Catalog House, served as the company headquarters until 1974, when the offices moved across the street to a new tower designed by Minoru Yamasaki.

[4] In the decades before 1930, Montgomery Ward built a network of large distribution centers across the country in Baltimore, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Oakland, Portland, and St. Paul.

By the end of the 1930s, Montgomery Ward had become the country's largest retailer, and Sewell Avery became the company's chief executive officer.

The action was ordered due to Avery's refusal to settle the strike as requested by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, concerned about the adverse effect on the delivery of goods in wartime.

[9] Avery had refused to comply with a War Labor Board order to recognize the unions and institute the terms of a collective bargaining agreement.

His plan was to bank profits to preserve liquidity when the recession or depression he anticipated hit, and then buy up his retail competition.

[11][12] In 1955, investor Louis Wolfson waged a high-profile proxy fight to obtain control of the board of Montgomery Ward.

This fight led to a state court decision that Illinois corporations were not entitled to stagger elections of board members.

In 1968, Brooker helped engineer a friendly merger with Container Corporation of America, the new parent company being named MARCOR.

[16] Mobil, flush with cash from the recent rise in oil prices and looking to diversify, bought a controlling share of MARCOR in 1974, only to acquire the company outright in 1976.

The company was an early entrant in the home computer market with the CyberVision 2001 in 1978, developed by the Authorship Resource, Inc., of Franklin, Ohio, and primarily manufactured by United Chem-Con.

[20] By the 1990s even its rivals began to lose ground to low-price competition from the likes of Target and Walmart, which eroded even more of Montgomery Ward's traditional customer base.

[22] On December 28, 2000, after lower-than-expected sales during the Christmas season, the company announced it would cease operating, close its remaining 250 retail outlets, and lay off its 37,000 employees.

After its demise, the familiarity of its brand meant its name, corporate logo, and advertising were considered valuable intangible assets.

[24] DMSI applied the brand to a new online and catalog-based retailing operation, with no physical stores, headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

DMSI then began operating under the Montgomery Ward branding in June 2004, selling many of the same kinds of products as the original company.

[25] A month before the catalog's launch, Swiss Colony President John Baumann told United Press International the retailer might also resurrect the original Montgomery Ward's Signature and Powr-Kraft store brands.