The Wabash Avenue Exodus: A Retail Rebellion in the Windy City

In the scorching streets of Chicago, a revolution was brewing in the retail sector. By February 1896, a growing sense of frustration had taken hold among the city’s retailers, who felt they were being squeezed dry by their landlords. Cicely, a once-thriving district, was on the verge of a mass exodus as shopkeepers grew tired of handing over their entire profits to their landlords.