McDade's Catalog Store: Recalling Chicago's Retail Past

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, IL -- Before Amazon, Chicago-area residents shopped at McDade’s -- "Chicagoland's Catalog House "-- with eight convenient locations spread out across the Chicago suburbs. Preservationist Rick Klein, curator and founder of the Museum of Classic Chicago Television / Fuzzy Memories TV), has dug up some TV holiday commercials that received wide local airplay during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. If you were watching TV back then, the McDade's jingle is probably still ingrained in your brain.

McDade’s Catalog Showroom sold electronics, appliances, jewelry, cameras and appliances that no longer exist in today’s society. Merchandise was showcased in attractive catalog showrooms located in Westmont, Burbank, Lincolnwood, Palatine, Chicago Heights, Carol Stream and Niles.

The family-owned company opened its first store in 1958 in an old post office building on 51st Street in Chicago, according to a Chicago Tribune article. Shoppers flocked to McDade & Co.'s Catalog House where they could buy brand-name merchandise at cut-rate prices in congenial attractive catalog showrooms -- GE food processors for $34.99, a string of cultured pearls to “delight that special lady” for $179.99 or a state-of-the-art Magnavox Odyssey II computer game system for just $139.76.

McDade’s had no problem shamelessly exploiting the crass commercialism of the holiday season, setting advertising jingles to well known Christmas carols, such as “You can give so much more, when you make McDade’s your Christmas store” to the tune of “Deck the Halls.”

Sadly, McDade’s became a victim of its own success and declared bankruptcy in 1987. According to a news report of the time, creditors claimed the company owed them $28 million. The family chose to keep McDade’s a private company, and were unable to get the capital needed to keep the showrooms stocked.

"Delight that Special Lady" (1980) | Museum of Classic Chicago Television