewhere, don't you think?

Jewel's Silver Anniversary Style

The artist’s rendering above dates from 1956, and depicts Jewel’s “25th Anniversary Store”, as planned for opening in Chicago the following year. This store featured the new tower design that replaced the masonry pylon as the company’s standard over the next several years. The store’s main sign was made up of individual “stand-up” letters, but rectangular signs were still used as well during this period. Here’s a 1970 color photo showing a late 50’s Jewel with the sign tower (barely) visible.

Twenty-five years on, Jewel could now claim the number one spot in Chicago grocery market share. Apparently, plenty of customers found Jewel “a better place to trade”, as their advertising tagline of the time put it. Jewel began to take its first expansion steps outside the Chicagoland area. In March, 1957, Jewel bought out the Eisner Grocery Company. Eisner was based in Champaign, home of the University of Illinois, and had 42 grocery stores located in Central Illinois and Western Central Indiana. Eisner grew rapidly within a short time under Jewel’s ownership, with the addition of five new stores in the first year. In 1958, Jewel would open up another new market area, with four new stores in greater Peoria. Although these stores went under the Jewel name, they were operated by Eisner. Due in part to the Eisner market area’s distance from Chicago, but mostly to the decentralized management style that was favored by Jewel, Eisner was operated as a stand-alone operation, with its own offices, warehousing and bakery operations in Champaign.

Around the same time, Jewel would venture into two adjoining states for the first time. First they entered Wisconsin, with the 1958 purchase of two stores from Connolly’s Finer Foods in just over the border Kenosha. The first Jewel in nearby Rockford, Illinois (just under the border) was also opened that year. In the following March, Jewel would open its first Michigan store in Benton Harbor, on the other side of Lake Michigan shoreline from Chicago. All of these stores were serviced from the Melrose Park home base.

Jewel's frontiers would expand much further in the early years of the 1960’s.

Just for fun, below is a 1956 view of the new Jewel Food Store in Chicago’s Scottsdale Shopping Center, located at West 79th Street and South Cicero Avenue and opened in November of the previous year. This shopping center (which still exists, though it goes without saying the original tenants have long since departed) was also notable for a unique Goldblatts store with a curved facade.

Jewel Food Stores in the 1950's

The early and middle years of the 1950’s were in effect the “calm before the storm” for Jewel. Near the end of the 50’s and especially in the 1960’s, Jewel would expand both its business model (adding drug stores, a discount operation and convenience stores, among other things) and its store operating territory (acquiring chains based in New England and the Northwest, along with interests in Europe and Mexico). Throughout the fifties, however, Jewel concentrated on growing its core Chicago market, expanding into the suburbs and upgrading to much larger stores.

In the winter of 1954/5, Jewel opened its new distribution and office complex at 1955 North Avenue in west suburban Melrose Park, Illinois. Large by the standards of time (a 500,000 square feet warehouse and a 52,000 square feet office building), the complex would be expanded many times over the years. Melrose Park would become the new nerve center of the company, due in part to its close proximity to Chicago and much more central location within Jewel’s operating area. Barrington’s Jewel Park, the company’s stomping grounds since 1930 (and at 400,000 square feet no small operation itself) would now house only the route operation offices and manufacturing. Jewel also maintained a produce and meat warehouse on Ashland Avenue in Chicago, which would later be closed down when its operations were moved to Melrose Park. Despite the ownership changes of the last 25 years, Melrose Park remains Jewel’s headquarters today.

The company continued to place a heavy emphasis on self-service in its stores, a practice that Jewel adopted earlier than many other major chains. Jewel’s meat departments, which had been the lone holdouts, were converted to self-service to great fanfare in the early and mid fifties. Jewel took great pains to educate their customers with regard to the convenience and speed benefits of self-service meat, all the while assuring them that their friendly meat managers were on standby to provide them with “those special cuts”.

The photos above show typical Jewel scenes from the fifties – (1) a 1953 storefront (which looks very similar to the Arlington Heights location) replete with banners promoting self-service meats. Not much room for daylight in those windows. (2) a typical new, vaunted self-service meat department, (3) a Jewel entrance featuring an “always open” air-curtain door arrangement, all the rage for a brief period in store construction – this particular store being located at 5140 North Lincoln Avenue, (4) a 1957 photo of a new Jewel store, complete with its masonry pylon under construction (you can see the store it would replace to the far right of the photo) and (5) a new Jewel store, with mirror-image design of that in the previous photo, brand new and open for business in 1955, one of eighteen new stores the company would add that year.