Over the entrance of the 30-story American Furniture Mart Building on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive is a bas-relief of a woodman hacking a tree into logs, a sawyer cutting the logs into lumber, a carpenter fashioning the lumber into furniture. Under this symbolic device last week hurried thousands of furniture buyers from big stores and little throughout the land to attend the 21st semi-annual exhibition of the American Furniture Mart. Elderly, grey-thatched Wade McGowin, head buyer of Wanamaker's, went from Manhattan, as did tall, dark-haired Mike Joseph of Gimbel Bros. and Charles S. Shaughnessy of R. H. Macy. From Sterling & Welch in Cleveland went short, heavy-set George Killius, known as one of the keenest buyers in the trade. In the largest collection of new furniture under one roof in the world they, and some 6,000 other buyers, joked and jostled over Mickey Mouse chairs, Biedermeier boudoirs, imitation Louis beds, functional sofas, juvenile hat racks, free wheeling beer carts.
Like the Toy Fair in Manhattan, the Furniture Mart is for manufacturers and buyers only. Spectators may not attend without passes. The Chicago mart is not the only furniture exhibit but it is the most important. A competing show at Marshall Field & Co.'s huge Merchandise Mart housed 53 exhibitors and Manhattan's show which closed a fortnight ago was a huge success with 406. The Furniture Mart opened with 600. There the big retail stores select suites (pronounced "suits" by most of the trade) for display in the autumn, when the public does most of its furniture shopping. The professional buyers who last week smiled, frowned, scratched their heads, slapped feather mattresses and dusted armchairs with the seat of their pants may not actually close a deal for weeks or even months. But the Mart claims that 70% of all furniture purchased in the U. S. is bought from companies exhibiting at its winter and summer shows. This year manufacturers hope to tempt the public into renewed buying of modern furniture, which has toned down considerably since its introduction in 1928. Of the 20,000 pieces on exhibit at the mart, 26% were modern "functional" (extreme) and "classic" (toned down), 30% Early American, 23% commercial and nondescript, 10% Georgian, the rest Louis, Early English, Empire and Biedermeier.
Biggest exhibitor at the Chicago Mart is also the titular head of U. S. furniture companies. Kroehler Manufacturing Co. of Naperville, Ill. claims the distinction of being the world's largest maker of upholstered furniture. Grey-haired, pock-marked Peter who always attends every show in person, was a $27-a-month bookkeeper when he started to work with a lounge company in Naperville. He bought the lounge company, built up a furniture corporation which in 1929 did $20,000,000 worth of business. His customers today include such heavy buyers as Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward.