UNIVERSITY VILLAGE — A shoe repair supplies store that has operated in the Maxwell Street neighborhood for nearly a century will soon move.
I Sachs Sons, in business since 1920 and currently located at 637 W. Roosevelt Road, will close its doors this month, operator Steve Sachs said. The business is moving to 4500 S. Kolin Ave. in Archer Heights.
The community is invited to a send-off party from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, April 26 at the Roosevelt Road location. The party will include an outdoor jam session in front of the store featuring core members of Low-reen's Maxwell Street Market Blues Band. Blues greats who performed at the old Maxwell Street Market will be stopping by to jam with the band.
Isadore Sachs, Steve Sach's grandfather, started the business in a warehouse on Roosevelt Road, just a few blocks west of the current location, according to Roosevelt University Professor Steve Balkin.
"It is one of the last indigenous businesses still operating in the Maxwell Street neighborhood," Balkin said.
At the age of 18, Isadore Sachs immigrated to America from Lithuania in 1917, Balkin said. The family lived in the back of the warehouse; in the front, they sold leather goods and supplies for working leather.
Isadore's four sons and a son-in-law all worked for the business, said Steve Sachs. Eleven years ago, he bought the business from his father and uncles.
"I am the only one from my generation to make a career of it here," he said. "But it is
still a family business — my nephews Justin and Mac Bennett work with
me here."
Sachs said fewer people today have their shoes repaired. The influx of big box stores in the Roosevelt Road corridor prompted the business to move, he said.
"At one time we had over 30 competitors just in Chicago. Now, we have 30 competitors in the entire USA," he said. "It is very sad to leave the area that my family has been in since 1920."
The send-off party is being hosted by I Sachs Sons and the Maxwell Street Foundation.
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