Staushov to State Street

One afternoon last week in the swank offices of Attorneys Pritzker & Pritzker, on the 22nd floor of Chicago's Metropolitan Building, a happy scene took place. Four very stylishly dressed little men beamed and pumped the hands of newshawks, eagerly posed this way and that way for photographers, put their arms around the shoulders of friends, rubbed their palms with satisfaction. A chance observer might have mistaken them for a team of tumblers jumping about in jubilation at having signed a contract to appear in the floor show of the Edgewater Beach Hotel. But their destination was not the Lake front but State Street. Henceforth Chicago's great shopping street--long distinguished with the names of such merchants as Marshall Field and Carson Pirie Scott & Co.--will be blazoned with the name of Goldblatt.

How the Brothers Goldblatt arrived on State Street is a none too happy incident in the corporate history of Marshall Field. On State Street, at the southern edge of the Loop where cheaper stores congregate, used to stand the Davis Store. Field's bought it in 1923 for $9,000,000. Unfortunately, shoppers who wanted bargains chose to patronize Field's basement rather than the Davis Store. And shoppers who could afford quality goods would not be caught in the Davis Store on a bet. After ups and downs and changes of management, Davis lost, all told, some $3,500,000. Thus when Field's chairman, James O. McKinsey, last week put his signature to a contract conveying the Davis Store to Morris, Nathan, Louis & Joseph Goldblatt (for a carefully concealed price), Mr. McKinsey was, in effect, relieving his firm of a bucket with a hole in the bottom of it. Well did the Goldblatts know it. Nevertheless, this entry into State Street was a crown on their careers.

Born in Staushov, Poland, Brothers Morris, Nathan and Louis made their entry into the U. S. at Ellis Island 30 years ago-before Brother Joseph was born. While Father Goldblatt set up a grocery business, the Goldblatt boys sold newspapers, later got jobs as clerks in a Milwaukee Avenue store. In 1914, by the time elder Brother Morris was 21, they had saved up a few-hundred dollars to set up their own store at Chicago and Ashland Avenues. In 1915 they did $35,000 gross business, in 1920, $225,000, in 1925 $1.825,000 and pushed their profits to the $101,000 mark.

Today Brother Maurice (he is still Morris on corporation statements but he is generally Maurice on social occasions) lives on Sheridan Road. Every morning his Duesenberg calls for him and after stopping to pick up Brother Nathan, who lives nearby, they drive to their luxuriously paneled, air-cooled offices in the Goldblatt warehouse, on lower Lincoln Avenue. Thither from their slightly less pretentious bachelors' apartment come younger Brothers Louis and Joseph in a Lincoln. The Goldblatt family is scrupulously graded by seniority. Maurice and Nathan as "the partners" draw top salaries of $25,000 each, but Maurice, as senior by a year, long held 29,271 shares of Goldblatt Bros., Inc. to Nathan's 29,270 shares. They now share a trust fund which holds 353,000 shares. Maurice's apartment has 15 rooms, Nathan's 14 rooms; Maurice is 5 ft. 5 in. tall, Nathan 5 ft. 3 in.

Nathan is soon to move into the $1,000,000 house which Architect Benjamin Marshall built for himself opposite the Bahai Temple in Wilmette. It has a dining room in which the table sinks through the floor into the kitchen below. Nathan recently bought it at a bargain price ($95,000) from Chicago's First National Bank. The balance of seniority will be maintained, however, for Maurice has a young wife, Bernice Mendelson, 22, his former secretary whom he married this year. His first wife he divorced for infidelity.

Father Simon Goldblatt did not live to see his sons' State Street glory, but before he died a year ago he knew that his sons were good businessmen. In 1928 they opened a second store, in 1929 a third, in 1930 a fourth, in 1931 a fifth--all in cheap shopping districts outside the Loop. Then they dotted three more stores in the outlying industrial towns of Hammond and Gary, Ind., Joliet, Ill., recently added a ninth in Chicago.

In 1933 the Better Business Bureau got after the Goldblatts for trying to force substitutes on the public instead of branded articles they advertised cheap, for advertising popular cigarets at 10-c- and making them available not at tobacco counters but only in far corners of the shoe department, the radio department, or the boy's clothing section. In 1934 their Blue Eagle was taken away for violating the jewelry & fair price code. Last year a $50 fine was imposed on one of their stores for shortweighting. A 3 oz. sausage was discovered stuck to the bottom of a meat scale. Goldblatt profits last year reached $1,114,000 on nearly $33,000,000 of sales.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.