Occupants: Osborn. R. Keith, Norman B. Ream, John Crerar
Location: 1901 S. Prairie
Life Span: 1882-1929
Architect: Lavall B. Dixon
Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1884
Keith Osborn R. (Edson Keith & Co.) 168 Wabash av. house 1901 Prairie av.
Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1885
Keith Osborn R. (Edson Keith & Co.) 168 Wabash av. house 1901 Prairie av.
Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1911
Crerar John (Crerar Clinch & Co) 645 The Rookery h 1901 Prairie av
- 1901 S. Prairie
Inter Ocean, January 15, 1887
The elegant residence of Norman B. Ream, No. 1901 Prairie avenue, war destroyed by fire early yesterday. with a loss of about
$100,000.
- 1901 S. Prairie
In 1898 as owned by Mr. Ream
Chicago Tribune, December 31, 1881
O. R. Keith & Co.
This noted house begins the new year with the prestige of unprecedented business success in the past and with the prospect of a large increase of trade for the year 1882. The experiment of adding fancy dry goods to millinery and notions has been eminently successful, and the unexpected demand for goods in all departments bas decided them to greatly enlarge their force and cultivate new territory the coming year. The past record of the house is a guarantee that whatever enterprise it undertakes will be prosecuted with characteristic energy and success. The bounds of Chicago trade is being constantly enlarged, and what was the utmost limit of Chicago enterprise ten years ago is but the threshold over which Chicago merchants pass to new fields of peaceful conquest.
The history of this house is the history of the growth of Chicago and the West for the past twenty-two years. Beginning, as did all the representative houses of today, in a moderate way, they studied the wants of the public, expanding their trade as the city and country grew in population and wealth, till they outgrew the progress of city and adjacent country, and reached out around and beyond the neighboring cities to the limits of the Union. And this extension of trade has been going on year after year, as Chicago has become more and more the great source of supplies for all the region south of the Great Lakes and west of the Alleghenies. And O. R. Keith & Co. have shown themselves equal to the new demands of trade imposed upon them, and are preparing not only to cultivate, more faithfully than heretofore, the old homestead, but to annex and take possession of new territory, and make its people glad with the products of an esthetic civilization. The great block which this house occupies contains six floors,160 feet front by 170 feet deep, and so arranged for convenience and the display of goods as to make it a model store for the transaction of an immense business.
The house has abundant means and unsurpassed facilities for the purchase of goods in England, France, and Germany, and through its house in Paris it is promptly supplied with the latest styles, and choicest fabrics in the great European centres of fashion.
No house has ever built up so large a business as this without really serving the public. It is because they have bought for cash in large quantities and sold at the lowest prices that they have such a wide circle of customers. With a palace for salesrooms, marvelously well-selected stocks in all departments, and appreciative customers, it is logical, it not inevitable, that this house should be first in its class, and justify the public judgment that it sells more goods in its lines than any other house in the world.
- 1901 S. Prairie Ave.
Robinson Fire Insurance Map
1886
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