WEST RIDGE — As the days of one-time retail behemoth Sears appear to be coming to an end, the company continues to close stores and share woeful financial outlooks with investors.
Sears Holdings, the parent company of Kmart and Sears, Roebuck and Co., told shareholders in its annual report Tuesday it had "substantial doubt exists related to the company’s ability to continue as a going concern," according to the Washington Post.
Though the retail empire has struggled to remain open in recent years, in its heyday the Chicago-born company revolutionized the world of shopping — beginning with its ambitious founder.
In 1893, Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Roebuck founded Sears, Roebuck and Company as a mail order catalog business before setting up retail stores in the mid-1920s.
Sears, originally from Minnesota, had been working at a railroad in 1886 when at age 23 he took advantage of a shipment of gold watches from Chicago that had been refused by a local jeweler.
He sold the watches, eventually netting enough profit he created the R.W. Sears Watch Company within months.
Sears began hawking his wares and distributing fliers around the country until he moved his watch company to Chicago in 1887 and moved himself to Oak Park.
A wanted ad asking for a watch repairman was answered by Roebuck.
By 1888, the pair had put out their first catalog under the R.W. Sears name, and by 1893 had officially changed the company's name to include "Roebuck and Company." The catalog quickly swelled with products.
"Here began the association of two young men, both still in their twenties, that was to make their names famous," the company writes on its website.
Though Roebuck would retire in 1901 and Sears himself died in 1914, the company bearing their names propelled itself into the commercial world.
The chain expanded to auto repair shops to photography studios, and everything from clothes, household appliances and toys either bore the Sears name or could be found in its department stores or catalog. The company's manufacturing plants even effectively put together the first successful assembly line, garnering the attention of Henry Ford, who visited Chicago just to study it, according to Sears.
In 1974, Sears opened a downtown headquarters: the Sears Tower.
That famous model was actually the company's second Sears Tower: in 1906 the original 14-story Sears Tower was built in North Lawndale and anchored the Sears, Roebuck and Co. mail-order warehouse.
It operated for 70 years before closing and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
For many years, the downtown headquarters was the tallest building in the world. Even after its technical name change to Willis Tower, the Sears moniker still remains in the minds of many.
But Sears has seen a decline in recent years.
Last year Sears closed its oldest retail store still standing at 1900 W. Lawrence Ave., though the 1920s building was spared from demolition and is now slated for redevelopment. The company had earlier sold a nearby parking lot, where a Mariano's grocery store now sits.
Today, the company only lists two remaining full-service stores in the city: at 1601 N. Harlem Ave. in Galewood and 4730 W. Irving Park Road in Portage Park.
And while the company's future looks bleak, its co-founder and namesake Richard Sears, who died more than 100 years ago, doesn't appear to be going anywhere.
After he died of chronic kidney disease in Waukesha, Wis. in 1914, Sears was interred in a private family room inside a mausoleum at Rosehill Cemetery in West Ridge.
The only room at the end of a small hallway on the building's second floor, the Sears tomb is watched over by a portrait of Jesus who shines when light from windows across the hallway splashes over it.
Though seemingly a peaceful resting place, Sears is said haunt the grounds because of his room's proximity to that of one of his most bitter rivals: Aaron Montgomery Ward.
Ward also operated a successful mail order business in Chicago at the same time as Sears and Roebuck, even declining a merger between the two companies.
A quick online search reveals pages of results from ghost hunters and anecdotes about encountering Sears wandering the mausoleum.
"Some have claimed to have seen the figure of a tall man in a top hat within Sears' locked room, walking toward the crypt of A. Montgomery Ward," writes Graveyard.com. "These two titans of the mail-order business are entombed only a short distance apart — bitter rivals in life, neighbors in death."
Meanwhile, Roebuck, who died in 1948, is buried Acacia Park Cemetery in Norridge on Irving Park Road just west of Harlem Ave.
Photos by Linze Rice.
Sears family memorial at Rosehill Cemetery.
A portrait of Jesus in the large family room.
Where Richard Warren Sears, the founder of Sears, is laid to rest.
A stained glass window in a sitting area of the Sears family memorial chamber.
From inside the Sears memorial, looking outward toward a building exit that leads out into the yard.
The Rosehill Mausoleum.
The entrance to Rosehill Cemetery, who was also designed by the man behind the Chicago Water Tower.
