Old Montgomery Ward store in Indiana

Montgomery Ward Store Building, Evansville Indiana

Date added: December 06, 2022 Categories:

It was not unusual for national corporations to use stock plans for their buildings when Montgomery Ward came to downtown Evansville in 1933. The firm extensively remodeled another building on this site, and distinct similarities can be noted between the Evansville store and stores throughout the Midwest.

The significance of the Old Montgomery Ward Building rests upon its association with an important national corporation and its reflection of an important passage in the social history of the country and of Evansville. The 1933 construction of the building in Evansville as part of the Ward retail system followed a pattern of retail shopping and consumerism which had its genesis in the large Eastern department stores of the late 19^th century. The preeminent Midwestern/rural catalog shopping phenomenon had begun its gradual erosion in 1925 with the establishment of Sears-Roebuck's first retail-only store (in Evansville, the McCurdy-Sears Building). The Ward Building in Evansville reflected the Chicago company's regard for the growth of city-based markets in the early 20^th century and its program of cementing its retail shopping thrust (begun falteringly in Plymouth, Indiana, in about 1928). Ward's approach to marketing also illuminated the pattern of democratization which had occurred over the quarter century of department store shopping preceding the Evansville Ward Building, whereby products and advertising were aimed at a broad range of economy-minded buyers instead of just the well-to-do.

The construction of the Ward store in Evansville represented a new chapter in the city's commercial experience. In the 19^th century, consumer goods were largely obtained by city dwellers on a personal, direct basis. Neighborhood stores flourished, and downtown establishments catered to specialized clientele. This was the era of predominantly smaller, locally-owned and managed stores which dealt in a limited line of goods for a single class of customers who were either well-to-do or less well-to-do, never both at once. Many local merchants even resided on their stores' premises.

The 20^th century marked a change which the Evansville Montgomery Ward store illustrated. Though there had been a few large general department stores in Evansville (for example, the William Hughes Store-#12--established in 1854 and responsible for the construction of a large store block in 1911), but these were still locally based. Chain stores appeared to enter the picture in about 1912 with the arrival of Woolworth's, the first time that nationally-based enterprises made a bid for the local retail market. The balance tipped further away from the local merchants in 1925 with the establishment of the world's first Sears-Roebuck non-catalog store, followed soon after by the less daring Ward chain in 1933. Ironically, the Ward corporation selected an early 20^th century department store which had been locally owned and operated for their remodeled Georgian Revival storefront.

Ward's development of a prototype storefront design in 1933 also underscored the transition from local to regional and even national perspective. Not many other institutions had the opportunity to behave as national architectural producers during the 19^th or early 20^th centuries. To an extent, larger railroad concerns unified the designs of stations and other railway buildings, not so much perhaps for purposes of identity, but rather because the larger companies employed staff architects and engineers who tended to stick with proven answers to similar programs. The Federal Government, in the form of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, certainly exercised more centralized control over the design and construction of public architecture than any other institution which comes to mind. The years during which Mills, Young, and Rogers occupied the office was a period in which the nation's building program was widely criticized for being too standardized. Nevertheless, when it came to commerce and the retail market, there was not any precedent for what the Montgomery Ward Corporation embarked upon when the Board of Directors accepted a prototype "architectural treatment for a new storefront of original design" as part of its first approach to the non-catalog, city-based market. The identification of the Ward store under a single, unified architectural rubric reflected the company's regard for high building standards. After all, not all Midwestern communities had architects on hand to design stores according to Ward's needs. Furthermore, as Midwesterners became more mobile and the region became more urban in the early 20^th century, Ward could be assured of ready identification of their stores by anyone new to a community. Ward was acutely mindful of the public's distrust of anything suggesting the slightest inconsistencies. Every effort was made, in advertising, the display of goods, or the architecture of the store, to reassure the skeptical consumer who was not familiar with national chains that he was getting exactly the same high quality that he had come to know and expect from Ward's long history of catalog sales. Ward was a slave of standardization; they would no sooner conduct retail business in differently appearing stores as they would attempt to issue different catalogs in the same year for their mail-order business. It may also be concluded that Ward, in choosing the Georgian Revival for the prototype seen in Evansville, was aligning itself with the conservative traditionalism of its rural/small town markets instead of, for instance, an Art Deco modernism more readily associated with big city ways.

Detailed History of the Montgomery Ward Company

Building Description

The Old Montgomery Ward Building, a brick-constructed building standing three stories in height with structural steel in its floors and ceilings, occupies a site in the center of Evansville's retail/commercial core. Evansville's Main Street was once lined with structures similar to this former retail store. Its Georgian Revival facade has been retained through the years and contains the significant architectural feature to be found on the exterior. The original storefront was typically plate glass with steel frame and has been remodeled repeatedly during the course of the building's retail history. The present ground-floor treatment was installed in 1975 by the then owner and is of contemporary design which is compatible with the scale, design, materials, color and texture of this building. Above the ground floor is a two-story elevation executed in common bond brick. Three vertically organized bays punctuate the facade, carrying two sets of double-hung multi-paned windows, one per floor. The bays are framed by short balustrades at the bottoms and molded cornices at the tops. Alternating corner quoins constructed of brick frame on either side of the facade. String courses and a stone coping divide the elevation horizontally. The bottoms of the window ensembles rest on a belt course of soldier course brick.

The outer dimensions of the building are approximately the same as those of an earlier building on the same site which was remodeled by the Ward chain to make room for their store in 1933. The party walls on either side of the elevation are completely devoid of decoration, as is the rear elevation.

The interior clear-span space consists of a basement, first floor, mezzanine, and second and third floors. Interior renovations were performed from time to time to suit the needs of the then occupant. The only remaining original interior architectural feature is the metal rail and stair on the first, mezzanine, and second-floor levels.