From its inception, the Hyde Park Cooperative Society has provided much more than top quality merchandise to its customers. The Hyde Park Co-Op began on December 1, 1932 as a buying club in an apartment above a bookstore near the University of Chicago. Just a month before, Franklin Roosevelt had been elected to his first term as President. The Great Depression was on. The Co-Op 's founding members believed they could save money if they pooled their purchases and bought in case lots. After eight months however, it was clear that gross margins would not cover expenses. Directors asked a University of Chicago economics professor, Paul Douglas, to advise them. "Either open a store at once, or liquidate before you lose the money," he said. So the Co-Op expanded, opening its first store in October 1933 at 5635 South Harper Avenue. When sales reached $4,000 a week, the store was too small. The Co-Op opened in larger quarters at 1464 East 57th Street on a Sunday in May, 1942. The new store had 100 grocery items and three checkout counters.

After nine years in this location, the Co-Op again was pushing out the walls. Sales were $1 million a year, thus the Co-Op could proudly be defined as a supermarket. The store was in an area scheduled for demolition as part of the City's plan for urban renewal. Directors and Manager Walker Sandbach could find only one suitable spot where they felt they could relocate, an abandoned icehouse. The new building at 5525 South Harper Avenue, not without its structural problems, would probably also face demolition. The Co-Op moved in nonetheless. In the spring of 1954 Alderman Robert Merriam cut the ribbon, Mahalia Jackson sang gospel hymns, and the store was open. Sales soared to $3 million a year.

Meanwhile, urban redevelopment went on. Buildings came down, and the store's very existence was threatened. A private developer bought a 47 acre tract for homes and a 14 store shopping center. Co-Op members began a tenacious campaign to relocate the Co-Op into the shopping center. The developer found the Co-Op 's ethics intriguing and agreed to the move, saying: "I couldn't resist 'We the people'."

The Hyde Park Co-Op opened for business in October 1959 in its present 45,000 square foot supermarket. When it opened, it was the largest supermarket in Chicago with 22,000 square feet of retail space. Three years later, in 1962, sales reached $100,00 a week for the first time and they have been climbing ever since. But the Co-Op is far more than successful business.

Our members represent all races, creeds, and educational and cultural backgrounds. They are a cross section of the famously diverse Hyde Park community, and the Markets are important both as shopping and as meeting places. The 55th Street store is the only food store in the shopping center, and manages to maintain the old pot-bellied-stove-and-cracker-barrel character while distinguishing itself as a leader in the most important contemporary issues. Environmental awareness and nutrition education are among the priorities of the Co-Op .

Not surprisingly, significant emphasis has been placed on cooperative education in the history of the Hyde Park Co-Op . The Co-Op 's monthly publication, the everGreen, which was first published in 1934, provides a forum for consumer and cooperative education.

Perhaps the former Senator from Illinois, that same Paul Douglas who told HPCS members to open a store in 1933 and who was a Co-Op member for the rest of his life, put it best: "Whenever you have two or three Hyde Parkers gathered together you have at least five or six differences of opinion, all seeming to pull the group is opposite directions. But the differences work themselves out and end up with progress. In the Co-Op , people of all national and racial stocks, all religions, found a growing sense of community, the feeling that mutual cooperativeness and helpfulness form the basis on which life should be lived."