A passing visitor to the Sheridan Village shopping center now dominated by the Hy-Vee supermarket would see the Bergner’s name over a set of doors. Only when you look through those doors there’s only sky.
The recent demolition of the Bergner’s store at the shopping center that represented an area shopping change in the 1950s is a reminder of one of Peoria’s greatest business success stories.
But the Bergner’s story starts in Downtown Peoria. As the former Block & Kuhl store undergoes renovation to serve as the headquarters for OSF Healthcare, area residents will soon see the return of a building that exemplified what a department store meant in its day.
The Big White Store, as it was known, was a seven-story retail wonderland with uniformed elevator operators (all women), holiday displays and a restaurant on the top floor.
Bergner’s did business in the shadow of Block & Kuhl along with other Peoria retailers like Clarke’s, B&M, Klein’s and Peoria Dry Goods.
If Block & Kuhl represented Macy’s in Peoria, across the street was Bergner’s, the local version of Gimbel’s, using the analogy on display in that 1947 movie, “Miracle of 34th Street.”
Both stores had a long history in Downtown Peoria. Peter Alan Bergner opened his first store in 1889, landing at the corner of Adams & Fulton in 1906, a year after the opening of Schipper & Block (later to become Block & Kuhl).
While the department store concept served as the retail model for decades, new competition arose in the 1950s when discount and specialty outlets sought to serve a growing market now moving to the suburbs.
Block & Kuhl was still a Downtown power when Thomas Liston arrived in Peoria to serve as president of Bergner’s in 1959.
“That was the finest retail plant in the state outside of Chicago,” Liston told the Peoria Journal Star, reflecting on the Block & Kuhl store. “I used to look at that beautiful building they had over there with great envy. They had a beautiful arena,” he said.
But the 39-year-old Liston, a decorated pilot in World War II, took over the controls at Bergner’s and sent the company skyward.
Over the years Liston brought fashion acceptance and selection to the Bergner’s line as well as expanding the number of stores. The P.A. Bergner firm went from $16 million in annual sales in 1958 to $186 million in 1982, at which time they had expanded to 25 stores.
Bergner’s decision to open a second store in Sheridan Village in 1957 was an important one, Liston told the Journal Star: “It was obvious that Bergner’s had got the jump on Block & Kuhl by moving to the suburbs and I thought that advantage could be exploited.”
Along with the convenience of free parking at a shopping center, Bergner’s approach, under Liston, was to make shopping easier for the consumer.
“I wanted to build a store with merchandise on the floor and not in the storeroom. My concept was to have the customer see and handle the merchandise without fixture obstruction and without a sales clerk having to find it,” Liston told the Journal Star in an interview shortly before his retirement in 1983.
After Liston retired, changes came rapidly on the retail scene — both locally and nationally. Bergner’s kept expanding, buying the Boston Store in 1985 when they moved the company headquarters from Peoria to Milwaukee.
After leaving Peoria, other acquisitions followed. But there were serious problems facing the nation’s department stores. Bergner’s filed for bankruptcy in 1991, re-emerging under the Carson, Pirie Scott & Co. mantle in 1993.
After more corporate shuffling as department stores fought bravely to compete — not just against discount chains but now the internet — the end for Bergner’s stores came with liquidation in 2018.
Bergner’s lives on in Peoria — not just on the Sheridan Village façade — but at the Shoppes at Grand Prairie where the logo remains on one of the main buildings. The name is all that remains — along with the memories.
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