Remembering Montgomery Ward's

The new Montgomery Ward store, viewed across Schuyler Avenue in 1938. The Kankakee store of Ward’s major competitor, Sears, Roebuck & Co., is at right, beyond the Eastern Illinois Trust and Savings Bank building.  (Kankakee County Museum Photo Archive)

By Jack Klasey

May 3, 2025

            Daughter: “Mom, I need a new dress for Susie’s party.”

            Mother: “We’ll go shopping for one at Monkey Ward’s this afternoon.”

“Monkey Ward’s” was a familiar nickname used by generations of shoppers to refer to the retail giant Montgomery Ward & Co. Founded as a mail order company in 1872, the company expanded in the 1920s from strictly mail order (catalog) sales to a network of more than 500 retail department store locations in cities and small towns across America.

A decade after Chicagoan Aaron Montgomery Ward started his mail order business, the Ward catalog had grown to 240 pages, and offered customers some 10,000 items. The catalogs filled a major need for people living in rural areas and small towns with limited shopping opportunities.

In 1896, Montgomery Ward & Co. found itself with a major competitor when Richard Warren Sears mailed out his first catalog under the name Sears, Roebuck & Co. The rivalry of the mail-order (and later, retail) giants would continue for more than a century.

The first Ward retail store in Kankakee opened in 1928. It was located at 236 E. Merchant Street, in a building on the south side of Merchant Street, midway between Schuyler and Dearborn Avenues.

On March 27, 1937, the Kankakee Republican -News reported that Montgomery Ward & Co. had signed a 40-year lease on an historic property than would soon become the location of the company’s local retail store.

The site of the new store would be the southeast corner of Schuyler Avenue and Court Street, which had been occupied by major downtown businesses for nearly seven decades. In 1868, pioneer merchant Frederick Swannell opened his dry goods store in a three-story brick building at that corner. The Swannell family closed their business in 1913 and leased the building to the Gelino Brothers, who opened a department store. The large building, which had a frontage of 50 feet on Court Street, and 138 feet on Schuyler Avenue, was one of the downtown’s oldest structures.

Disaster struck the Gelino Department Store on November 15, 1928. Fire seriously damaged the building, which had been recently remodeled and was filled with goods for the Christmas shopping season. The business loss was estimated at nearly $200,000, while the building (still owned by the Swannell family), suffered $125,000 in damage.

The Gelino store reopened, with limited merchandise, in the first floor of the Court Street portion of the building. Work soon began on rebuilding the damaged structure, and was essentially completed a year later. Unfortunately, the remodeled building shortly became vacant, when the Gelino Brothers Department Store was forced into bankruptcy by unpaid creditors. For the next eight years, as a result of the Great Depression, the Swannell family was unable to find a buyer or a tenant for their building.

On August 20, 1937, the Republican-News—in an article on the impending grand opening of the new Ward store—commented, “After standing in darkness for eight years, the… corner building will again take its place along with other brightly lighted establishments, removing one of the last reminders of a depression period.”

Kankakee Mayor Albert Hattenburg was scheduled to officiate at the 9 a.m. Saturday ribbon-cutting ceremony, the newspaper noted, “and the store will be thrown open to thousands of visitors who are expected on the first day.” More than 100 salespeople would be employed in the new store, which provided more than 20,000 square feet of merchandise displays on the basement, first, and second floors. The entire third floor was devoted to merchandise stock rooms, which “will enable Ward’s to carry ample supplies of several thousand items for the counter sales.”

The company purchased five full-page advertisements in the newspaper’s August 20 edition to promote its “Grand Opening Sale.” On one of those pages, the company declared the opening to be “Really the opening of three stores in one, for you’ll find a complete apparel store for men, women, and children, a complete home furnishings store with everything for your home, and a complete hardware store carrying a full stock of auto supplies, sporting goods, heating and plumbing equipment, tools, and farm and garden supplies.”

On those five pages of ads, more than 50 items were pictured and advertised at “Opening Special” prices. Some examples: “Gym Shoes,” 49 cents (sell regularly at 59 cents); “Modern Dinette Sets,” $29.88; “5 Tube Radio with Finger Tip Tuning, ” $11.98; “Spark Plugs,” 22 cents; “New Fall Suits” for men, $22.95, and “Cotton Frocks, 21 cents savings on each,” 48 cents.

“Ward’s selected Kankakee as a key city,” Manager Benjamin F. Holschuh told the newspaper, “because of the confidence it has merited since its first store opened here in 1928. We have all faith in the city’s continued growth, and in the community’s response to our merchandise. We want to continue to be an important factor in the city’s commercial life.”

The downtown Montgomery Ward store continued to be “an important factor in the city’s commercial life” for more than 30 years. In late 1968, it was replaced by a modern, one-story store erected on a half-block site on the east side of Schuyler Avenue, between Oak and Chestnut Streets.

The building at Court and Schuyler, where the store had been located between 1937 and 1968, was demolished in 1970 and replaced by a Walgreens Drug Store. That building, in turn, was torn down and replaced by the Executive Centre office building in the early 1990s.

Jack Klasey is a former Journal reporter and a retired publishing executive. He can be contacted at jwklasey@comcast.net.