Iwan Ries & Co.

Iwan Ries & Co. traces its founding to 1857, when German immigrant Edward Hoffman opened E. Hoffman & Co. inside Chicago's Sherman House Hotel, twenty years after the city's incorporation. Hoffman later began manufacturing his own cigars and brought his nephew, fellow German immigrant Iwan Ries, into the business to help run it.

The original premises were destroyed when the Great Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871, burned down the Sherman House Hotel; the business rebuilt and continued. Hoffman brought Iwan Ries into the company in 1891, and after Hoffman's retirement in 1898, Ries sold off the manufacturing side of the business to a New York pipe company and renamed the retail shop Iwan Ries & Co., the name it has carried since.

Now in its fifth generation of family ownership and billed as America's oldest tobacco shop, the business today occupies a store at 55 E. Monroe in Chicago's Loop, stocking more than 15,000 pipes from a wide range of makers alongside a large pipe tobacco selection that includes house blends such as Three Star and its IRC British and bulk lines. The shop also carries cigars, lighters, cutters, humidors, and other accessories, and operates an adjoining smoking lounge, the Front Room, that keeps later evening hours than the retail floor.