Almost every day for more than a half-century, Gus Lukis arrived early at Hyde Park Shoe Rebuilders — sometimes around 4:30 a.m. — and went to work repairing shoes and bags. Businesses and families moved in and out of the surrounding apartments and storefronts, but the little store on 57th Street remained.
This weekend, Hyde Park Shoe Rebuilders will close its doors permanently. The Lukis family decided to close the business after Lukis — once dubbed the Mayor of 57th Street — was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in October.
In the store’s last days, forgotten shoes and purses lay scattered in the front window and on shelves. The mostly iron shoe repair machinery, which has been in Lukis’ family for nearly 100 years, wore a fine layer of dust.
David Niles, a volunteer for Restoration Ministries in Harvey, said everything left at the store will be taken to the organization’s thrift shop and warehouses. All of the machinery will be sold, and proceeds will go to Restoration Ministries.
Hyde Park natives remember Lukis, his family and his business as an institution of the neighborhood.
In 2009, the Chicago Maroon dubbed Lukis the Mayor of 57th Street in an article about his time at Hyde Park Shoe Rebuilders. Sam D’Orlaque, 62, grew up across the street from the store and said Lukis was a “fixture of the place.”
D’Orlaque, who said his mother would take the family’s shoes there for repairs, remembers Lukis taking breaks to sit outside on a nearby concrete stump.
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“If you look at the view that he could see looking out his front window, or looking straight ahead or down the streets, it’s like he had to have seen everything. I mean absolutely everything,” D’Orlaque said.
Now, with their father’s health declining, Lukis’ sons, Jim and John Lukis, are reflecting on the store’s history and contributions to the neighborhood.
University of Chicago students, faculty and staff frequented the store to have their shoes, backpacks and purses repaired, Jim Lukis said.
He said his father wasn’t always interested in shoe repair, but he didn’t have much of a choice.
The Greek-American was born in Chicago in 1929 but moved back to Leonidio, Greece, with family when he was 6 months old. His father’s candy store in Chicago didn’t last through the year Lukis was born.
Jim Lukis said when his father was 18, he received a letter in Greece saying he had been drafted into the U.S. Army.
Later, it was determined that “they didn’t need him because he didn’t speak much English,” Jim Lukis said.
Gus Lukis eventually ended up back in Chicago, sent by his father to find work with his great uncle John Psihitsas, who went by the name John Reachas. Reachas established Hyde Park Shoe Rebuilders after he finished serving in the Army in World War I. The business moved to a few locations in Hyde Park before settling on 57th Street in 1959.
Gus Lukis learned the craft of shoe repair from his uncle and eventually took over the family business when Reachas died in 1969.
“He had some uncertainty working there by himself, he was anxious,” Jim Lukis said. “He didn’t know if he was going to make it.”
The biggest lesson Jim Lukis said he learned from his father was that “dirty hands make clean money.” Jim Lukis said his father also taught him the value of family.
It was at Hyde Park Shoe Rebuilders that Gus Lukis met his wife, Connie Kutulas, who Reachas had hired to help at the store. They went on a few dates, and eventually, the story goes, Kutulas asked Lukis when he was going to propose.
They married in 1951, and Connie continued to work the cash register and fix stitching in bags until the early 2000s.
Yang and Ki Kim, owners of Vogue Cleaners across the street, remember the couple well. Yang Kim said Gus Lukis would go home from the store every day about 10 a.m. and bring Connie Lukis back to the store. She died in 2004 of complications after a kidney transplant 10 years earlier, Jim Lukis said.
“He was a really good husband,” Kim said. “He visited her grave every day.”
Kim described Lukis as a second father to her and someone who had helped her small business since it opened in 1995. When Lukis started to become ill, Kim helped Hyde Park Shoe Rebuilders customers pick up their shoes.
Lukis was always walking around the street and talking to locals, Kim said.
“He came to us the first day,” Kim said. “I really won’t forget about him.”
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