Nugents or B. Nugent & Brother Dry Goods Co. was a department store in

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

at the southeast corner of Washington Avenue and Broadway. It was the first downtown department store in the United States to open a suburban branch. The dry goods store was founded in 1869 by Byron Nugent (d. 1908) in

Mount Vernon, Illinois Mount Vernon is a city in and the county seat of Jefferson County, Illinois, United States. The population was 14,600 at the 2020 census. Mount Vernon is the principal city of the Mount Vernon Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all o ...

. He moved to St. Louis and started a 23-by-56-foot store there at the southeast corner of Broadway and Franklin in February 1873. In 1878 it moved to larger quarters at 817 N. Broadway, then added 819, for a total of four stories of 50-by-100-feet each ( in total). Mottos included "onward and upward", "one price system". In 1882, 815 and 821 N. Broadway were added to the store complex. It also built out the back, for four stories at 90 x 135 feet( in total). In 1889 Nugents moved again to an even larger site, which would remain its home until the company closed, but not before annexing two additional buildings. In 1914, it celebrated "41 years underselling", illustrating the low-price, mass-merchandise theme of Nugents where it positioned itself in the market. The downtown complex eventually came to consist of three buildings and there was a bridge across St. Charles Street to one of them, referred to as an Annex, which dated back to 1850. The bridge and the Annex were both demolished in 1942. The main part of the Downtown store was reclad and is in use by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.

Uptown branch

Nugents opened a branch store, the first downtown department store in the U.S. to do so, in

Midtown St. Louis Midtown is a neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri. It is located west of the city riverfront at the intersection of Grand and Lindell Boulevards. It is home to the campus of Saint Louis University and the Grand Center Arts District. Historic stat ...

(then called "Uptown") at Olive and Vandeventer, on April 12, 1913. It had bought an existing store called The Banner Store and converted it. The Uptown branch was in size over three floors. 14–15 years before any other U.S. downtown department store did so. A branch was later opened in

Wellston, Missouri Wellston is a city in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States, along the northwest border of the city of St. Louis. The population was 2,313 at the 2010 census. History Wellston was incorporated as a city in 1909; due to "government difficulti ...

Epilogue

The company was bought by National Department Stores in 1923 and was liquidated in 1933. At their peak the stores had employed around 1500 persons.

References

{{reflist Defunct department stores based in Missouri Midtown St. Louis Buildings and structures in St. Louis