The Fair Department Store I

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The Fair Department Store I
Life Span: 1875-1897
Location: State and Adams Streets
Architect: TBD

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Since Forty Years Ago, Forrest Casey, 1915

The genius of Mr. Lehmann’s idea lay in the fact that he recognized this trait of human nature and saw the extent to which it could be used to move trade to centralize shopping. He was himself a poor man and this circumstance put him in position to realize the problems of the people, the pressure upon the ordinary family to economize and the appeal to the struggling housewife made by the opportunity to save even a few cents on each purchase for the home. Besides, the public appetite for economy was especially keen at that time from the fact that the country was still in the grip of the financial panic of 1873. Any chance to buy cheaply was not to be overlooked.

His philosophy was simple:

Show the American Housewife that she can save money by trading with you and you will win her patronage. And the more excitement and competition you can put into her shopping the better she’ll like it.

This was about all that Mr. Lehmann saw when, in 1875, he opened up his little stock of jewelry, notions, crockery, hardware, and kitchen utensils. Later, he realized more and more that in the one word Volume lay the real secret of expansion. Volume in purchases would compel Volume in sales. Volume meant smaller profits but more profits. So he went out after Volume. Right here was the real foundation of the Department Store—and History is clear and definite in giving to Mr. E. J. Lehmann uncontested credit for founding the first Department Store.

The building in which this notable demonstration in centralized merchandising was sheltered was a little, one-story, frame structure that would to-day be called a shack. It contained only twelve hundred and eighty square feet of floor space and stood on the west side of State Street, just sixteen feet north of Adams. When it opened there was hardly a more insignificant store in that part of the city, but it was destined to do as much as any other enterprise, if not more, to make State Street the great permanent retail shopping thoroughfare that it is to-day. The whole investment made by Mr. Lehmann when he threw open his doors for the first day’s business was less than a thousand dollars. Mark these two original figures: twelve hundred and eighty feet of floor space;
one thousand dollars capital.

What extensions have forty years written in the expansion column opposite these entries? There is no secret as to the fact that Mr. Lehmann’s great monument to the principle of down-town shopping contains 798,000 square feet of floor space and about eight miles of counters and show-cases. As to the investment, I can only conjecture that it is certainly high in the millions.

But let us get back to the little store from which this mighty volume of retail merchandising started and see what nourished a growth so marvelous.

There is more than a mere hint of the real secret of that success in the story of Mr. Lehmann’s first sign. A few doors away, around the corner, was the paint shop of W. P. Nelson-whose sons have since become celebrated as interior decorators — and to this neighbor he explained that he was going to call his store “The Fair for two reasons: he wished to imply to those reading the sign that fair dealing would be given all customers and also that the store was like a fair because it offered many and different things for sale at a cheap price. The sign must not only proclaim the cheapness of the prices offered, but it must also be cheap itself, Mr. Lehmann added — and he must be permitted to pay for it a dollar at a time as he could spare it from his business. The bargain was struck and the sign painted. It read: THE FAIR CHEAP

This crisp sign, with its one descriptive word, pitched the key of the enterprise so clearly that he who ran might read. There was a flavor to the word “cheap” in those days of prolonged financial depression that caught the eye and stopped the feet of the passer. In just four years the ” cheap store had so expanded that it absorbed the shop in which the sign was painted — and paid for on the installment plan.

It had started with sixteen feet on State Street and, in four years, multiplied its total frontage by four-teen. How The Fair pushed out in every direction, absorbed one building after another and finally found itself “way ’round on Dearborn Street” is too long a chapter to be told in detail. But its growth may be suggested in a sentence: In an atmosphere of failure it thrived; as its neighbors shriveled and collapsed under the frost of financial depression, it expanded and eagerly took the room vacated by the outgoing enterprises.

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Dearborn Street looking north from Adams showing “The Fair” and the Adams Express Building and showing the Crilly Building at the northeast corner of Dearborn and Monroe. This was taken in 1883.

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Chicago Tribune, May 31, 1885

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Adams Street east of Clark in 1889. On the left is shown Kinsley’s Restaurant, the old Marquette Building and the Fair when the latter had but two stories. The old Federal Building is on the right.

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The Fair
1888.

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Owings Building and The Fair
1891

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The Fair
Samborn Fire Insurance Map
1886

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