Department Stores
Chicago's department stores played a major role in the
transformation of the city's everyday life during the early twentieth
century. Dedicated to improved customer service and enticing advertising
campaigns, the modern department store looked nothing like its
predecessor, the dry-goods store. For the city's better-off women, a
visit to one of the city's department stores, the largest of which lined
State Street in the Loop, was much more than just a quick errand. With
restaurants, beauty salons, ladies parlors, and other amenities, the
stores offered women a well-rounded social experience that often evolved
into an all-day outing. While visiting the store, women educated
themselves about the latest styles and trends in apparel, cosmetics,
home furnishings, and family activities. Such knowledge was crucial to
their effort to demonstrate their family's moral and social
respectability through publicly displayed material possessions. Through
their combined efforts, department stores and the women who shopped them
helped the city's more conservative middle-class cope with the moral
anxieties and social insecurities of the increasingly unpredictable
modern age. To learn more about the city's department store industry
during Chicago's Jazz Age, click on the links below. |
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Marshall Field
& Co. Store, ca. 1914 |
