Associated Dry Goods Corp.

Associated Dry Goods (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 chain began when Henry Siegel, who had founded department store Siegel, Cooper & Co. in Chicago, obtained financing from Goldman Sachs for a store in New York City in the early twentieth century. Though Siegel failed in his endeavor, the remnants of the chain were merged with John Claflin's stores H.B. Claflin & Company, along with Lord & Taylor, Stewart & Co., Hengerer's, and J. N. Adam & Co. (with financing from J. P. Morgan & Company), to create Associated Dry Goods. Other stores were spun off to Mercantile Stores Co.

Through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s ADG continued to expand through acquisitions. In the 1970s, they created a new St. Petersburg, Florida-based department store, Robinson's of Florida. However, ADG was most well known for its upscale New York City based Lord & Taylor division, with over 84 locations across the country. Lord & Taylor was ADG's largest and most profitable division.

In the early and mid-1980s ADG attempted to rationalize its department stores, focusing on high-growth areas. Several of its non-profitable department store chains were sold or shuttered. They merged Hengerer's of Buffalo, New York into Rochester-based Sibley's in 1981. 1983 saw the merger of Cincinnati-based H.& S. Pogue Co. (5 locations) into Indianapolis-based L. S. Ayres. Also in 1983 The Diamond division (2 locations) of West Virginia was sold to Stone & Thomas. In 1984, Stix Baer & Fuller (12 locations) in St. Louis, Missouri was sold to Dillard Department Stores. Also, in 1984, the Baltimore-based Stewart & Company division was merged into its Caldor discount division. The Powers Dry Goods Company (9 locations) in Minneapolis, Minnesota were sold to Allied Stores' The Donaldson Co. in 1985. In early 1986, they merged the Louisville-based Stewart Dry Goods division into its Indianapolis-based L. S. Ayres & Co. operations.

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