John S. Bachrach was long associated with the sale of clothing. With Oscar Mandel he owned My Store. He married Oscar's sister, Emilie Mandel, and made a home with her at 410 E. Washington.
This charming house stood at 410 E. Front Street (Wesley Methodist church). Note the generous use of ornamental trim above and below the window and the circular decorations on the porch railing. One has to wonder at the choice of this house over one more similar to that of Oscar Mandel, which was much larger and built of stone.
The Bachrachs were part of a small but influential Jewish community within Bloomington. Many of the families were merchants: the Livingstons, the Greisheims and the Mandels. They were all members of the Moses Montefiore Temple and had ties with other Jewish communities throughout the Midwest. When Mattie Grace Bacharach married, it was to a young banker from Pontiac, Harry Greenebaum. Visitors for her engagement party came from Chicago, Cleveland and Decatur. His other daughter was married to a Bloomington doctor, H. Lee Howell.
John Bacharach died at the age of 50 in 1904, and Mrs. Bachrach continued to live there until her death in 1936. My Store was sold by Mandel in 1899, after Bacharach had retired from the business. A few years later, Mandel built a bigger and better "My Store" with another brother in law, Albert Schwarzmann. That store thrived under the management of Mandel until his death in 1922. Sadly, Albert Schwarzmann suffered a nervous breakdown in 1927 and committed suicide, leaving the store in the hands of his female heirs. Those women expressed a belief that merchandising was not suited to the female constitution and decided to sell the store rather than operate it.