 | |
 Fourth and Market store, c. 1916 | |
| Formerly | J. Bacon & Sons |
|---|---|
| Company type | Department store |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1845 in Louisville, Kentucky |
| Founder | Jeremiah Bacon |
| Defunct | 1998 |
| Fate | acquired by Dillards |
| Headquarters | Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. |
Number of locations | 5 (1998) [1] |
Area served | Louisville, Kentucky, Southern Indiana, Owensboro, Kentucky |
| Parent | Mercantile Stores |
Bacon's was a chain of department stores based in Louisville, Kentucky, United States.
Jeremiah Bacon opened a store called Bacon's Dry Goods in 1845 on Market Street near Hancock Street. In 1876 he moved into a structure four times larger than the original. In 1901, Bacon's opened a location on Fourth and Market streets that became its flagship store. The new 115,000-square-foot (10,700 m2) building had entrances on each street and featured a distinctive spiraling atrium. [2] The store remained open until September 6, 1972, when it closed to make way for the Kentucky International Convention Center. [3] [4]
In 1903, Bacon's sons sold the store to the large New York City-based dry goods conglomerate H.B. Claflin & Company, the owner of Stewart Dry Goods. The store was acquired by Ohio-based Mercantile Stores [2] when Claflin went bankrupt in 1914. [5] Bacon's opened a suburban location in St. Matthews in 1953; [6] locations followed in Shively in 1956 [7] and Bashford Manor Mall in 1972. [8] The chain added a location in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1977. [9]
In 1982, Bacon's revived its Downtown Louisville presence with a store in the Louisville Galleria (later renamed Fourth Street Live!). The downtown store closed in 2003. In 1988, it opened a location in Mall St. Matthews. [9]
Bacon's marketed itself as Kentucky's oldest department store, and often held elaborate sales and celebrations for its anniversaries. Bacon's also held "Midnight Madness" sales that were popular with shoppers. In the 1990s, Bacon's faced increasing competition from national chains, including Dillard's, which would often open up locations in the same shopping centers as Bacon's.
Some Louisville-based department store chain competitors included Stewart Dry Goods, Ben Snyders, and Kaufman-Straus.
Mercantile Stores was acquired by Dillard's in 1998 [10] and the Bacon's name was retired. [1] [2]
Bacon's always had a presence in Indiana prior to the opening of its St. Matthews store in 1953. One of the earliest location in Indiana was on Spring Street in downtown Jeffersonville. [11] By the mid-1950s, this store was determined to be too small and was replaced by a much larger store in the newly built Youngstown shopping center in 1956. [12] The store in the Youngstown Shopping Center in Jeffersonville moved in 1990 to River Falls Mall. [13]
Dillard's, Inc. is an American department store chain with approximately 267 stores in 29 states and headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. Currently, the largest number of stores are located in Texas with 57 and Florida with 42. The company also has stores in 27 more states; however, it is absent from the Northeast, most of the Upper Midwest, and most of the West Coast, aside from three stores in California.
Mercantile Stores Company Inc. until 1998, was a traditional department store retailer operating 102 fashion apparel stores and 16 home fashion stores in 17 states. The stores were operated under 13 different nameplates and varied in size, with the average store approximating 170,000 sq ft (16,000 m2). Store names included Bacon's, Castner Knott, deLendrecie's, Gayfers, Glass Block, Hennessy's, J. B. White, The Jones Store Company, Joslins, Lion Store, Maison Blanche, McAlpin's, and Root's.
Joslins was a chain of department stores that was based in Denver, Colorado, United States.
L. S. Ayres and Company was a department store based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and founded in 1872 by Lyman S. Ayres. Over the years its Indianapolis flagship store, which opened in 1905 and was later enlarged, became known for its women's fashions, the Tea Room, holiday events and displays, and the basement budget store. As urban populations shifted to the suburbs, Ayres established branch stores in new shopping centers in several Indiana cities. Ayres also acquired retail subsidiaries in Springfield, Illinois; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Louisville, Kentucky. Ayr-Way, the Ayres discount store subsidiary, became the first discount store launched by a full-line department store. By the end of the 1960s Ayres had become a diversified merchandising business with retail department stores, a chain of discount stores, specialty clothing stores, a home furnishings showroom, and a real estate holding company. A long-time Ayres slogan, "That Ayres Look", promoted the company as a fashion leader, and by 1972 it had become the oldest continuous retail slogan in the United States.
The Jones Store Company was an American chain of department stores located in the Kansas City area formerly operated by Mercantile Stores Company and the St. Louis, Missouri-based May Co.
Associated Dry Goods Corporation (ADG) was a chain of department stores that merged with May Department Stores in 1986. It was founded in 1916 as an association of independent stores called American Dry Goods, based in New York City.
The Stewart Dry Goods Company—alternately known as Stewart Dry Goods, or Stewart's—was a regional department store chain based in Louisville, Kentucky. At its height, the chain consisted of seven store locations in Kentucky and Indiana. The chain in its later years operated as a division of New York–based Associated Dry Goods.
Blue Boar Cafeterias was a chain of cafeteria-style restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky. The first Blue Boar was opened in 1931. Once a major presence in metro Louisville, it is still remembered for its old downtown location on Fourth Avenue near Broadway. During the 1930s, Guion (Guyon) Clement Earle (1870–1940) served as advertising manager. He was the brother-in-law of Frank Kennicott Reilly (1863–1932) owner of the Reilly & Lee publishing firm of Chicago. Mr. Earle was well known to the customers of the Blue Boar Restaurant through the witty jottings he created which appeared on the Blue Boar's menus. A decade earlier, Mr. Earle had served as the Superintendent of Loveman, Joseph & Loeb in Birmingham, Alabama, where he published a literary review entitled "The Bookworm".
Bullock's was a chain of full-line department stores from 1907 through 1995, headquartered in Los Angeles, growing to operate across California, Arizona and Nevada. Bullock's also operated as many as seven more upscale Bullocks Wilshire specialty department stores across Southern California. Many former Bullock's locations continue to operate today as Macy's.
River Falls Mall is a shopping center in Clarksville, Indiana, on Lewis and Clark Parkway. From its opening in 1990 until 2006, the center was an enclosed mall, with 762,000 square feet (70,800 m2) of gross leasable area. It originally comprised multiple entertainment venues and retail. After losing the majority of its tenants, River Falls Mall was redeveloped in 2006 as a power center, comprising Dick's Sporting Goods, Old Time Pottery, Jo-Ann Fabrics, and Bass Pro Shops.
May Company California was an American chain of department stores operating in Southern California and Nevada, with headquarters at its flagship Downtown Los Angeles store until 1983 when it moved them to North Hollywood. It was a subsidiary of May Department Stores and merged with May's other Southern California subsidiary, J. W. Robinson's, in 1993 to form Robinsons-May.
Mall St. Matthews, formerly known as The Mall, is a shopping mall located near Louisville, Kentucky at 5000 Shelbyville Road in the eastern suburb of St. Matthews.
Green Tree Mall is a shopping mall located in Clarksville, Indiana, United States. The mall is located off of I-65 about four miles north of downtown Louisville. It has a total area of 795,382 square feet (73,893 m2). It was named for a large boundary tree of considerable age that once stood at the location. Currently, there are more than 80 inline stores and 2 major anchor stores. The third anchor was Sears which closed on October 1, 2017. The mall is managed by Namdar Realty. Green Tree Mall is a retail anchor for the Clarksville area.
Jefferson Mall is an enclosed shopping mall in Louisville, Kentucky, the largest city in Kentucky. The mall is located near the intersection of Interstate 65 and Outer Loop in southern Louisville. Jefferson Mall is the only major mall in southern Jefferson County, and the only of Louisville's six regional shopping centers serving the south and west county; the others are located in the east county.
The H. & S. Pogue Company was a Cincinnati, Ohio based department store chain founded by two brothers, Henry and Samuel Pogue. They came from County Cavan, Northern Ireland, to Cincinnati and worked in their uncle's dry goods store. They later were able to buy him out and H. & S. Pogue Dry Goods Company was established in 1863 at 111 West Fifth Street. Brothers Thomas, Joseph, and William Pogue would eventually join the enterprise.
Kenwood Towne Centre is a shopping mall northeast of Cincinnati, at the corner of Montgomery and Kenwood Roads, adjacent to Interstate 71.
Lion Store was a Toledo, Ohio department store chain. Mercantile Stores operated the chain from 1914 until its 1998 acquisition by Dillard's, which retired the Lion nameplate in 1999.
John A. Brown was an Oklahoma department store chain. It operated under that name from 1932, when its founder bought out its predecessor and renamed the chain for himself. After Mr. Brown died in 1940, his widow took over management until her own death in 1967, forcing a change in ownership. Dayton-Hudson, another retail company, continued operating the chain under the Brown name, until 1984, when Dayton-Hudson sold the Brown chain to Dillard's, another national chain, which combined all of the Brown stores under its own name. The flagship store on West Main Street was closed in 1974 and was subsequently razed as part of an urban renewal project. The project was supposed to result in a new shopping center known as the Galleria. However, the project was never completed, so the Brown chain never returned to downtown.
Interstate Department Stores, Inc., was an American holding company for a chain of small department stores, founded in Delaware in 1928. After a very rapid expansion as the result of acquisition and expansion of two discount store chains acquired in 1959 and 1960 and also two toy store chains acquired in 1967 and 1969, the firm was renamed in 1970 as Interstate Stores, Inc., to better reflect its business. Increased competition and the changes in consumer buying habits eventually led to decreased sales in the late 1960s and early 1970s which forced the firm to file for bankruptcy in 1974. After shedding all of its non-performing units, the firm was able to exit bankruptcy with the entire toy division intact along with a small remnant of the department store division in 1978. The firm was renamed Toys "R" Us upon emergence from bankruptcy.
To encourage impulse buying, J. Bacon & Son, St. Matthews has emphasis the rear entrance of the store... This is the first suburban unit in Kentucky. It was opened less than 11 months after ground was broken for it. On a lot totalling 72,000 square feet, selling space of the actual two floors of the store is 34,000 square feet.
Bacon's Department Store has opened its 54,000-square-foot unit in Bacon's Shively shopping center along with 15 other stores. The new store gives Bacon's four outlets in the Louisville area. One is in downtown at Fourth and Market, another is in suburban St. Matthews, and another in Youngstown shopping center in Jeffersonville.
This year, three of the biggest stores on Spring Street, Jeffersonville's main business street, have announced they will be in one of the two shopping centers. One of them is Louisville's J. Bacon & Sons department store, which will close their Spring Street branch. Construction of a new Bacon's branch in the Youngstown center is progressing.
J. Bacon & Sons department store has opened its 32,000-square-foot suburban shopping center branch in Jeffersonville, Ind., across the river from Louisville. [T]he new store in the Youngstown Shopping Center is almost five times the size of the store it replaces in downtown Jeffersonville.