The history of Marshall Field’s Wholesale Stores, Chicago (1887-1930).

By the time of the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, Marshall Field had established himself as one of the giants of commerce in the city of Chicago. His company was known for its innovative and groundbreaking policies and consisted of two divisions for retail and wholesale. The building which they shared was destroyed in the fire, giving Field the opportunity to construct new buildings for each. 

In 1872, he completed a five-story structure at Madison and Water Streets (now Wacker) to house the wholesale division, but within a decade, the division was already outgrowing its space, as Field continued to add new product lines. 

By May 1881 he had purchased all the lots on the block bordered by Adams, Fifth (now Wells), Quincy, and Franklin, near the location of the Chicago Board of Trade Building.

In 1885, Field contacted architect Henry Hobson Richardson with the proposition of designing a new building on the site for the Marshall Field's Wholesale Store (sometimes referred to as the Marshall Field's Warehouse Store).

Richardson completed preliminary plans by summer and in October travelled to Chicago to unveil the finished plans and sign the contract. By December 1885, the foundation was in and the stonework was underway, but the building did not even begin to approach completion before Richardson’s untimely death in April 1886.

The statistics for the building were staggering for the time. The completed structure stood seven stories high, with full basement on spread foundations. It fronted 325 feet on Adams and 190 feet on Franklin and Wells, and was 130 feet tall. The plan encompassed 61,750 square feet per floor, totaling almost twelve acres of floor space, which could accommodate 1,800 employees. The final cost of $888,807 ($25,077,735 today) was an enormous sum of money at the time, but just a fraction of the sales of the wholesale division for 1887, which were over $23,000,000 ($648,946,100 today). Marshall Field owned the land and the building personally, and leased it back to his company. The Wholesale Store opened on June 20, 1887, amid little fanfare in comparison to the opening of the retail store. 

The load-bearing outer walls were brick covered by rock-faced Missouri red granite up to the second-floor windowsills, and East Longmeadow red sandstone above. The structure was impressive both for its overall size and for the size of the stones used. Adjectives such as “enormous,” “palatial,” “Cyclopean,” “immense,” and “mammoth” were used to describe it in contemporary accounts. These terms are not surprising, given that the stones in the granite base were larger than those utilized in any other building in the city. The first-floor window sills alone were nearly eighteen feet long.

The second through fourth floors were tied together by the main arcade stretching thirteen bays on Adams and seven each on Franklin and Wells between broad corner piers ornamented with boltels. The fifth and sixth floors were also joined by an arcade having two arches over every one for the floors below. Groups of four rectangular openings marked the top floor creating a horizontal band above the vertically thrusting arches. 

Above this was the crocketted cornice in Gothic style “vigorously and crudely cut, to be in scale with the whole mass which it terminates.”  The plate glass windows, set in wood framed double-hung sash were recessed to the inner face of the walls to emphasize the thickness of the stone when viewed from the exterior.

Packing Department

In spite of all the praise lavished on the building, it was pure economics that eventually led to its demolition. By the early 1920s, the wholesale division was in serious trouble. The railroad and especially the automobile made it easier for rural residents to travel into larger cities to shop; spelling disaster for the country merchants who had been wholesale’s best customers. Additionally, many of the merchants in the small towns succumbed to manufacturer’s appeals to buy direct at lower prices, and the success of huge mail-order houses further contributed to the decline of wholesale. In an effort to breathe new life into the wholesale division, plans were announced in 1927 for the construction of a huge new facility, covering two city blocks, and containing 4,000,000 square feet of space. The new building, known as the Merchandise Mart, served as the death knell for Richardson’s Wholesale Store building.

The Merchandise Mart, built by Marshall Field & Co. and later owned for over half a century by the Kennedy family, opened in 1930.

Marshall Field & Co. engaged Graham, Anderson, Probst & White to draw up specifications for the demolition of the old building. The massive structure was reduced to rubble by mid-summer to accommodate a parking lot. Little was salvaged other than machinery and equipment, lighting fixtures, brass rails, gates and revolving doors. The granite and sandstone, so praised for its visual impact, was used as fill to create a level surface for the asphalt parking lot.

Marshall Field Wholesale Advertisement from 1907.

Marshall Field Wholesale Advertisement from 1907.

Marshall Field Wholesale Advertisement from 1907.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.