MOTOR ROW — From the outside, the Chicago Brand Museum looks like your typical nondescript building. But once inside, you are instantly transported to the sights and sounds of your youth.

The space at 2412 S. Michigan Ave. is part time capsule, part love letter to the brands that shaped American life. The thousands of items on display in the two-story museum not only tell the story of global consumerism, but also reflect the commitment of husband-and-wife team Fred Richards and Elisabeth Emory, who met on the job while working in advertising.

Sixteen years and 40,000 objects later, the two are turning their private passion into a public museum, which they run along with a private branding and design firm.

“We had Mars/Wrigley as mutual clients, and we were working with two different agencies at the time on different parts of their business. So we worked across a lot of their gum and confections brands over the years, met and hit it off and just kind of never looked back,” said Emory, a North Carolina native. 

Richards, who came to Chicago from London 31 years ago, is the collector of the two, amassing a number of items from his travels across the globe. That includes vintage ketchup bottles from flea markets, Cold War-era peanut butter jars from estate sales and one-of-a-kind milk bottles from antique stores. Each object has its own origin story. 

They also have work by artist Andy Warhol, part of a series of sculptural art pieces created from 1963-69 that replicate ordinary supermarket product cartons.

But the duo want it to be clear: The Brand Museum isn’t like other museums. Visitors are encouraged to get close to the custom-made, black-trimmed display cases, and are allowed to grab and feel the uncased curios as they make their way through the space. If they feel inspired to take home a piece of nostalgia, they can likely find it at the first-floor gift shop.

Vintage milk bottle sit for display at the Chicago Brand Museum in the Near South Side on Aug. 31, 2026. Credit: Giacomo Cain/Block Club Chicago

The venue also serves as a flexible meeting and event space within walking distance of McCormick Place.

Even the boardroom table has a story, said the couple. It’s from the offices of the Chicago Defender and sat in a second floor conference room for decades until the newspaper moved their operations to Bronzeville in 2005. The table remained in place when Revel Motors took possession of the 90-year-old building in 2017. When employees required additional meeting space, they relocated the table to the museum’s first floor.

“We bought the table. It was such an important piece of history that we wanted to keep it here, and it would be a place where people could come and have a meeting or you know come together as a community. And we wanted to really preserve the history of it in a special way,” said Emory.

‘A Pandemic Pivot’

It was during the height of the pandemic when the couple had the conversation that would change their lives. After realizing they’d run out of room to store their collection of curios at home — “It wasn’t an episode of ‘Hoarders,’” joked Emory — the two decided to draw up a business plan, envisioning what the Brand Museum could be.

After selling one of their properties in Charlotte, they began looking for a replacement in Bronzeville, where they’d moved from the North Side several years prior. The two stumbled upon the museum’s future home while driving past the building where it’s housed now, noting the architecture, which prompted Emory to do a deep dive into the structure’s history. She learned it had been built by siblings Brian and Florence Lathrop, the latter the wife of Marshall Field’s brother, Henry. 

That Florence Lathrop commissioned the Art Institute lions after her husband’s death further connected the couple to the building as Emory is a School of the Art Institute alumna. That link made her think of what she wanted to leave behind for their 7-year-old daughter.

“Someday, if our daughter wants it, she can have this great brand that my family built. Being able to take that legacy and continue it on was something that was important for us,” said Emory.

Custom Coca-Cola bottles sit for display at the Chicago Brand Museum in the Near South Side on Aug. 31, 2026. Credit: Giacomo Cain/Block Club Chicago

But the concept proved to be a hard sell for the banks, all of whom scoffed at loaning them money. So they tapped into their personal savings instead, investing everything they had into the project. 

It was also a hard sell for the city, and Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) at first, the couple said, although Dowell later changed her tune. Navigating the process to get the museum open was a long one, but Dowell’s later help was key in getting to the finish line, they said. (A spokesperson for Dowell declined to comment.)

Before the alderperson’s initial visit, she “sent a security detail over to just be sure that everything was safe,” Richards said. “Her guy told us she’s only going to be here for 15 minutes. … Three hours later, Pat is still here. You could see her eyes say ‘I get it.’”

Like all museums, there has been a substantial education component to the exhibits, the couple said. Even explaining what the museum is to people in their own industry was a bit difficult.

“People are coming here and they don’t really understand what a brand is. So when they come in the door, they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s an advertising museum.’ No, not an advertising museum. We’re a brand museum. These are brands, brand packaging,” said Richards.

Branding, explained the couple, is how a company builds its identity, reputation, and emotional connection with customers. Advertising is how a company promotes its products or services to attract customers and drive sales.

Demonstrating brand evolution through a collection of vintage Kellogg’s Corn Flakes cereal boxes displayed on a shelf, Richards shows how its mascot, Cornelius Rooster, has changed over time.

“On some boxes he’s speaking, on others he’s less engaged. Sometimes Cornelius goes away completely. Then Kellogg’s starts introducing celebrities, movie franchises,” said Richards.

It’s about more than the artwork printed on the cardboard. It speaks to the labor behind it, capturing how a creative squad spent months tweaking the emblem and fine-tuning Cornelius’s changing look.

Then there are the brands that have come and gone, limited-edition concepts like Monopoly Cereal, a collaboration between General Mills and Hasbro that made a brief appearance on supermarket shelves in 2003.

“Some stand the test of time and others, so not so much,” said Richards.

‘Consumerism Is The Ultimate Democracy’Andy Warhol art pieces sit at the Chicago Brand Museum in the Near South Side on Aug. 31, 2026. Credit: Giacomo Cain/Block Club Chicago

Even the evolution of packaging tells the story of who we are, said the couple. From vintage bottle labels made by hand to the mass-produced designs consumers now see everywhere, how we connect to products has evolved alongside the way it is presented to us.

Richards and Emory recalled a recent visitor who burst into tears upon seeing an old Peter Pan peanut butter jar.

“His father would use the empty jars to store nuts and bolts in his workshop. … He showed us a picture of his dad’s workshop. It was a happy memory,” said Richards.

Which is the point, added the couple. They want the Brand Museum to unlock core memories when visitors spot a recognizable item from their childhood.

How Much A Chicago Household Consumes Per Year

They also want visitors to be more mindful of how they consume. As an experiment, they catalogued how much waste their household produced over the course of a year. The results are encased in a standalone display case, called “A Year In Plastic,” showing every soda bottle, every empty yogurt container, every campaign mailer and every to-go box they used. The total number of displayed items, which includes more than just plastic, is 7,810.

To get a sense of how much is consumed around the city, they multiplied that by the number of Chicago households to get an estimated 8.6 million pieces of waste.

For a presentation on the subject, they weighed and measured the packaging for each category of item, which they then documented on a deck of cards. Each card shows the total impact of a specific category of item consumed.

“We drank 41 bottles of Fairlife Milk that year. So that’s almost one a week, right? All deodorants and things like that that we used. Thirty-seven of those, 145 things of milk in addition to the Fairlife. [Plastic] toys, 23 Starbucks cups. 

“The most annoying thing, of course, was disposable cutlery that was showing up in our Grubhub orders,” said Richards.

He is working on a follow-up presentation about the experience, hoping to share what he and Emory learned and how their consumer habits changed afterward. 

“Consumerism is the ultimate democracy, because we do have the power. We vote with our wallets,” said Richards.

A case full of one person’s yearly plastic usage sits at the Chicago Brand Museum in the Near South Side on Aug. 31, 2026. Credit: Giacomo Cain/Block Club Chicago

As the Chicago Brand Museum continues to grow, Richards and Emory say they hope to eventually find a larger space in Bronzeville that will accommodate their collection.

“It’s the ultimate freedom to be able to take an idea, run with it and see where it takes you. Our goal is to just keep growing and building on it,” said Emory.

The Chicago Brand Museum is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Thursday-Saturday and noon-6 p,m. Sunday. Tickets start at $25.

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