Saturday, September 24, 2016

September 24, 1954 -- Butler Brothers Heads for the Suburbs



September 24, 1954 – With the decision to move to the suburbs, the Butler Brothers Catalog Company announces the appointment of Hogan & Farwell, Inc., a Chicago realty firm, as the leasing agent to develop the Butler building on the northeast corner of Canal and Randolph Streets.  The building has close to one million square feet of floor space with the Prudential Insurance Company of Americn leasing the tenth and eleventh floors and the United States government holding short-term leases for the Social Security board and the Air Force.   George and Edward Butler founded their mail-order company in Boston in 1877, opening a Chicago warehouse two years later.  By 1910 over a thousand people worked in its Chicago operation.  The 1922 warehouse, originally designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, is today Randolph Place Condos with 340 loft apartments.  The photo above shows the complex in 1950.

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