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- Nugents or B. Nugent & Brother Dry Goods Co. was a department store in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri 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. 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 (20,000 square feet (1,900 m2) 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(48,600 square feet (4,520 m2) 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. (en)
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