Firm founded 1881, closed 1964
Main store: 1611-1621 Orrington Avenue, Evanston
Built 1930, demolished 1966
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Lord's in downtown Evanston was one of the North Shore's most
fashionable retail stores during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Catering to the needs and desires of the
area's increasingly wealthy residents, the store's growth
mirrored that of Evanston and the surrounding villages.
Lord's was the successor to an older dry goods store known as
"The Enterprise." Founded in 1881, The Enterprise Store was
located on the southwest corner of Davis Street and Sherman
Avenue. It was originally owned by Mary F. and Edwin Haskin,
but they sold it in 1893 to the store's upstart manager,
William Sinclair Lord. Two years after acquiring the store,
Lord relocated it to the first floor of the newly completed
Rood Building, which stood in the high-profile angle between
Sherman and Orrington Avenues on the north side of Fountain
Square. Here Lord introduced Evanston's first motorized
delivery truck and, beginning in 1901, published a monthly
women's fashion and homemaking magazine known as Queen of
the West. During this period, the store was known as
"Lord's Enterprise" and later as "Evanston's Famous Shop" and
"Lord's Fashion Store."
During the early 1900s, continued business growth once again
created a need for larger quarters. In 1906, Lord moved his
store into a two-story building on the east side of Orrington
Avenue between the State Bank of Evanston and the old YMCA
Building. To give the store a frontage on Davis Street, he
leased the rear-adjacent jewelry store of Albert H. Ullrich.
In its new location, Lord was able to greatly expanded his
merchandise lines to meet the demands of North Shore shoppers
and the store prospered like never before. By 1913, the
store's profits were said to be $20,000 per year, or roughly
$380,000 in 2005 dollars.
Despite his business successes, Lord's personal life had
become stormy. During the early 1910s, Lord began to make
secretive trips to California. Rumors swirled about an affair
between the merchant and a female store employee. In May
1913, Lord's wife, Nellie, sued him for divorce, claiming her
husband had deserted her and committed adultery on several
occasions.
Two years later, perhaps in part due to these personal
difficulties, Lord decided to sell his store and move to
California. On 1 January 1916, Albert Ullrich became the new
owner of Lord's department store. As such, Ullrich embarked
upon a major overhaul and expansion of the store. In 1924, he
purchased the Central YMCA Building at 1611 Orrington Avenue,
just north of the store. Upon completion of the sale, Lord's
occupied the first floor of the building, while the
YMCA continued to operate out of the upper floors while its new
quarters at Grove Street and Maple Avenue were completed. Six years
later, following demolition of the old YMCA Building and the
construction of a massive, new, three-story, neo-classical department store
in its place, Lord's vacated its previous Orrington Avenue location.
As before, however, the store maintained a alternate entrance
at 621-625 Davis Street. Ullrich remained president of the store until his death
in 1951.
Lord's opened its first branch store in October 1961. The
opening of the 50,000-square-foot store at the south end of
the new Golf Mill shopping center in Niles, Illinois,
coincided with the store's 80th anniversary. The opening of
the new store boosted Lord's annual sales to about $3 million,
making it one of the North Shore's oldest and biggest
independent department stores.
Although Lord's remained a favorite among many North Shore
shoppers, it was too small to compete effectively against the
larger department store chains and discount retailers that
anchored the area's growing number of suburban shopping malls.
In August 1963, three former executives of The Fair gained a
controlling interest in the Lord's. Thirteen months later,
the store declared bankruptcy. The Lord's store in downtown
Evanston was demolished in 1966 to make way for the expansion
of the State National Bank.
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Barbara J. Buchbinder-Green, Evanston: A Pictorial History (Saint Louis, Mo.: Bradley Publishing, 1989), 124-125;
Evanston Review, 4 Jul 1963, 44-45, 138; Chicago Tribune, 28 Jul 1901, 38; 29 Mar 1924, 21; 27 Apr 1951, C6; 7 Oct 1956, N9; 12 Oct 1961, N11; 9 Aug 1963, C7; 6 Oct 1964, C6.
Page authored: 31 December 2005
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