Furniture Turns Into Fashion

1954 ad

1957 ad

1930 ad

Continuing with my recent trend of old furniture stores in the Back of the Yards neighborhood we have the building located at 4756-58 S. Ashland, once known in the early 1930s as Burley & Company, a furniture store with fancy oriental rugs and chairs with walnut finishes. This appears to have been a rather large furniture chain as it shows in the 1930 ad (click for a larger view) that there were many other locations in addition to the store on South Ashland. This location didn't go on very long as by the end of the 1930s it became the first location for Goldberg's Fashion Forum, a women's appeal shop that spans throughout the 20th Century in Chicago.

Goldberg's Fashion forum was started in 1904 as a men's shop at 48th & Ashland by Russian immigrant Sam Goldberg. A fixture of the South Side, Mr. Goldberg's apparel business grew as his son Louis D. Goldberg, along with his siblings helped to shape up what would take the family from locations on Ashland and also South Halsted into newly built malls such as Ford City, Lincoln Mall, North Riverside and Orland Square at a time when malls sponsored local and regional chains as opposed to the national chains left over of today. The Goldberg's did it all. In addition to advertising in newspapers, they made themselves well known on ads for radio and later television.

Louis D. Goldberg lived well into his 90s and died in 2004. He was a particularly interesting fellow as he, along with his brother and father, helped kids in the Back of the Yards during the Great Depression. His sister Beatrice Crain was quoted in his obituary in the Chicago Sun Times as saying, "They started baseball teams and sponsored boxing matches, provided equipment. The kids were just fantastic. There was a complete turnaround. They had a place to go, they were proud of being a member of a team."

All of the Goldberg Fashion Forums were closed by 1988. Unfortunately, I couldn't find much information as to why. Was it because the brothers retired or was the chain in any kind of financial jeopardy? If anyone knows the reason, I would love to know as I am curious. Shoot a comment or an email in the usual places.