By Peter von Buol
Special to Inside
For nearly 100 years, the family-owned custom jewelry manufacturer B. Leader and Sons has been a Chicago institution for jewelry, but on Sept. 30 it closed its doors for new business.
Owner Michael Leader, 62, cites a soft market for custom-made jewelry and the rising costs associated with maintaining a jewelry business. In addition, after working for decades as a diamond-setter, his own eye-sight has diminished.
"It was a decision that I did not make lightly," says Leader, whose family has been in the jewelry business for about 120 years. "We prided ourselves on our personal service and for being able to do things no one else would do because we cared about our customers."
For example, many years ago one of their long-time customers requested a special wrist-bracelet for a daughter who had a birth defect. The bracelet covered the gap between her prosthesis and her forearm.
"No one else could do it, but we were able to," says Leader. "That's just the kind of personal attention that we strived to achieve."
The Leaders were renowned for their ability to manufacture custom pieces on demand. At first they opened a retail shop at North and Kedzie avenues, but they eventually found the demand in manufacturing to be so great that for a while they closed the shop to customers and only worked as manufacturers for other stores and businesses.
Located at 2042 N. Halsted St., the store is well-known to passers-by for its green awning and a seven-foot Maurice Lacroix "wrist-watch" built into the side-walk.
Leader, who still owns the building in which his business was based, says the clock will remain. Inside, his shop is a time-machine into the early 1900s. Old photographs of his family are on the wall and many of the machines actually pre-date the Leaders. Many were built for the World's Fair of 1893, and he hopes to donate them to the Chicago Historical Society.
While Leader's son, Jesse, 33, had been working with his father, the younger Leader decided to follow another career path and the older Leader says he cannot run the business by himself. Leader says he supports his son's change of profession.
According to Leader, for numerous reasons the custom-made jewelry business has not been the same since the financial slump of 2000.
"We have actually been hurting financially for the last four years," says Leader, who reluctantly decided to close up shop. A sign on the door of the shop sums up this sentiment by saying, "Gone Fishing: Should have done it four years ago."
Leader and Sons was unique because its craftsmen did not just repair jewelry, it manufactured pieces on-site.
Leader says he enjoyed the challenge of making the visions of customers come to life. For decades, the Leaders employed the finest jewelry craftsmen from Europe, mostly Germany and Italy.
"I learned from the best old-world craftsmen," Leader says proudly.
Leader's father and uncle, who had emigrated from Czarist Russia, established their first Chicago location in 1909. Both had been master craftsmen in Minsk, Belarus and later Moscow. The original Leaders were most likely descended from German craftsmen who had been invited to Russia by the Russian Emperor Peter the Great. A break-in at the family's jewelry store in Minsk and the threat of being drafted into the Imperial Russian Army caused Leader's older uncle to emigrate to America. He was eventually joined by Leader's father.
"I believe their initial plan was to make money in America and return to Russia," says Leader. "But World War One and the Russian Revolution caused them to change those plans."
Unfortunately, one of his other uncles had decided to return to what had become the Soviet Union in an attempt to reclaim the family business, but he was murdered by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s.
An attention to detail and a friendly family atmosphere were the cornerstones of the family business. Leader's father and uncles wanted it to be a place that would not intimidate their customers. They wanted it to be an informal setting that would be a meeting place for everyone. It is personal contact with customers that Leader will miss the most.
"This is the hardest decision I have had to make in my life. The business has been good to us. It provided all of us with a comfortable life," says Leader.
Leader says he feels it is an end to the era of the family-owned business in Lincoln Park. Except for Braun Drugs, 2075 N. Lincoln Ave., there are no longer any full-service family-owned hardware stores or drug stores in the neighborhood.
"Unfortunately, we are turning off the lights for family-owned business in Lincoln Park,"
says Leader. |
