Founding Henry Carl Prange was the son of farmers who had immigrated to Wisconsin from Germany following the
Revolutions of 1848. In 1876, he began working at John Plath's
general store in
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, as a clerk, janitor, and delivery boy. In 1887, he attempted to purchase a share of his employer's store; after this proved unsuccessful, he founded his own store on October 4, 1887, with his sister Eliza, and brother-in-law, J. H. Bitter. The store located in Sheboygan was called H. C. Prange. Unlike his local competition, the store offered lines of credit to farmers. In 1898, it was incorporated as the H. C. Prange Company. By 1923, a new store was built on the same site with more than , making it the largest store in Wisconsin outside of
Milwaukee. H. Carl Prange's goal in 1930 during the stock market crash was to do one million dollars in the grocery business and two million in dry-goods. During the Depression, while still heavily in debt from the purchase of the Hall Dry Goods building in Green Bay, Prange acquired the LM Washburn company of Sturgeon Bay and opened the firm's third store. In 1935 a fire burned the Sturgeon Bay store to the ground. Five months after the fire a new store was built. The year 1946 saw the purchase of Appleton's Pettibone-Peabody store, one of the oldest retail organizations in the state. Over the years more acquisitions were made by the H.C. Prange Company, and existing stores underwent continuous improvement to keep abreast of the times. At its peak, the H. C. Prange Co. had 25 stores, 18 in
Wisconsin, five in
Michigan, and two in
Illinois, with a total of about of retail space. In 1991, Prange's department store unit had sales of about $229 million (~$ in ). The company's largest store was in
Green Bay's Port Plaza Mall. Some of the remaining
Peck & Peck locations were acquired by the company after a sale by their previous owners,
Minneapolis-based
Salkin & Linoff in the late 1970s.
The End The H. C. Prange Company's 25-unit department store division was purchased by
Younkers, Inc. for $67 million (~$ in ) in 1992. Younkers also assumed about $9 million in liabilities of the division. Eventually Younkers would become a part of Saks "northern group" which later enveloped longtime Prange's competitors
Boston Store, and
Herberger's under the same corporate ownership. This division was ultimately sold to
The Bon-Ton of
York, Pennsylvania. The former Prange's flagship store in Sheboygan ended operations in mid-January 2014 after several years of operating under The Bon-Ton's Boston Store banner after their purchase of Younkers. The building was reconstructed in 1984 when a water main break in 1982 forced demolition of the old flagship store after the building's support columns sagged. The 1984 building was torn down beginning in January 2015 over a two-month period, and was used as an open field for a series of concerts that summer before construction began on a new apartment development intended to spur the filling of professional jobs in the area. == Prange Way ==