Jazz Age Chicago -- Chain Stores

Chain Stores

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, chains of retail stores spread all across Chicago. Selling everything from cigars and groceries to household goods and ice cream sodas, these chains quickly became an indispensible place in the everyday lives of thousands of Chicagoans, both male and female, young and old. One or more of these stores could be found in every Chicago neighborhood, and, in many cases, as many as two or three outlets of the same chain could be found within a couple of blocks of one another. Collectively, they filled numerous storefronts along the city's primary arteries and relied heavily upon public forms of transportation to supplement the already sizable numbers of customers who lived in homes nearby and could walk to and from the stores.

In the 1920s, chain stores were considered a rather new phenomena in the history of American retailing. Developed by career business executives rather than individual entrepreneurs, chain stores were part of a widespread movement among bankers, manufacturers, and retailers to rationalize the nation's consumer economy through systematic, streamlined business practices. Within the world of chain stores, these practices included the purchase of goods for resale direct from manufacturers, the earning of profits through volume sales, and the consolidation of marketing departments. As a result, chain stores were able to offer their merchandise and related services at lower prices than their non-chain competitors, which, needless to say, quickly attracted the attention of shoppers.

Equally significant was the chain stores' ability to capitalize on the rapid geographical expansion of Chicago's neighborhoods and transportation network. The 1920s, after all, were years of rapid suburbanization and, as the famed "Bungalow Belt" spread into new and ever more remote parts of the city, chain stores helped fill the void of retail establishments in the newly populated districts. Chicagoans who moved out of the "old" neighborhood and into a new home in a more outlying district often found nearby chain stores to be a worthy substitute for the familiar retailing establishments they left behind.

Although the number may vary depending on one's definition of a chain store, there were between ten and twenty chains operating in the Chicago area by the end of the 1920s. While this is a small number in comparison to that of our own day, it nonetheless represented a monumental shift in the character of retailing and consumerism just a few years earlier when individual, "mom-'n'-pop" stores ruled the marketplace, almost without exception. While shopping at a chain store may seem second-nature to those of us who've lived with it all our lives, it was not so for shoppers in the 1920s. For them, the decision to save a few dollars on one's monthly food bill by patronizing the A&P rather than the neighborhood's long-established league of bakers, butchers, and grocers was often a difficult one that sometimes provoked accusations of disloyalty and years of hard feelings.

Here, then, is a more detailed look at some of Chicago's earliest and most successful chain stores:

F.W. Woolworth	Thompson's Cafeterias
Walgreens Drugs	Fannie May Candies
Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea	National Tea
Central Cigar	United Cigar

Jazz Age Chicago

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