Listen to the audio and read the full story on WGLT's website here
McHistory goes back in time to explore big moments and small stories from McLean County history. McHistory episodes can be heard periodically on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
It has been many decades since Downtown Bloomington was the premier destination for shoppers in the community. There was a time, though, when there were four large department stores downtown.
“My Store was a discount department store, kind of the Kmart or Walmart of its day. I guess you could say Amazon. It was billed as the laboring man's favorite trading place. Its sales and its marketing was geared toward working-class folk in Bloomington,” said Bill Kemp, librarian at the McLean County Museum of History.
My Store was at the south end of the downtown, starting in the early 1890s. Kemp said it speaks to the important role German Jews played in shaping Bloomington's thriving retail scene in the latter half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.
“German Jewish names like Griesheim, Stern, Livingston, Heldman all shaped downtown retail. And in the case of My Store, you have three German Jewish families, Bachrach, Schwarzman and Mandel,” said Kemp. Downtown trade had an immigrant owned presence as early as 1877.
Livingston’s was one important store. It lasted more than a century before falling to the mall culture of the 1970s. New Market was another, located at Front and Center. Later, Montgomery Ward took its place and now the building is being demolished for surface parking and later redevelopment. Two other stores owned by German Jewish families were C.W. Klemm’s and W.H. Rollins, both on the north end of the courthouse square.
