Sears Sears Sears, Roebuck and Company, colloquially known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1893, reincorporated (a formality for a history-making consumer sector initial public offering) by Richard Sears and new partner Julius Rosenwald in 1906. Formerly based at the Sears Tower in Chicago and currently headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, the operation began as a mail ordering catalog company and began opening retail locations in 1925. The first location was in Evansville, Indiana. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box
Joshua Sears Building works on what is now Peter Kirk Park. The building originally intended to house a bank at the corner. Sears outfitted the entire interior and even hired a partial staff but with the arrival of the Panic of 1893, the doors, like the steel mill, never opened. In the years after the bust, the building, like many others in the area remained mostly vacant, though it, along with a large portion of the original townsite remained in the ownership of the Sears estate. The corner space was eventually occupied by a printing company and later a grocery store. An electric