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blog: Author: Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator and Housewares Historian, IHA
For parts one and two of this three part series, see:
Part 1 – From Hotels to McCormick Place: A History of the International Home + Housewares Show
Part 2 – From Hotels to McCormick Place: A History of the International Home + Housewares Show
New Era On The Lakefront
More than 900 formerly “squeezed” housewares exhibitors happily stretched into the comfortable 310,000 square feet of new space. Yet the grand facility was still too small for demand. The excitement brought 33,000 attendees to McCormick Place for opening day in 1961.
With the inauguration of the new hall, the Show bid farewell to Atlantic City and contracted for both semi-annual Shows in Chicago. The fortunes of the International Housewares Show were joined with McCormick Place for the next 36 years.
The Show’s size and services continued to expand, improving its appearance and efficiency. In 1964 carpeting throughout the halls extended a welcome to buyers who rejoiced at the new walking comfort. That year also saw the first “air rights” booth as new cubic-volume regulations allowed double-decker exhibits.
The Show That Didn’t Happen
Late Sunday night, January 15, 1967, 1,236 exhibitors finished setting up their booths for the 13th International Housewares Show at McCormick Place, fully expecting to meet 15,000 buyers the next morning on opening day. Instead, the industry experienced its greatest catastrophe and the most strenuous test of its resolve.
Hours later, at 2 A.M., security guards detected a small fire; faulty electrical wiring had ignited storage materials in one exhibitor’s booth on the upper-level main exhibit area. The flames spread rapidly through flammable exhibit walls and materials, and although firefighters responded within 10 minutes, the mammoth building’s roof collapsed in less than one hour. Racing downward through other exhibit floors, the inferno spread throughout the building despite the efforts of 65 percent of Chicago’s Fire Department working in 16-degree cold. By the time the fire was declared extinguished at 9:46 A.M., the country’s largest exposition hall was a total loss.
In a few hours a year of work for the housewares industry went up in smoke. In dollar value the conflagration was more costly than the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Had the flame erupted a few hours later when the Show was in progress, the loss of life would have been tremendous. Miraculously, only one person perished in this tragedy.
NHMA management convened at its Merchandise Mart office to mount a new Show as quickly as possible and to deal with the aftermath of the emergency. Aided by communications systems at hotels, radio stations, and TV broadcasts, buyers and sellers scrambled to find each other. Sales materials fortunately remaining in hotel rooms and product samples scooped up from Merchandise Mart showrooms and department stores had to substitute for exhibits worth thousands of dollars.
Several other cities stepped in to compete for the housewares trade show, but only Chicago had enough hotel rooms and the transportation systems to move 60,000 visitors in and out. Within a month, NHMA announced the Show would go on, at the International Amphitheatre on June 12-16.
Estimates varied on how much the disaster had affected business, but it was clear that small companies suffered the most from the loss of sales contacts.
An Era Of Change
A new McCormick Place rose from the ashes of the old, and in January 1971, the 54th International Housewares Show “came home” to inaugurate the exposition center. Three levels of exposition space, 700,000 square feet in all, replaced the former facility’s 480,000 square feet. Still, the Show needed to grow. In 1979 the West Building (Donnelley Hall) was pressed into service for new housewares exhibitors with an extra day to attract buyers. During the 1980s, adjusting to the buying cycles of major retailers; the Association experimented with Show dates in spring in Chicago and fall in Atlanta. McCormick Place’s new North building added 300,000 square feet in 1986 to a Show that occupied three buildings.
In 1991 NHMA moved to a new quarters in Rosemont near O’Hare Airport. The show changed its title several times, most notably from the “National Housewares Exposition” in the ’80s to the “International Housewares Show” in 1992, when it became a single annual January Show in Chicago. Other trade shows offered access to diverse retail channels for the great variety of housewares products. While the industry’s need for a trade show venue was served by a single event per year, NHMA developed a menu of services assisting members in the operation of their business. By 1996 the International Housewares Show ranked as the seventh largest trade event in the U.S., filling 791,000 net square feet of exhibit space. In 1997 the International Housewares Show opened in the grand new South building of the McCormick Place complex. Over 2,000 exhibitors occupied space in the nation’s largest convention hall, with newly-categorized displays in three buildings on Chicago’s lakefront. In effect, the largest Housewares Show in the world had another new home.
In 1999 recognizing the inevitable globalization of the homegoods industry, NHMA became the International Housewares Association and early in the new century rechristened the Show as the International Home + Housewares Show whose goal as confirmed by IHA’s Board and Retailer Advisory Councils is to be the complete homegoods and housewares marketplace.
