The Mart Joseph Kennedy Bought

The enormous building along the river ahead was, for decades, one of the quietest sources of the Kennedy family fortune. Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president, bought it in nineteen forty five, at a moment when few other investors wanted to gamble on downtown real estate. His family held onto it for roughly fifty years, collecting rent from wholesalers long after his sons had gone into politics, before finally selling it in nineteen ninety eight.

He bought a genuine giant. When the Merchandise Mart opened in May of nineteen thirty, after roughly eighteen months of Great Depression era construction, it was the largest building in the world by floor space, built to gather Chicago's scattered wholesale furniture and home goods showrooms under one roof. At four million square feet, it had its own zip code and its own police force.

Kennedy left a mark on the building beyond the ownership papers. In nineteen fifty three he commissioned eight bronze busts for what he called the Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame, honoring the retail pioneers he considered the giants of American commerce: Marshall Field, Frank Woolworth, Montgomery Ward, Julius Rosenwald, Robert Wood, John Wanamaker, Edward Filene, and George Hartford. The busts still stand in a row along the riverfront, all facing north toward the building's gold front door, as if still keeping watch over the merchants who followed them.

So the next time you pass the Mart, know that eight of the most important names in the history of American retailing are watching the river go by, placed there by a man better remembered today for the sons he raised than the buildings he bought.