Following World War II, changing lifestyles, new housing patterns, and the rise of shopping strips and malls brought decline to older business districts such as Cherokee Street, but Homemaker Antiques, established in 1945, both anticipated and helped drive the area's rebirth as Antique Row. The business began after Ambrose Christopher Daues, forced by a heart condition to change careers, left a traveling job and bought a used furniture store, Homemaker Furniture Shop, at 2204 Cherokee. Its shift from used furniture to antiques started when he found boxes and barrels of china and glassware stored in the shop, and his wife Leonora, drawing on her experience in the fine china department of Famous-Barr, recognized their quality, cleaned them, displayed them in the windows, and sold them quickly. About three years after Ambrose bought the business, he died, and in 1952 Leonora moved the store to 2124 Cherokee, a corner storefront built in 1902 for David's Furniture Company. She packed the store with goods, acquiring items brought by Illinois farmers, including arrowheads, ancient farm equipment, Indian pottery now in museums, unusual furniture, and cut glass, and, according to Patricia Daues Heffner, bought and sold Depression Glass before it was known by that name. Patricia later developed expertise in dolls and doll restoration, and also learned china and porcelain painting and restoration of decorative painting on furniture. After Leonora died in 1975, Patricia, her husband Robert Heffner, and son James assumed the business's day-to-day operations.
