Read's Department Stores

D.M. Read's Department Stores, Inc.

Industry	Retail chain
Fate	Acquired
Successor	Allied Stores, 1926
Founded	1856
Defunct	1993
Headquarters	Bridgeport, Connecticut & vicinity
Key people	D.M. Read, Founder

Read's Department Stores was a Bridgeport, Connecticut-based retail chain founded in 1857 by D.M. Read. Known for its classy, upscale merchandise, it was once hailed as New England's largest department store.

In 1857, David M. Read and W. B. Hall opened a dry goods and carpet store on Main Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with Read going solo in 1877. In 1885, the business expanded to two buildings on Main Street and Fairfield Avenue forming a "very popular and elegant place of business." Read's became known for its classy, upscale merchandise and shopping environment, becoming New England's largest department store. In 1926, Read's moved to the corner of Broad and John Streets in downtown Bridgeport, where its flagship store ultimately had over 100,000 square feet (10,000 m²) of selling area on five floors. D.M. Read Company became a unit of Allied Stores in 1954. Allied expanded the store into a chain in the 1950s and 1960s. By then they were up to six stores in Fairfield and New Haven Counties in Connecticut.

In 1981, Allied closed Read's landmark downtown store, leaving behind a boarded-up building as a reminder of Bridgeport's brighter past.

In 1983, Read's opened a New York location in the Jefferson Valley Mall in Yorktown Heights, while in 1981 Allied decided to move Read's out of their original flagship store and into space recently vacated by Gimbel's at the nearby Lafayette Plaza Mall. Around 1985 its television and radio commercials featured the jingle, "Reads, Your Something Special Store". Read's operated in its hometown of Bridgeport until 1987 when Campeau Corp. of Canada, which had bought Allied Stores, merged it into Allied's sister division, Jordan Marsh of Boston, Massachusetts, and the stores subsequently took on the Jordan Marsh name.

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