Montgomery Ward Invented Mail Order. Then It Lost Chicago

Montgomery Ward started with a single page listing 163 items in 1872, and by the early 1900s it had built a 1.25-million-square-foot Catalog House on the Chicago River employing over seven thousand people, with roller-skating warehouse pickers and a shipping dock that loaded 24 freight cars at once. Four converging pressures — Sears outpacing it into the suburbs, discount chains like Kmart and Walmart changing the competitive floor, a cautious postwar strategy, and a revolving door of corporate owners — drove the general merchandise catalog to a $279 million loss by 1985, and after a leveraged buyout and two bankruptcies, the original company was gone by 2001. This video traces how the catalog that built a national retail system collapsed while the riverfront building that housed it still stands today. Watch More: Why Chicago Lost the Brach's Candy Factory    • Why Chicago Lost the Brach's Candy Factory   Why Did Zenith Disappear From Chicago?    • Why Did Zenith Disappear From Chicago?   Why Elgin Stopped Making America's Watches    • Why Elgin Stopped Making America's Watches