Will signs of businesses past cause confusion for future Chicagoans?

I suppose people will argue it’s a matter of historic preservation, but there’s a part of me that thinks it’s ridiculous that the giant letters of gothic type spelling out “Chicago Tribune” will remain in place on the building the newspaper no longer uses.

Sign to be restored around 2020

Tribune Media (the division that operates the television stations) sold the nearly century-old tower that was corporate headquarters, and the newspaper that had been housed there for decades made its move just over a month ago.

Dominant sign near Tribune's new digs

IT SEEMS THE company that bought the building (and has plans to convert it into condominiums) thought it was buying the rights to the building, as-is. Including the eight-foot-high letters that spelled out the newspaper name.

While the newspaper thought they had the right to take their sign with them to their new offices in the one-time Prudential Building just a few blocks to the south.

In the end, it appears the sign will remain in place – with the argument being made that it is a part of the historic character of the structure that the company thought it was buying along with the structure itself.

Retail rivalry signs live on, even though Field's … 

The sign itself will be taken down later this year when the construction work needed to convert the structure into high-end condominiums for the ridiculously-wealthy of Chicago residents. When that work is complete (sometime around the year 2020), the sign will be restored.

WILL WE HAVE future generations of out-of-towners who get confused about where exactly one of our city’s newspapers is located?

… & Carson's are no more

Particularly because it seems that there isn’t anything excessively prominent to let people from outside know that the Tribune is located where it is now.

I took a recent day trip downtown just to walk around, and checked out the Prudential Building area because I wanted to see for myself just how prominently the newspaper had put its stamp on its new digs.

I found nothing. I had to have it pointed out to me where exactly the Tribune’s new home is. The Tribune hasn’t let its professional ego take over its new site.

IF ANYTHING, THE huge sign marking the building as the corporate headquarters of The Prudential Insurance Company of America is still all-dominant. Just as a few blocks once one crosses the Chicago River and one-time site of Fort Dearborn, the gothic type of the Chicago Tribune will be a very visual reminder of what once was.

Maybe that’s not too confusing. Take a little trip along State Street just a few blocks away, and you’ll see the signs remaining on Marshall Field’s and Carson, Pirie, Scott – even though it is Macy’s and Target that now do business in the one-time downtown flagships of Chicago’s classic retailers.

Past newspapers live on only as Mich. Ave. plaque

Maybe it’s evidence of my increasing age (I’m on the ‘experienced’ side of the half-century mark), but I’m at the point where every time I head into the city, I notice something else missing.

I’m starting to develop in my memory an entire city that no longer exists in quite the same form.

I ONCE THOUGHT it odd that a part of me still expects to see the brick, whitewashed building at 35^th Street on the Dan Ryan Expressway, instead of the pale pink concrete paneled structure that replaced it as the Chicago White Sox ballpark some 28 years ago.

Of course, it also makes me realize there are older generations of people who would regard themselves as life-long Chicagoans for whom my Chicago of memory would be a whole lot of nonsense – none of it existed when they were around.

How many think Macy's Frango Mints the  same? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

We have a city of perpetual change. It may be a sign of continued development. Because stagnation is not something we’d want to occur.

Although I also noticed that when I used the search engine of bing.com to confirm the new Chicago Tribune address, it persisted in telling me the newspaper is at Tribune Tower north of the river. Perhaps the Internet is confused by the sign’s remaining in place – and may be evidence we shouldn’t put too much trust in anything we find on these computers.

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Our retail habits continuously evolve – will old Carson’s become Amazon.com

It always amuses me whenever I think about retail practices (not that I think about them that often) to realize that one of the grand old spots of shopping in Chicago is now just another Target store.

The old nameplates remain ...

Which has me wondering with the news reports that Target may be purchased sometime this year by that behemoth of Internet shopping. As in Amazon.com.

DOES THAT MEAN the one-time Carson Pirie Scott flagship store on State Street will essentially become a visible sign of just how much Amazon.com has taken over the world of retail?

The idea behind the purchase, according to the Bloomberg Business News service, is that Amazon.com and Target already share a common demographic in terms of people who rely on them to purchase the goods they wish to have in life. Combining could create a sizable retail combine – albeit one not quite as big as Wal-mart.

But then again, the so-called retail experts consider that to be a separate demographic of shoppers. It’s a matter of everybody will claim they control their segment of society, and don’t really care about other groups amongst us.

But to me, the idea that the grand old department store (which had operated at various sites in Chicago since 1854 and at its current State/Madison street location since 1904) continues to stand in its architectural grandeur (designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan) but without its old retail elegance is amusing.

EVERY TIME I find myself inside the old Carson’s these days, I find myself trying to find traces of the old style – only to find that I’m in a Target barely distinguishable from the Target stores one can find anywhere else in Chicago or at various suburban locations.

If this deal does go through, will that one-time Carson’s location wind up taking on the smiling Amazon.com logo? Will it become a place people go to if they happen to be downtown, check out the goods, then return home to place the order?

... even though the classic retail businesses are long gone from State Street

I’ve seen that kind of behavior in many a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and it is one that I personally find strange. You’d think that since they’ve already made the trip to the store, they’d just buy the item right there and then!

But this is a new age now that we’re well into the 21^st Century and we now have people coming of age who weren’t even alive back on that date when the 1900s receded into the past and we moved into this era of the 2000s (is that 2-thousand or 20-hundred?).

REGARDLESS, I STILL find the old Carson’s building, along with the one-time Marshall Field’s just a couple of blocks north on State Street, to be significant landmarks.

They are points that help me personally anchor my location whenever I happen to be walking about. Yes, thinking of something as being “just a couple of blocks” from Carson’s is the way I think – even if there probably are some deluded individuals who will see the Target bullseye logo and think I’ve gone goofy.

It’s just a matter of how we think. Besides, I’m sure there will be a certain subgroup of people who have become so accustomed to the Target label on that structure that they will forever think of it that way – and will have an even younger generation think they’ve gone goofy.

“What Target? That’s Amazon.com!,” they’ll say.

OF COURSE, IF you want to live in the past and still shop at the Carson’s brand, you can always hit any of the many suburban locations that have kept that name – even though the flagship store did not.

A place to reminisce about Chicago of old. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

Just as you can still walk into what is now the downtown Chicago store of Macy’s and try to pretend it is still Marshall Field’s. Particularly if you go down to the basement level and spend all your time by the Frango mints stand. That brand has managed to outlive the company that originally created it.

Although the Amazon.com move (which previously took over the Whole Foods brand name) toward Target does have me wondering who eventually will wind up taking over the one-time Field’s.

And if we’re ultimately moving in the direction of all types of stores becoming tied together and merged into one massive entity to be known as “The Store.”

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Black Friday misery, or sense prevails?

As one who personally detests the concept of holiday-related retail activity (I’ll go ahead and say it, “Bah, Humbug!!!”), I can’t help but feel some sense in joy in the anecdotal activity I’ve seen with the post-Thanksgiving Christmas holiday shopping that supposedly is taking place Friday.

From what I'm told, Macy's decorations similar to these erected last year. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

I’ve seen a lot of people on Facebook posting their own observations of how the lines at shopping centers and stores don’t seem as ridiculously long this time.

THIS MAY BE an instance of me hoping that by writing something, I make it true regardless of what is really happening.

But I know when I ran an errand Friday that required I physically go to an AT&T store (and yes, they tried giving me the hard-sell to contemplate buying a new phone, even though the one I have now is barely over a year old), I was shocked at how few people were out and about.

The particular store I went to in suburban Chicago is part of a larger shopping area, and shares a parking lot with a Best Buy store – one of those big boxes that typically is particularly gross in trying to sway people in to shop now with so-called holiday retail bargains.

The traffic appeared to be little more than what would be seen on any other Friday mid-day. It didn’t feel like the “Black Friday” holiday at all. Does that mean the retailers who supposedly don’t clear into the black financially for the year until now are still in the red?

Art Institute Chgo's gift to Midwest?

SHOULD WE FEEL sorry for them that the crowds of shoppers trying to find that so-called perfect give to give to Uncle Frankie so he can exchange it for something else during come the late December post-Christmas (he’ll claim it’s the wrong color, but his real objection would be that the XXL size you got him fits perfectly, but he doesn’t want to admit he’s THAT big) aren’t quite so enormous?

Or could it be that many people are coming to the same realization I came to years ago – trying to deal with the holiday shopping crowds on this particular day truly stinks! There are better ways to shop without following the leader – being led by the nose by those advertisements and coupons that retailers put in the Thursday newspapers (and that some people tackily try to steal for free – while leaving the actual editorial content unsold).

A scene we no longer see in downtown Chicago proper

As for those who haven’t learned, perhaps the computer problems experienced Friday by Macy’s (a.k.a., the dirty rats who stole the name “Marshall Field’s” from the Chicago scene) will sway more.

The Friday news reports tell of glitches that prevent people trying to use their Macy’s charge cards from being able to buy anything. Although it seems the problems arise for anybody who tries to buy more than $100 – which is exactly the kind of person Macy’s wants out today (they could care less about the guy looking to buy a package of boxer shorts – which can be as little as a $17.99 purchase if one is particularly cheap).

IT WAS CASH-ONLY at Macy’s, which is such an anti-21^st Century attitude (albeit one that I try to follow whenever possible) that I’m sure many would-be followers will be incredibly offended.

So much so they’ll storm off to Kohl’s or J.C. Penney’s or whatever other option they happen to have available to them.

It’s a bit of that holiday shopping frustration that I wish could convince people there has to be a more rational way to do this than think there’s actually something special about this day-after-Thanksgiving that requires us to shop!

It makes me think to the old days when the idea of a downtown holiday shopping trip was as much about the spectacle – particularly in Chicago where many still mourn the loss of Field’s because the old State Street store’s windows no longer have those unique (remember Uncle Mistletoe?) decorations.

How many remember Uncle Mistletoe's wife, Aunt Holly? Photo provided by Chuckman's Chicago Nostalgia

THE WINDOWS STILL exist under the Macy’s brand name, but I’ve already read Facebook rants about how Macy’s has desecrated the whole concept with their generic decorations.

Which may be some people taking the whole concept far too seriously.

But now that “Black Friday” has come and gone, maybe we all now can relax just a bit – something we all probably can use after the stress of the Thanksgiving festivities and the Christmas/Hanukkah/whichever holiday you do activities that will come up in coming weeks.

A bit of relaxation might be what we as a society needs – just before the moment that President Donald J. Trump decides to screw up a national mood of peace by going on yet another irrational Tweet-from-a-Twit rant about how somebody is committing “War” on the Christmas holiday spirit.

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Ridiculously early? Or acceptably tardy? It’s Christmas on State Street!

I realize that many retail-type businesses started decorating for the Christmas holiday over a month ago – just prior to the sugar rush for kids otherwise known as Halloween.

Will this display window remain in use through Valentine's Day? Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

But I have to admit a journey I made Sunday to “that Great street” threw me for a bit of a loop – and I don’t mean the one that circulates el trains around the downtown area.

Is this "A" quality work?

FOR THE DISPLAY windows at Macy’s (the one-time Marshall Field’s) aren’t fully prepared for the holidays. Does this mean Macy’s is slacking off and lagging behind in preparing its holiday window display? Or are they kicking in with something that ought to be complete right about the time that Christmas actually arrives?

It seems the theme for this year is some sort of combination of Christmas with Valentine’s Day – a whole lot of hearts and pink and a combination of the two days.

Which is cute. I’m not complaining. Although it just seems so weak compared to the holiday displays I recall from childhood at the old Marshall Field’s – whose bronze signs remain on the façade of the building, largely because they’re historically significant and Macy’s wouldn’t be allowed to remove them no matter how much they may want to.

The Macy's façade prepares to symbolically blare out the joys of the holiday

Then again, times change. And I’m sure at least a few readers will dismiss me as an old codger for reminiscing about the long-gone days of Uncle Mistletoe.

ONE THING I couldn’t help but notice on Sunday, a few of the windows along Washington Street had special labels indicating they were the result of the Practicum Visual Class at nearby Columbia College.

A leftover sign of the days of old when Marshall Field &Co. would have given the Christmas holiday a particularly-Chicago signature

In the past, Field’s had their own full-time staff dedicated to those window displays – they were a source of professional pride.

Now, they’re just a class project. Let’s only hope we got “A” grade-level work for our holiday this season.

And we'll see how nice the displays look for this holiday season -- which is approaching rapidly, since the city's official holiday tree has already arrived and will soon be on display for all to see.

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EXTRA: Jewel vs. Dominick’s – another great Chicago debate terminates

Only the clocks remain from Field's. What will survive from Dominick's? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Probably the biggest retail competition in Chicago history was that of Marshall Field’s versus Carson, Pirie, Scott.

There used to be people who would seriously argue (sometimes as vociferously as if the subject matter was Sox versus Cubs) as to which store was better – both at their main locations on State Street and at their other assorted stores throughout the Chicago area.

TECHNICALLY, CARSONS WON that war. Field’s was bought out and converted to give Macy’s a presence in Chicago. Although the old flagship store for Carsons isn’t a a Carsons any longer.

But to those of us who grew up in Chicago in recent years and were just looking for something to bicker about, there was another fight we could fix over.

Best supermarket – Jewel’s or Dominick’s? Personally, I always shopped at whichever one was closest to where I lived at the time – although I became a little more loyal to Jewel during the stint I lived in Springfield, Ill., and it was a choice of a Chicago-oriented supermarket or the more St. Louis-leaning Schnuck’s.

In the big picture, it seems that Jewel’s will win the supermarket war, since the Jewel/Osco brand remains (although many people think it has deteriorated to the point where they prefer buying their groceries at a Wal-mart store, just a few aisles over from the underwear section).

Will its memory be mourned?

THINK I’M KIDDING? The Chicago Tribune reported that Jewel these days has 29.1 percent market share in the Chicago area, compared to only 8.7 percent. Dominick’s literally is lagging behind Wal-mart, which is at a 9.4 percent share and growing.

All of which is what motivated Safeway officials to say Thursday that they’re pulling out of the Chicago market. Which was the only place they used the Dominick’s brand-name.

By early next year, there won’t be any more Dominick’s stores. They will be big, empty storefronts – many of which might sit there for years as blots on their respective neighborhoods/suburban communities.

Da winner, but still champeen?

A fortunate few will get a new life. Although I find it funny that the owner of Jewel/Osco (the oft-maligned Albertson’s) has already reached an agreement to buy four Dominick’s sites to convert them to a Jewel.

WHICH I’M SURE to those people who remained devoted Dominick’s customers to the end will feel like some sort of betrayal – walking into the Dominick’s on Clybourn Avenue or Canal Street only to discover it a part of, “da Jewels.”

Definitely the days when Jewel and Dominick’s provided about two-thirds of the grocery market share for the Chicago metro area are a thing of the past!

Perhaps it’s just a thing of the past to have a general purpose supermarket, as it seems people either like to split between shopping at a store that offers up high-end or scarce foodstuffs – or one that purports to offer convenience in being able to buy groceries while also shopping for clothes or a new set of tires for the car.

The 21^st Century take on the grocery rivalry seems to be something along the lines of Whole Foods versus Wal-Mart (too bad we can't go Kroger-ing in Chicago like I did when I was in college in Bloomington, Ill.). Which definitely means something has been lost if we can no longer quarrel over Dominick’s versus Jewel.

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Reminiscing for the days of a better Chicago? Or merely living in the past?

The Chicago of my youth took a few more steps Tuesday toward being a wispy dream that exists only in my head.

First, there was the fact that city officials were all a-giddy at the thought of attracting a new Target store – one that will be filling in the space on That Great Street that once was occupied by the flagship store of Carson, Pirie, Scott.

NOW I CAN understand that it is a good thing that a vacant retail space, particularly one as big as Carson’s, ought not to sit vacant. It was becoming almost as big an embarrassment for Chicago that nothing was sitting at Madison and State streets as the fact that Block 37 sat vacant for so many decades.

Yet a part of me wonders if the idea of a Target at the heart of the city grid system is almost as tacky as those ice-skating rinks that used to be set up at Block 37, with city officials spewing some rhetoric making it seem like the vacant block was a deliberate plan so that city-goers could skate during the winter months.

For the one-time flagship of a major retailer isn’t big enough to be anything substantial for Target. We get talk of an urban-style Target store, compared to their usual formula of those big boxes built on former farmland in suburbia.

Which means scaled-down. While I realize that many more people live downtown than did in past decades (which is a good thing), the idea that they will be the primary market for this new Target almost makes it seem like the one-time Carson’s is being turned into a convenience store for Loop dwellers.

AS FOR THOSE who want the full-fledged Target shopping experience, they probably will continue to go to the store at Roosevelt Road and Clark Street. The Near South Side location, with a subway stop just a block away.

Even the thought of the jobs (which is what had Mayor Richard M. Daley drooling publicly on Tuesday) to be created isn’t all that big a deal. Some 200 employees for those part-time slots that hardly pay enough to raise a family on. So you’ll have people paying a significant part of their earnings just to commute to work.

It’s a good thing that Illinois officials are giving thought to boosting the minimum wage in this state, hoping to get it to a level just over $10 per hour by the time they’re through. Otherwise, these workers would be toast.

But the Chicago of my youth had a State Street anchored by the major flagships of Carson’s and Marshall Fields – neither of which no longer exists. The Chicago of today now has Macy’s (which doesn’t even feel like a New York import to our city as much as just a generic shopping experience that could take place anywhere) and Target.

STATE STREET JUST doesn’t feel like a Great Street so much anymore.

Then again, the city’s population isn’t what it used to be either. The Chicago of my youth was a city of 3 million people – one of the few cities proper that could achieve that level.

Yet the population counts for Illinois were made public on Tuesday, and while parts of the Chicago metropolitan area are gaining significantly (two out of every three Illinoisans lives in the Chicago-area, and three of the other four municipalities that comprise the Illinois Top 5 are suburbs themselves), the city itself has just slightly under 2.7 million people living here.

We can’t even make the claim that we did a decade ago – that we were a city of just under 3 million people. We’re starting to look more and more like Houston in terms of the number of people who live in the city itself.

OF COURSE, NO matter how few our numbers become, the individuals who are here will continue to have more class than those who live anyplace else. But it does make me wonder about those people who engaged in their politically partisan raging back in November when they claimed almighty Chicago was forcing its wicked ways upon the rest of the state.

What it really means is that it is the suburbs that are on the rise, and those individuals chose to throw in their lot with the urban residents of the state rather than the rural portions that think Cairo is a city on the Rivers Ohio and Mississippi – rather than the Nile.

So a part of me is doing a bit of reminiscing for obscure concepts of a Chicago of old. Then again, there is a part of me that always approaches 35^th Street and expects to see the whitewashed brick building where the White Sox play on the north side of the street – and feels a bit of a let-down when I instead see the rosey-tinted concrete slabs of the stadium that now rests to the south.



I was only 1 year old when the federal building that Al Capone and countless generations of Chicagoans would have known disappeared. Yet now I'm starting to appreciate the sentiments of people who reminisce for it.



Which means I’m starting to appreciate the sentiment of the real old-timers of Chicagoland – the ones who rant about the beautiful federal building/post office the city used to have at Jackson and Dearborn, instead of the black glass towers that now sit just across the street and come across as being so generic by comparison.

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Is Chicago Christmas still special?

Who remembers Uncle Mistletoe?

Going downtown to check out the department store window displays for the Christmas holiday season is supposed to be one of those quintessential experiences that defines the character of Chicago. Yet I can’t remember the last time I actually did that.

It may well have been back when I was still legally a child. Considering that I’m now into middle-age, that means it has been a long, long time.

NOW I KNOW some people are going to argue that the unique character of those department store displays was lost when places like Marshal Field’s and Carson, Pirie, Scott ceased to be locally-owned entities. The fact that Field’s is now Macys and Carson’s on State Street is nothing, although it may someday become a Target only further adds to any loss of distinct character.

What we get now are some sort of generic displays that I must admit to paying no attention to.

In fact, this time of year, I go out of my way to avoid State Street and Michigan Avenue whenever I can, along with anything resembling crowded shopping malls. Too many people creating congestion for the mess of commercialized holiday shopping.

(Yes, I’m probably in need of “Linus” coming in about now to remind me of the true meaning of Christmas, but that is a commentary for another day).

MAYBE IT IS just age coming on for me. But where is the sense of holiday spectacle that used to make a trip to our city’s downtown business district worth making? I can’t help but think that the children of today (such as my nephews and nieces) have lost out on something by never getting the chance to see a mass spectacle of people showing up along State Street (even if their parents had no intention of buying anything that day) to guess at what wonderments they would get to see along, “that Great Street.”



This 1909 postcard of the old Siegel-Cooper department storeon State Street (later, Sears Roebuck & Co.) includes the holiday-decorated windows. Image provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia



I’m not normally of the type who thinks that everything was better back some 30 or 40 years ago (even though, in many cases, it was). But I’m feeling particularly nostalgic these days for the Christmases of my youth, and wishing that some of those traits could have been retained.

Part of this may very well be due to the loss of my mother just over a month ago. So much of my Christmas holiday routine in recent years had centered around trying to bring her some joy. Now, I have to figure out new ways to occupy my time at this holiday season (or else risk becoming one of those hermits who spend the day locked away).

That certainly is not my intention. But it does seem to have me reminiscing for those December days back when I was 7 or 8 (and my brother, Chris, was about 2 or 3) and our parents took us to State Street.

I CAN REMEMBER the anticipation of checking out each store, going from window to window to watch whatever respective story line was being told build to its conclusion. Even with that hideous mall-like configuration that kept traffic off State Street, the area seemed to have more character then than it does now.

Simple stuff, but more mentally intoxicating than any of the video games that I see my nephew who is roughly that age play these days. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m becoming a tad grouchy in my old age.

It almost seems like when it comes to a public holiday display in Chicago these days, we have to focus our attention away from State Street and its generically-decorated windows and focus on Daley Plaza.

In the shadow of the Picasso statue, we get the official city holiday tree (which was lit back on Nov. 24) and the official city Hanukkah menorah (whose time has passed since the Jewish holiday came early this year at the beginning of December).

PERHAPS THAT IS part of my dismay with public holiday displays – they come so ridiculously early. I know that in my immediate neighborhood, wreaths with red bows were hung from all the public lamp-posts and some colorful Christmas lights were set up – back at the end of October.

I hadn’t even seen the kids come scavenging through my neighborhood in search of Halloween candy when the first municipal Christmas decorations were erected.

Although I’m sure to some people, the more tragic act of Chicago-style Christmas is the restrictions in the downtown high rises against live Christmas trees in the residential units (officials fear the potential of a fire – one nitwit with a dried-out tree can cause an ignition that leaves many pricey units uninhabitable).

Personally, the idea of an artificial tree doesn’t bother me too much. In certain circumstances, they can be more practical. I could even see in cases of the high-rises, where there might be risk of branches or bristles falling hundreds of feet to the streets below, creating more of a mess.

SO THIS IS what has become of Christmas in Chicago – generic window displays, public decorations erected a couple of holiday seasons too early, and some people griping about too-tough restrictions.



How many children of a century ago were scared off by this 1902 incarnation of Santa Claus on State Street?



But perhaps I’m coming off a bit too grouchy. It is, after all, a holiday to celebrate the spirit of life and joy, which is why I always find it a downer that some people are determined to put a negative spin on this holiday by making a stink over whether to say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays?”

Either works in my mind. Or how about, “Feliz Navidad” (except that will leave the nativist crowd p-o’ed these days).

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Happy X-Mas, Chicago-style

I’m giving the commentary a rest, primarily because I would hope that the majority of you have better things to do Thursday than sit at your computer reading things on the Internet.

So shut down that blasted machine and go do something enjoyable in the real world to celebrate Christmas, the fifth sundown of Hanukkah or the Day before Kwanzaa.

BUT BEFORE YOU go, here’s an animated moment from the past that many older generations will remember from television (remember “Ray Rayner and Friends?”) around the Christmas holiday season. Now if by chance you would have preferred to have seen "Suzy Snowflake" or "Frosty the Snowman," or are the snot-nosed type who thinks the crudity of the antique animation takes away from its charm, I have to say, “I don't want to hear it.”

But if you’re the type who can appreciate how State Street just isn’t the same as it used to be back in the day when Marshall Fields’ had uniquely decorated holiday windows (or can actually remember what "Santa's Village" was), feel free to post comments on whatever thoughts you may have of Chicago Christmases of years past.

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