The dry-goods founders — George Wyman, George Robertson, and the Welber brothers

Wyman's store from 1878 · Robertson's from 1904 · the Welber purchase, 1932

Wyman's: George Wyman and Company — Wyman's, to the whole city — was the South Bend dry-goods institution: on The History Museum's count its run was 112 years, and its store at 107–109 North Michigan Street dated from 1878. Around the cloth the house built the services of a great dry-goods store — a hat-making shop, a window-shade cutting room, home deliveries across a fifty-mile territory. The generation that grew up shopping downtown South Bend shopped at Wyman's first. In 1951 Wyman's bought the Ellsworth department store next door; the combined store closed in 1972 and the building was demolished in 1973.

Robertson's: The Robertson Brothers Company opened its first South Bend store in 1904, under its president George A. Robertson — the 1921 Polk directory lists the company at 127–133 South Michigan Street, dealing in dry goods, carpets, cloaks, millinery, gloves, and laces. George Robertson bought his brother's interest in 1910 and kept the plural name; the brother's name is not carried in the record reached for this history. In 1922 the company bought the site at 209–217 South Michigan — ground that first held the Studebaker brothers' blacksmith shop — and built its six-story flagship there, opened in 1925, at about 185,000 square feet the largest department store in South Bend, employing about 400 people at its postwar height. In 1932 the store was sold to the brothers Will and Sig Welber — the trade press of December 1932 names Sig G. Welber its president in the reorganization — and the Welber family ran Robertson's for the rest of its life, to the close in 1986. Robertson's was regarded, in the landmark tour's record, as the downtown department store where Black shoppers were treated fairly, allowed to try on clothing like any other customer, in an era when that was not the rule in American retail.

Sources:

1. Businesses — "Wyman's — two generations on Michigan Street" (the 112-year run on The History Museum's count; the store from 1878 at 107–109 North Michigan; the services; the 1951 Ellsworth purchase; the 1972 close and 1973 demolition) and "Robertson's — the big store at 211 South Michigan" (the 1904 opening under President George A. Robertson; the 1910 purchase of the brother's interest; the 1922 site purchase and 1925 flagship; the 1932 sale to Will and Sig Welber and Sig G. Welber's presidency in the trade press; the Welber tenure to 1986; the landmark tour's account of the store's standing with Black shoppers).