Sunday, March 27, 2005

I'm with Roger Ebert: keep Marshall Field's

There's a new corporate owner of the Chicago department store Marshall Field's and they are considering wiping out all the regional names of their stores and consolidating the Macy's brand for all the stores they own. I'm not much of a shopper but I do like the rich Chicago history of the guy who was named Marshall Field. He was the one mostly responsible for our gorgeous public lakefront remaining forever free and clear from real estate development. Those public beaches and parks just don't happen. He was a landowner and under tremendous political pressure to permit development along the lakefront. He held out and we enjoy the fruits of his stubbornness. I think that history is worth preserving, so I hope we can continue to have a downtown department store named after one of Chicago's greatest citizens.

4 comments:

ted said...

Now all we need to do is complete the "forever free and clear" vision and depave lakeshore drive! :-)

ted said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

He also wanted to let the Haymarket martyrs hang but whose counting.

Anonymous said...

I totally agree; I just moved here from Memphis, where Federated just "macified" our vererable dept. store, Goldsmith's. But, the credit for making the lakefront public goes to Montgomery Ward, not Marshall Field.