Heritage
JEWEL OF CHICAGO
C.D. Peacock has been a proud provider of jewelry and watches in and around the Windy City almost from the city’s birth. A jewelry establishment was something new for infant Chicago, population 4,000, when the House of Peacock opened at what was then 155 Lake Street on February 9, 1837. (Abraham Lincoln was a state legislator; Mark Twain was still in diapers.) But jewelry and watch repair wasn’t new to the store’s proprietor, Englishman Elijah Peacock, whose family had been in that business for three generations. The town took hold—for a while Chicago was the world’s fastestgrowing city—and so did the jewelry business. Peacock “sold jewelry to the women, repaired watches for the men and adjusted chronometers of Lake Michigan boat captains,” as the Chicago Tribune wrote. The Great Chicago Fire of October 1871 destroyed the building, but happily the valuable merchandise had been kept in a fireproof vault. In 1889, Elijah turned the business over to his son, Charles Daniel Peacock, whose initials provide its lasting moniker. Though the Peacocks sold the business in 1969, C.D. Peacock has maintained their traditions of quality and service. Customers have included Mary Todd Lincoln, Marshall Field and Mick Jagger (a rarely heard trio of Ms!); surely more bold-faced names will yet visit a Chicagoland institution that is something of a jewel itself.
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