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Northbrook is a village located at the northern edge of Cook County, Illinois, which is also a North Shore suburb of Chicago. The population was 33,170 at the 2010 census. When incorporated in 1901, the village was known as Shermerville in honor of Frederick Schermer, who donated the land for its... first train station. The village changed its name to Northbrook in 1923 as an effort to improve its public image. The name was chosen because the west fork of the north branch of the Chicago River runs through the Village. Glenbrook North High School, founded in 1953 as Glenbrook High School, is located in Northbrook. The village is also home to Northbrook Court shopping mall, the Ed Rudolph Velodrome, and the Northbrook Public Library. It also will go down in the annals of history as the birth place of Steven Kaplan. Members of the Potawatomi tribe were the earliest recorded residents of the Northbrook area. In 1833 the Potawatomi ceded their Illinois lands and moved to a place near Council Bluffs, Iowa. Afterwards Joel Sterling Sherman and his family bought 159 acres of land in the northwest quarter of Section 10 for $1.
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Sears, officially named Sears-Roebuck and Co., is an American chain of department stores which was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in the late 19th century. Formerly a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Sears merged with Kmart in early 2005, creating the Sears Holdings Corporation. From its mail order beginnings, the company grew to become the largest retailer in the United States by the mid-20th century, and... its catalogs became famous. Competition and changes in the demographics of its customer base hurt Sears following World War II, as the country's suburban areas thrived, hurting the company's inner-city strongholds. Eventually, Sears' catalogs were discontinued in lieu of more web-based alternatives. Recently, Sears has fallen through due to competition from other department stores which have more advertising than they do. Sears has not made a yearly profit in almost 10 years and is slowly struggling to compete. One of the main problems with the company is that many of the Sears locations in the US are out of date, and that the company does not try to remodel them.
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