Become a digitalPLUS subscriber. $13 for 13 weeks.


Arizona Cardinals
Chicago's last tannery
Chicago's last tannery

Some of Nick Horween’s earliest memories of his family’s leather tannery are of taking the train from Barrington, the northern Chicago suburb where he grew up, into the city to visit his father and grandfather at work. The smell of leather would hit him the instant he walked through the front door at Horween Leather Co. When his father returned home, Nick would hug him and breathe in the same scent, which lingered on his father’s jacket. The smell of leather has followed five generations of Horweens. Nick’s father, Arnold “Skip” Horween III, runs the tannery that Nick’s great-great-grandfather, a Ukrainian immigrant named Isidore Horween, founded...