The Ultimate Emporia For Persons of Modest Means

It all started here for me at this department store located in Uptown at 4700 N Broadway. In September 2008 I wrote about my one and only experience inside this Goldblatt's store,

" It was a cold and very windy night. Flurries were in the air, or maybe it was snow or maybe after almost twenty years my mind is eluding me. My mittens were on, my hood over my head and cold still chilled me to shivers but my mummy dearest was still determined to get her pots and pans. Maybe she was on pot, who knows. Usually my father never had trouble saying no, but this was a man who relished going to a grand opening of a Kmart in the cold, he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to drive to Uptown on the corner of Broadway and Lawrence (Coincidentally, that location had once been a department store called Loren Miller which Goldblatt's bought in 1931) and marvel at a store he'd never been in. Yet it wasn't the grand spectacle they were expecting. Oh, there was a spectacle. Mobs of people touching, grabbing and feeling piles of what my parents would later label eloquently as junk. They were no where near impressed and neither was my eight year old self. Never mind I was trapped in a department store time warp. Change the model of our car and it could have easily been right after the Great Depression which the chain had actually survived. Hell, it was the Great Depression since the store hadn't looked like it had been updated since its Loren Miller days. We couldn't imagine why anyone would want to spend money coming to the most uncool place anyone could ever shop in. After walking around and gasping for air, we decided to leave. I think my mother later found her set of pots at Montgomery Ward or Sears or something with slightly more 'class.'"

For Maurice and Nathan Goldblatt, sons of Polish immigrants, it was all about the neighborhood department store. Everyone knows that downtowns were once the lively blood of cities with all the local names and local department stores to distinguish between high end, mid tier and lower end establishments where some serious money was made, capital thrived, workers exploited, local people chatted up the latest gossip etc, etc. Typical stories come from all walks of life and Goldblatt's had one that was no different than all the others.

Starting off as errand boys, Maurice and Nathan managed to open up their own dry goods establishment in 1914. It was most certainly a location near Chicago's downtown but not close enough to be considered in the loop so to speak as the big guns of Marshall Fields, Carson, Pirie, Scott, Boston Store, etc. Nathan, for good or for worse, seemed to be your regular Sam Walton (There will be other little details about Goldblatt's that sound very Walmart-esque but we'll get to that later) buying up various items he could find and selling them at a high rate of speed that would make your best Nascar driver blush. Who amongst the Chicago public was Goldblatt's biggest, quicker picker uppers? Of course, the immigrant pool my parents were once a part of.

This photo comes from Richard Longstreth's wonderful article titled "Bringing Downtown to the Neighborhoods: Weiboldt's, Goldblatt's and the Creation of Department Store Chains in Chicago" which appeared in a 2007 issue of Buildings and Landscapes. Longstreth describes the famous, but little recalled fondly department store as a pioneer of sorts. "At a time when the department store industry still cultivated an ambiance that made customers feel more important and more economically well-off than most actually were, Goldblatt's flaunted cheapness, conspicuously billing its stores as places where immigrants and others with little to spare could find unbeatable bargains-the ultimate emporia for persons of modest means." Sounds like they must have consulted my dad on how best to flaunt cheapness. Seems like he was always an expert at it growing up. Thus, Goldblatt's would continue to grow as much as my dad's beer belly did growing up, at a rapid pace. I'd say that's pretty PFG, don't ya think?

This location, pictured to the right on Broadway, is a little hard to see architecturally and it doesn't look as wondrous and fabulous as some of the other Goldblatt's buildings. Though this picture probably does it no justice and this location actually was not built by the Goldblatt brothers themselves as it was a buy out having once been Loren Miller. More will photos and stories of Goldblatt's will be sure to come in the coming days.