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Invitation for Employee Anniversary Party
12th Street Store, Chicago, IL
Circa 1955The 12th Street Store was a large department store in Chicago, located on Roosevelt Road (south 12th street) and Halsted. Along Halsted St. were numerous little shops and of course the famous open stands full of everything from fruit to clothing. I'm not sure when the store opened or when it finally closed, but my aunt worked there in the 50's, and until recently, I thought "12th Street Store" was a nickname or just a location that some people used to describe a chain store on 12th street (like "Walmart on 18th street").
"Roosevelt Road had the wholesalers, Halsted was basically one price with two big department stores, L. Klein and the
12th Street Store, and Maxwell Street was the pushcart, open stand bargaining bazaar but it also had a few small, but very busy department stores such as Gabel's, Robinson's, and Mackevich's." - Maxwell Street Foundation web page.
Here's a copy of an invoice sent to someone for their purchases. I don't know what was purchased, but the prices are unbelievable- $1.62 for infant clothing!
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Invoice
12th Street Store
Chicago, IL 1953Something to notice on the envelope is the zip code. Until the mid 70s, addresses would only have the last one or two numbers of the zip code, presumable because everyone knew the Chicago IL prefix. So, here it's just marked "Chicago 7" instead of 60607.
That was true with telephone numbers too. Note the invoice that reads, "Telephone, Haymarket 1100" That means: HA1-1100, or 421-1100 in today's terms. Click here to see a document that lists all of the
Chicago telephone prefix words and their numeric meanings.
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Invoice Envelope
12th Street Store
