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.
Associated Dry Goods acquired Ayres in 1972. After The May Company acquired Associated Dry Goods in 1986, several Ayres stores were closed. The flagship store in Indianapolis was closed in the spring of 1992 as the remaining Ayres operation merged with May's Famous-Barr division. Federated Department Stores, owner of rival Macy's, acquired The May Company on August 30, 2005. On February 1, 2006, L. S. Ayres was dissolved and folded into the newly formed Macy's Midwest division. On September 9, 2006, the L. S. Ayres name was retired as most stores were converted to Macy's.
History
Origins in Indianapolis Lyman S. Ayres, who owned a dry-goods store in Geneva, New York, founded a new firm in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1872, the year in which he bought controlling interest in N. R. Smith and Company, a dry-goods store that was also known as the Trade Palace. The store was located at 26–28 West Washington Street in Indianapolis. The new store, renamed N. R. Smith and Ayres, opened in January 1872. Ayres bought out Smith's interest in the store in 1874. The name "L. S. Ayres & Co." appeared in February 1874 in an Indianapolis newspaper advertisement. In 1875, Ayres relocated the store across the street to 33–37 West Washington Street, where it remained for thirty years as L. S. Ayres and Company. The store called itself a "First Class One Price Establishment" and offered merchandise with uniform quality and price, concepts that were unusual for that time. During the first half of the 20th century, Ayres grew to become one of Indianapolis's leading department stores. In Indianapolis its department store competitors were the William H. Block Company, the H. P. Wasson and Company, and L. S. Strauss and Company. Beginning in 1972, the Lazarus department store chain arrived in Indianapolis as it absorbed the Block's stores. All of these stores offered a full line of merchandise, but Ayres was especially known for its women's fashions.
For several years prior to his death in 1896, Lyman had been purchasing real estate along Meridian and Washington streets in Indianapolis, where he intended to build a new store at the intersection of these two prominent downtown streets. Designed by the Indianapolis architectural firm of Vonnegut and Bohn, the new eight-story flagship store opened on October 3, 1905, with more than of selling space. The landmark store at One West Washington Street was enlarged several times. The store's first major expansion was completed in 1915 and doubled the store's size and its frontage along Washington Street. Beginning in the 1920s the company acquired property along Meridian Street, south of its main store, including the old Chamber of Commerce building, and opened the South Building on September 14, 1929. By this time the store complex was in size. After World War II, an eleven-story addition to the flagship store completed along Meridian Street, adjacent to the South Building. In the 1950s, downtown Indianapolis began to deteriorate as businesses moved outside the city center; however, Ayres continued to buy real estate adjacent to its downtown store. The company bought several old buildings near its flagship store, tore them down, created surface parking on the vacant lots, and later built two parking garages to entice suburban shoppers to drive downtown and park near its store.
Despite Ayres's efforts to improve its Indianapolis flagship store, the city's downtown had declined by the 1970s and the West Washington Street store was surrounded by empty lots and vacant buildings. To encourage economic development of the area, Ayres and others invested in two downtown hotel developments in an effort to attract convention and tourism business. Ayres contributed $3.3 million to development of a downtown Hilton Hotel, which later became a Sheraton Hotel, and $50,000 to the Merchants Plaza project, where a Hyatt Regency Hotel and Merchants Bank offices occupied most of its space.
Expansion of the Ayres 1905 flagship complex +Expansion of the Ayres 1905 flagship complex Date Additions Architects Sq ft Sq m Original One W. Washington Street building, 8 stories. Replaced the Hubbard Block. Vonnegut & Bohn Built 1914 Added an annex on the site of the Iron Block, which burned down in Jan. 1914: #9-11 Washington St. (Bobbs & Merrill stationery) and #13-15 (Besten & Langen store). The addition roughly doubled the size of the Ayres store. Vonnegut, Bohn, and Mueller ~ ~ by 1920 Additional to the west, for a total of feet along Washington. ~ ~ by 1928 L.S. Ayres Annex Warehouse, Haueisen property, #14-22 Maryland St. ( of frontage). Used for storage as of 1928. Built 1926,opened South Building, 30-32 S. Meridian; 11 full stories + 2 story penthouse+ 2 basement levels; 7 elevators. Added 90% more floorspace to the complex. Over the 1920s Ayres had acquired space southwards, including: Air rights over Pearl Street, over which Ayres built a multi-story bridge Chamber of Commerce Building (#26-30 S. Meridian, 46 feet of frontage, at cost of $335,000) in 1928. #32 S. Meridian (23 feet of frontage) in 1926 Vonnegut, Bohn, and Mueller 425,000 1936 L. S. Ayres Clock installed 1941 Burford printing plant to the west along Pearl Street, added to store 1941 Part of Stutz Motor Co., 10th and Capitol. Used as workhouse, warehouse and delivery garage. 1946 11-story addition at 38-40 S. Meridian St. (38.5-foot frontage), on south side of Pearl St., on site of William B. Burford store. added space. Cost $500,000. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Current use 1-7 W. Washington and 30 S. Meridian were retrofitted in 1997 by Browning Investments & Hagerman Construction for use as an office building and Parisian, later Carson's, department store, anchoring a new Circle Centre Mall. Carson's closed in 2018 and space is currently vacant.
Suburban expansion As urban populations shifted outward to suburban areas, Ayres moved closer to its customers by establishing branch stores in Indianapolis and Lafayette, Indiana. In 1959, Ayres also opened a large warehouse facility and service center on Hillside Avenue in Indianapolis. In 1965, a new branch store opened in the Greenwood Shopping Center, south of the Indianapolis flagship store. In 1966, Ayres opened a new branch store at Glenbrook Square in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In addition to building new branch stores in Indiana, Ayres acquired a retail subsidiary, The John Bressmer Company in Springfield, Illinois, in 1958 and created Ayr-Way, a chain of self-service discount stores. In 1969 Ayres expanded into Louisville, Kentucky, with the acquisition of Kaufman-Straus Company, a retail division of City Stores Corporation. The declining downtown Louisville store was not profitable and Ayres closed it within two years of its purchase. In 1973, Ayres installed an Ayr-Way discount store in the downtown Louisville location, but that also failed and closed in 1975. Two suburban Louisville locations were later merged into Ayres's Indianapolis operations. The City Stores deal also included the acquisition of Wolf & Dessauer (W&D), a leading department store in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana. In the late 1960s, Ayres also entered the field of specialty retailing with the establishment of the Sycamore Shops and Cygnet Shops to cater to young adults.
By the end of the 1960s, Ayres had expanded from department stores into a diversified merchandising business that included the Ayres flagship store in Indianapolis and its branches in Indiana, three subsidiary department stores (Bressmer's, Kaufman's, and W & D), a new chain of discount stores (Ayr-Way and Ayr-Way Discount Foods), specialty stores (Sycamore Shops and Cygnet), a high-end home furnishing shop (Murray Showrooms), and a real estate investment company (Murray Investments).
Acquisition In 1972, Ayres was acquired by Associated Dry Goods of New York City. Announced on January 26, 1972, the sale, which exchanged Ayres stock for 1.4 million common shares of Associated Dry Goods stock, was equivalent, at that time, to a purchase price of $78.5 million (~$ in ). In 1983, Associated Dry Goods merged Cincinnati, Ohio-based Pogue's with Ayres. Pogue's stores were renamed L. S. Ayres and Company in 1984 and received $7 million (~$ in ) in renovations. In 1985, the Louisville, Kentucky-based Stewart Dry Goods stores were absorbed into Ayres.The 1972 Associated Dry Goods merger with Ayres placed two of its subsidiaries, Ayres and Stewart Dry Goods, as competitors in the Louisville market. With strong competition from other retailers, declining profits, and a decaying downtown Louisville, the Stewart Dry Goods stores were renamed L. S. Ayres and Company in 1987 and Ayres spent $6.5 million (~$ in ) to remodel the downtown store.
In 1986, Associated Dry Goods was acquired by The May Department Stores Company in a stock swap valued, at that time, at approximately $2.47 billion (~$ in ). Between 1986 and 1990, several Ayres chairmen and CEOs arrived and departed as the May Company tried to improve Ayres's profitability, which also included store closings in Louisville and Cincinnati. In the late 1980s, the May Company shuttered the former Pogue's and Stewart's locations, reducing the number of Ayres locations to fourteen. Three Ayres stores in Cincinnati at Tri-County Mall, Kenwood Towne Centre, and Northgate Mall, were sold to J. C. Penney in 1988. All three stores have since been closed or relocated. In April 1991, a May spokesperson announced that the Ayres flagship store would not be a part of Indianapolis's proposed Circle Centre mall. The project, adjacent to the downtown Ayres store, was already under construction. It was no surprise when May announced on October 25, 1991, that the downtown Indianapolis Ayres store would close, as would three of its Indiana branches. Also in 1991, the Ayres operations merged with the St. Louis, Missouri-headquartered Famous-Barr division of May, although the Ayres nameplate was retained. Parisian opened a store in the Ayres downtown Indianapolis space in 1995; Carson's replaced the Parisian store in 2007 and it closed in 2018.
Federated Department Stores acquired Macy's in 1994 and The May Department Stores Company in 2005. On February 1, 2006, Ayres was subsumed into the newly created Macy's Midwest (now Macy's Central). Most of the Ayres locations became Macy's stores, with the exception of the Greenwood Park Mall and Castleton Square stores in the Indianapolis suburbs, where the existing Lazarus locations were retained as the surviving Macy's store. The Ayres stores at the Greenwood Park Mall and Castleton Square were later demolished.
Stores and subsidiaries
Flagship store
Ayres offered a full line of merchandise and services, but it was especially known for women's fashions and its Tea Room, Christmas events and displays, and the budget store.