Trade Catalog Collection
Scope and Contents
The collection consists of catalogs and advertisements for goods and services produced or sold by Chicago’s manufacturers, retail stores, wholesale houses and other businesses. The product categories include agriculture, amusement, apparel, appliances, automotive, bicycles, construction, education, furniture, hardware, housewares, jewelry, machinery, medicine, music, printing, publishing, sporting goods and general merchandise.
Dates
- 1864-1986, 2022
Language of Materials
Materials are primarily in English with a couple titles in Spanish and Polish.
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Please consult staff to determine ability to reuse materials from collection.
Biographical / Historical
Trade catalogs began appearing internationally in the early 18th century and some scholars cite Benjamin Franklin’s catalog of books, first published in 1744, as the beginning of America’s culture of mail order and trade catalog advertising.1 These booklets and sales sheets were generally published by manufacturers or retail outlets to advertise their products and designs. By the 19th century, advances in printing technology made trade catalogs easier to produce and accessible sales tools for a wide range of businesses. As a result, they were available to consumers nationwide, including rural customers.
Aided by a flourishing railroad system and the 1893 introduction of rural free delivery, as well as the advent of parcel post in 1912, Chicago soon became the hub of mail order business. Sears, Roebuck and Company and Montgomery Wards were two of the largest commercial operations thriving in Chicago, but hundreds of other Chicago businesses, large and small, advertised merchandise such as bicycles, roller skates, prefabricated houses and furniture, suits, furs and veterinary supplies. In addition to the array of merchandise available, consumers also had choices to make about specific items. Clothing manufacturers enclosed fabric swatches with their catalogs. Paint manufacturers offered paint chips and illustrations of houses painted in different styles. Consumers began to look upon trade catalogs as “wishbooks,” with the exciting variety of choices they offered.
Many companies advertised more than merchandise; they offered advice on etiquette and stylish dressing and even how to improve one’s business by buying their products. Trade catalogs also illustrated scenes of life in Chicago that invited “readers to visit Chicago, either as armchair travelers, or as actual tourists. For those content to stay down on the farm, the catalogs shaped an image of Chicago for several generations.”2
Over the years, many of these Chicago based businesses ceased to exist, but their catalogs, artifacts of late 19th and early 20th-century America, hold the stories of what was fashionable in the past. Trade catalogs not only show what people were wearing, but also what they bought for their homes and the materials with which their homes or businesses were constructed. Trade catalogs printed prior to 1906, when Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act, showed which medicines were sold to cure ailments such as “hysteria” and “tobacco habit.” In addition to illustrating consumer lifestyles, catalogs show what prices Americans paid for goods and the economics of the time. For companies whose financial records no longer exist, trade catalogs serve as the documents of entrepreneurial and internal history of these firms.
1 Lawrence B. Romaine. A Guide to American Trade Catalogs, 1744-1900 (New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1960), ix.
2 Thomas Schlereth. Artifacts and the American Past (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1996), 64.
Extent
29 Linear Feet (in 34 boxes, includes 88 bound volumes)
Abstract
The collection consists of catalogs and advertisements for goods and services produced or sold by Chicago’s manufacturers, retail stores, wholesale houses and other businesses. The product categories include agriculture, amusement, apparel, appliances, automotive, bicycles, construction, education, furniture, hardware, housewares, jewelry, machinery, medicine, music, printing, publishing, sporting goods and general merchandise.
Arrangement
The catalogs are arranged alphabetically by business name, business event or individual businessperson’s last name and then by catalog title or description. When a business name begins with a first name or initials, the alphabetization begins with these. Box 1, folder 1 contains an index of businesses by product type that was created and maintained by archivists in the cataloging process. Some of these categories have been parenthetically inserted into item descriptions to aid searches of the collection inventory. The subject categories include agriculture, amusement, apparel, appliances, automobile, bicycle, construction, education, furniture, hardware, housewares, jewelry, machinery, medicine, music, printing, publishing, sporting goods and general merchandise. Some business, however, carried an eclectic range of goods and these subject designations may not be inclusive. The bound volume designations of A, B and C are used to differentiate the physical size of the catalog.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The Special Collections and Preservation Division began collecting trade catalogs of Chicago-area companies in 1995. Additions to the collection are made on an ongoing basis.
- Advertising cards Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Agriculture -- Equipment and supplies -- Catalogs Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Artists’ materials -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Automobiles -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Business enterprises -- Illinois -- Chicago Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Business enterprises -- United States -- History Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Chicago (Ill.) -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Local sources
- Clothing and dress -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Commercial catalogs -- Illinois -- Chicago Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Commercial products -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Construction industry -- Equipment and supplies -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Furniture -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Hardware industry -- Illinois -- Chicago Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Home furnishings -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Household appliances -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Ironwork -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Jewelry -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Mail-order business -- Illinois -- Chicago Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Marshall Field's (Department store)
- Medicine -- Equipment and supplies -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Montgomery Ward
- Musical instruments -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Printing machinery and supplies -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Publishing -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Sears, Roebuck and Company
- Silverwork -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Sporting goods -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Woodwork -- Catalogs -- History -- Sources Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Title
- Guide to the Trade Catalog Collection
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Processed by Andrea P. Telli, 1998. Added entries made by Glenn Humphreys, 2003 and by Sarah Zimmerman, 2004, 2006 and 2017. Updated and ingested into ArchivesSpace by Michelle McCoy, 2022.
- Date
- 1998
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Finding aid written in English.
Repository Details
Part of the Special Collections Unit at Harold Washington Library Center Repository
Harold Washington Library Center, 9th Floor
Chicago Public Library
400 S. State Street
Chicago IL 60605 United States
(312) 747-4875
specoll@chipublib.org