An early view of Stewart's 1907 Building, which was expanded in 1947 and 1959
Fourth Street in Louisville, showing Stewart's, with a modernized Street Floor and Marquee.
Stewart Dry Goods (Stewart's) (1846)
501 South Fourth Street (at Walnut)
Louisville, Kentucky
DOWNTOWN STORE DIRECTORY
Downstairs
Housewares • Small Appliances • Hardware • Garden Shop • Appliances • TVs and Stereos • Radios • Records • Books • Toys • Sporting Goods • Luncheonette
Street Floor
Fine Jewelry • Jewelry • Handbags • Leather Goods • Gloves • Neckwear • Umbrellas • Wigs • Millinery • Cosmetics • Street Floor Blouses • Street Floor Sweaters • Street Floor Sportswear • Street Floor Lingerie • Robes • Notions • Stationery • Derby Shop • Luggage • Candy • Epicure • Cameras
The Men's Shop Men's Toiletries • Men's Accessories • Men's Furnishings • Men's Sportswear • Men's Clothing • Men's Shoes • Men's Hats
Second Floor
Coffeetrees Gallery • Fashion Fabrics • Needlework • Sewing Machines • Linens • Bath Shop • Infants' Shop • Toddlers' Shop • Children's Boutique • Girls' Shop • Girls' Accessories • Girls' Sleepwear • Girls' Boutique • Boys' Shop • Varsity Shop • NFL Shop
Third Floor
Miss Stewart Shop • Miss Stewart Sportswear • Miss Stewart Coats • Better Sportswear • Better Traditional Sportswear • Better Dresses • Coats • Suits • Designer Dresses • Designer Sportswear • Coach House • Fur Salon • Bridal Salon • Shoes • Shoe Salon • Aigner Shop • Millinery • Wigs
Fourth Floor
Career Dresses • Career Sportswear • Career Casuals • Career Coats • Suburbia Sportswear • Active Sportswear • Contemporary Sportswear • Junior Dresses • Junior Sportswear • Junior Coats • Junior Lingerie
Fifth Floor
Furniture • Decorating • Designer Gallery • Bedding • Summer Furniture • Floor Coverings • Rugs • Curtains • Draperies • Art Gallery
Sixth Floor
Gifts • China • Crystal • Waterford Gallery • Glassware • Fine Silver • Lamps • Mirrors • Table Top Linens • Trim-the-Tree • The Orchid Room Restaurant
BRANCH STORES
Lexington (1951/1961)
130 East Main Street
(160,000 sq. ft.)
Evansville (1969)
Washington Square Mall
(135,000 sq. ft.)
Oxmoor Center (1971)
7900 Shelbyville Road
(156,000 sq. ft.)
Fayette Mall (1971)
3401 Nicholson Road
Lexington, Kentucky
Jefferson Mall (1978)
The Orchid Room was on the sixth floor, not the fifth floor.
ReplyDeleteCan you substantiate your location at all? I have three sources that say "Fifth-Floor Orchid Room." As I am interested in accuracy, I'd like to find out just what the correct location was.
ReplyDeleteBAK
I believe I can substantiate that the Orchid Room was on the same floor as the fine china. I ate there many times during the last 10 yrs that it was in business and often looked at the china while waiting to get a table.
ReplyDeleteThe Orchid Room was always on the sixth floor. I ate there at least twice a week from childhood until it closed. It was one of the finest department store restaurants in the country.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this site - I just bought an amazingly minty boomerang shaped mosaic tiled coffee table at a flea mall here in Louisville, on closer inspection it still has a label (handwritten) saying the style is Comet and it was purchased from Stewart's Dry Goods - one google search and here is all this amazing info on the place!!
ReplyDeleteIn an antique store I just purchased a Condensed Milk Jar in the pattern used in Stewart Dry Goods Orchid Room. Would love to find more>
ReplyDeleteI am from Delaware
As a little boy, my mother took me to Stewarts a lot. There was only the downtown store at that time. I remember the elevators that were woodgrained and operated by ladies. At Christmas time the corner window (4th and Walnut) was decorated to the hilt and was just fascinating to look at. We usually ate in the luncheonette downstairs, but in later years we ate in the Orchid Room on the 6th floor. Stewarts was a "real" department store and first class all the way. The building still stands, but it has been converted to an office building now. Stewarts was truely a great place to shop!
ReplyDeleteStewarts was such a wonderful department store. I remember a different and beautiful girl in the swing on the first floor every year. I had lunch downstairs in the luncheonette many times. They made the most delicious potato salad. I modeled in many fashion shows for Stewarts; remember the beautiful Christmas decorations and windows and for Christmas shopping they would wrap your packages and deliver them for FREE. I miss it.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1960's I took my children there. We ate lunch in the Orchid Room, and then there was a department at Christmas time where the children were allowed in to shop for their parents and I had to wait outside so their gifts would be a surprise for myself and my husband on Christmas morning. Of course, the gifts were charged on my charge account, but it is still a wonderful memory for all of us, and I still have some of the gifts I received! We also loved the beautifully decorated windows at Christmas. I wish Sterart's was still there.
ReplyDeleteI was one of the last employees to walk out the front door when the downtown store was closed forever. I worked there for 13 years. That was the end of a beautiful and graceful era!
ReplyDeleteI am very curious when the last store in Kentucky closed? does anyone know the date?
ReplyDeleteStewarts Dry Goods was part of Associated Dry Goods (ADG),and as was usually the case with ADG stores, it was the carriage trade store in that area.
ReplyDeleteYou can see a picture of this grand store at the start of the movie, Stripes, when the cab driver (played by Bill Murray) picks up a fare for a ride to the airport.
Thank you for this site and this write-up about Stewart's. My late mother had fond teenage memories of taking the bus in the 1950s from the east end of Louisville to Stewart's downtown to have lunch at the luncheonette and do some shopping. She would take me there, too, in the 1970s. Two good sources about Stewart's: http://pastperfectvintage.com/louisvillestores.htm (which includes info about other Louisville department stores, too) and the book "Stewart's: A Louisville Landmark" (1991) by Kenneth L. Miller.
ReplyDeleteThe entire Stewart's Dry Goods store is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. All pertinent information regarding the history can be found by searching on line for the National Register Nomination at the National Park Service Website. NPS.focus You search under the state and county. The 1907 section of the store was listed in first, in the 1980s; an addendum to that nomination was listed about 2008.
ReplyDeleteI was a young girl in the late 70's when my Aunt and I would ride the bus into downtown and shop at Stewart's. I remember walking in on the ground floor and seeing hosiery and cosmetics and large hanging lamps and mint green walls. Then we went up to the orchid room, and I am forever grateful for the experience of beef tips and noodles for lunch! Architecture and food make quite an impression together. I
ReplyDeleteNo connection to Stewart's of Baltimore, except that they were both owned by Associated Dry Goods.
ReplyDeleteMy great aunt worked at the downtown Louisville Stewarts for many years, I found a very interesting 100 year in business store anniversary booklet called "Down the Century with Stewart's 1846-1946". by Isabel McLennan McMeekin. It is a 12 plus page booklet of the illustrated history of of Stewarts from early 1800's to when it was printed in 1946. Let me know if you are interested in adding it to your museum collection? I don't need it, it has no worth to me. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteDear Tim:
ReplyDeleteThanks for your generous offer. I would love to have the booklet; eventually I would scan it and include it in this exhibit for all to enjoy.
Please send me an email at bakgraphics@comcast.net and I will send my home address to you. I would be more than happy to pick up the shipping costs for the item.
Thanks again for your generosity in considering your little piece of history for wider distribution.
Bruce
According to the book I have "Stewart's A Louisville Landmark" the Orchid room was on the 6th floor.
ReplyDeleteIn 1968, after one year of colloge I worked at Stewart's in a restaurant on the lower level. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but I see on your websit there was one call the Luncheonette, so that most of been it. Many business professional and mature adults eat there for lunch. I made 65 cent a hour. I did last long because I was young, inexperienced, and just didn't seem to fit in. The uniform that I had to wear reminded me of the ones wore on the show Mel's Diner.
ReplyDeleteI worked at the Stewart's in Oxmoor Mall 1980-1981. . .a classy company, and a great place to work. Got to know a lot of regular customers and made a lot of friends there. I remember that there were many employees who had worked for Stewart's for 20 years or more. . .you won't that too much today at a department store. You could actually make a career there and not just a job.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this info. I was born in Louisville and, like many others, loved any chance to go shopping downtown with my grandmother or my aunt and eat lunch at Stewart's lunchonette or on special occasions, in the Orchid room. Although we moved away when I was young, every time we came home for a visit, I found a way to do two or three things; shop at Stewart's, see a movie at the spectacular Lowest Palace theater and go to White Castles. I am writing a book based on my grandmother's life story and your website has helped with some details. But, I always thought the Orchid Room was on the 6th floor. Which is it?
ReplyDeleteI think that the matter is settled - it was on the Sixth Floor, and hopefully, some day, I will have newspaper ads to support that fact.
ReplyDeleteBruce
My mother, Margaret Ruth Smoots, was from Corydon, Indiana and graduated high school in 1940. She was class valedictorian and the May Queen. She grew up on a farm, without indoor plumbing or electricity and Stewarts was her beacon as to what constituted a more "refined lifestyle." Her parents were hard working and provided a very nice home, but somehow, we are all compelled to seak something we believe to be better in life. Stewarts was a great place to find it, always understated elegance, never nouveau riche. Margaret worked as a career girl in Louisville during the 1940's, married well, and used to take me to lunch at the fabulous Orchid Room with its soft yellow tuffted walls and silver plated dining ware. I think that Stewarts was the model she used to define what was good taste.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this insight; it is true, as much as my experience with department store history can tell me. Hudson's in my once-home-town of Detroit was THE style-setter there. I am sure that it was more possible to "seek something better" when the example is nearer to home, visible, and somehow attainable . . . today's stores don't have that effect on people and I doubt it is even possible given the state of affairs.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, your description of The Orchid Room allows readers like myself to conjure up what constituted "a more "refined lifestyle"" to which you refer.
Thanks again!
Bruce
I worked for Stewarts in the warehouse in Jeffersontown from December 1977 to April 1987. I tranfered to Indianapolis when Stewarts mergered with L. S. Ayres.
ReplyDeleteStewarts had great people to work with and the best customers in the Louisville area.
I worked in the delivery department at the 4th street store during the Christmas time in 1975. It was located in the rear of the store. The dock came off the alley on 3rd street.
ReplyDeleteLster I worked in the warehouse in Jeffersontown from December 1977 to April 1987.i transfer to L. S. Ayres at that time.
Stewarts was a great place to work.
I loved all of these stores in our cities.
ReplyDeleteI worked at Stewart's downtown in 1974 and after. I was in the toy dept. Which was shared with books on the fourth floor. I loved my job and the customers. Around Christmas I'd take calls from grandparents wanting to purchase something special for a grandchild. They would tell me the age and sex of the child and I'd make suggestions. They'd choose one or ask me to pick one, give me their c.c. # and mailing address and I would gift wrap it and mail it. Customers would come in hand me their pink Stewarts credit card and have me pick out gifts and gift wrap them and they would be back after having lunch in the Orchid Room. The popular toys were the Madame Alexander dolls. One afternoon a gentleman walked up to me, I was 20 and he asked me a few questions about the store. He then told me I had a friendly smile and a rosey complexion. Then handed me a silver dollar and said to continue smiling. I showed one of the older ladies working with me, and she said no one knew who the man was but he would come around Christmas and he was known for giving a sales clerk a silver dollar for doing a good job. She said I should be honored. I did feel good. The 7th. Floor was employees break room and gift wrapping. When watching Miracle on 34th. Street Macy's reminds me of Stewarts. Great memories there.
ReplyDeleteI from Taiwan and I have a silver coin of stewart's, it has "since 1846" on the front and "FIFTY DOLLARS, REDEEMABLE IN MERCHANDISE" on the back. Does anyone interested? moonofautumn@gmail.com
ReplyDelete