St. Louis Department Stores: What's Left, and What They Still Do Best

Revised August 17, 2026

Imagine it’s a Thursday in mid-August and three things land on you at once. Your daughter has outgrown every pair of shoes she owns. A cousin’s wedding is nine days out and the suit you were counting on needs the sleeves taken up. And somebody in Florissant is texting to ask where the couple is registered.

Twenty years ago that was one errand. You drove to a department store, worked the shoe floor, handed the jacket to the tailor upstairs, and set up the registry near housewares. Now you’re sitting in a lot in Affton with your phone out, trying to work out whether the store you have in mind is even open anymore.

Fair thing to wonder about here. The metro has lost department-store anchors at a steady clip, including one whose name was on the building your grandmother shopped. What’s left is a shorter list, and still genuinely better than a website for about six specific jobs. Here’s the current map.

What major department stores are left?

Three national nameplates carry full-line department stores in the St. Louis metro as of August 2026: Dillard’s, Macy’s and JCPenney, plus a single remaining Nordstrom. Dillard’s and Macy’s anchor the Saint Louis Galleria in Richmond Heights. West County Center in Des Peres lists Macy’s, Nordstrom and JCPenney. South County Center in Mehlville holds Dillard’s and JCPenney. Across the river, St. Clair Square in Fairview Heights carries Macy’s, Dillard’s and JCPenney.

Mid Rivers Mall in St. Peters is the St. Charles County entry, still listing Dillard’s, JCPenney and Macy’s. Add the off-mall chains that quietly absorbed the same shopping — discounters, club stores, the category boxes for shoes and home goods — and you have most of what people mean by department store today.

One habit worth building: check the store’s own page the morning you go, not the mall directory board. Retail moves fast enough here that an hour, a department, or an entire anchor can change between one back-to-school season and the next, and “the store is open” and “the department you want is still in it” are two different questions.

Which anchors has the metro actually lost?

The big one is recent. Nordstrom closed at the Saint Louis Galleria on August 24, 2025, after nearly 14 years, with about 135 employees affected under the state WARN notice; the company said the lease was ending and renewing would not be profitable. Dick’s House of Sport is taking both floors of that space, and as of April 2026 it was still under construction.

Macy’s closed its South County Center store in 2025, part of a round of 66 U.S. closures the company announced on January 9, 2025. That building had a longer story than most: South County opened in 1963 with Famous-Barr, and the Dillard’s next door started life as Stix, Baer & Fuller before Dillard’s took the nameplate over in 1984.

And Chesterfield Mall is simply gone. Demolition started in October 2024 and finished in April 2025, leaving only the Dillard’s and Macy’s buildings standing. The 100-plus acres are being rebuilt as Downtown Chesterfield, a roughly $2 billion mixed-use project from the Staenberg Group with up to 2,363 residential units planned and a modernized Dillard’s slated to reopen in late 2026.

Wildly off-topic — that limb over the driveway needs a tree service.

What can a department store still do that a website cannot?

Six things, and they are the reason to drive. A return handled at a counter in ninety seconds beats a box, a label and a nine-day wait for the refund to post. Alterations get pinned on you instead of guessed at. A cosmetics counter lets you smell the thing and match your skin tone in real light.

• Returns in person. No packing, no drop-off, and you leave knowing the credit is issued.
• Alterations and tailoring. Sleeves, hems and waists, usually with a fitting on the spot and a pickup date you can plan a wedding around.
• Fragrance and cosmetics counters. Sampling, shade matching, and gift-with-purchase events that never show up the same way online.
• Appliance and mattress floors. You open the door, pull the drawer, lie down for four minutes. Photos cannot do that.
• Fine jewelry counters. Sizing, cleaning and a look under real light before you buy — the same reasons it pays to choose a jeweler carefully.
• Registry and gifting. Scanning a registry in person is still faster than building one in six browser tabs, especially if you are already deep into wedding planning.

Outlet or full-line — which is worth the drive?

Full-line stores carry the brands, the services and the deepest sizes. Outlet and clearance formats carry price. The catch is that a lot of outlet inventory is not last season’s full-line goods marked down; it is manufactured for the outlet channel at a lower spec, with its own style numbers and sometimes its own return terms. That is not a scandal, it is a business model, and you only get burned when you assume the two are the same shirt.

The blurriest version of this is the store-within-a-store. Macy’s Backstage operates inside the Macy’s at the Saint Louis Galleria and inside the one at St. Clair Square in Fairview Heights, which means you can walk from full-line to clearance in the same building. Handy — but check the tag and the receipt, because a clearance department can run a different return window than the floor twenty feet away.

Rule of thumb: if you need a fitting, a shade match, a warranty, or a human measuring something, go full-line. If you know your size and the brand and you are buying basics or gifts, the clearance floor wins on price and costs you nothing but choice.

How do returns, price adjustments and pickup orders actually work?

Your return window is set by the retailer and printed on the receipt or in the order confirmation email. That is the document to keep. Windows vary by chain, by department, and by whether the item was clearance, jewelry, a mattress or electronics, so the number you remember from three years ago is not reliable. Read it once at the register.

A price adjustment — refunding the difference when something you just bought goes on sale — is a courtesy policy, not a right, and it is usually time-limited and excluded on clearance. Ask at the customer service counter with the receipt in hand, and ask early rather than at the end of the month. Gift receipts are the other underused tool: they let the recipient exchange without seeing the price and without needing you in the loop.

Buy online, pick up in store is the sleeper feature. You lock the item so it is not sold off the floor while you drive in from Belleville or Kirkwood, you skip shipping, and you can usually hand back anything wrong at the same counter. Two things to watch: some listings are ship-from-store, meaning the order is picked out of another location’s stock and is not waiting for you, and pickup orders are held only a set number of days before they are restocked and refunded. That hold window is in the ready-for-pickup email.

How do holiday hours usually run?

The pattern is consistent even when the specific times are not. Malls extend evening hours through late November and December, often opening earlier on weekends and staying open past normal closing in the final week. Thanksgiving Day is now widely closed at both malls and their anchors, with the long Friday opening the season instead. Christmas Eve closes early, frequently mid-afternoon, and Christmas Day is closed almost everywhere.

What trips people up is that anchor stores keep their own hours, separate from the mall’s. If your errand depends on a service desk — alterations, jewelry repair, appliance sales, returns — check that department’s hours specifically, because service counters often close an hour or two before the sales floor.

Which two weekends should a Missouri shopper circle?

Two, and they are written into Missouri statute. The Back to School sales tax holiday runs from 12:01 a.m. on Friday, August 7, 2026 through midnight on Sunday, August 9, 2026. Under Section 144.049, RSMo, the exemption covers clothing at $100 or less per item, school supplies up to $50 per purchase, computers and peripherals up to $1,500, computer software at $350 or less, and graphing calculators at $150 or less.

The second is the Show Me Green sales tax holiday, April 19 through 25 every year under Section 144.526.1, RSMo. It exempts qualifying new ENERGY STAR certified appliances from all state and local sales and use taxes, up to $1,500 per appliance, covering clothes washers and dryers, water heaters, trash compactors, dishwashers, conventional ovens, ranges, stoves, air conditioners, furnaces, refrigerators and freezers. If you have been limping along on a dying washer, that is the week to walk an appliance floor.

Both are Missouri laws, so they apply to purchases made in Missouri. They do not follow you across the river. A family in Belleville or Edwardsville that wants the break on a laptop or a refrigerator has to buy on the Missouri side during those dates, which is worth a look at the map before you pick a store.

What does this look like from behind the counter?

The ticket price was never the plan. Buyers set initial markup knowing a large share of the goods will sell at markdown, so the number that decides a season is maintained margin at the end of it, not what the tag says in week one. Cosmetics and fragrance carry the floor — fast turns, repeat customers, and counters frequently staffed or subsidized by the brand rather than the store. Fine jewelry and appliances are where one sale rescues a slow afternoon. The store card is no courtesy either; the credit program is its own profit line. November and December decide the year, January is returns and re-ticketing, and back-to-school is the second season. What operators grumble about to each other is return abuse and the pickup counter, where online orders turn floor staff into pickers without adding an hour of payroll. Independents feel all of it harder, which is why a complete listing matters — it is how a shopper finds a store that is not on a mall directory board.

Frequently asked questions

What were some of the old department stores in St. Louis?

Famous-Barr is the name most people reach for — a St. Louis institution under the May Department Stores Company. Stix, Baer & Fuller was the other local giant; Dillard’s took over its stores and the South County location carried the Dillard’s name from 1984. Lord & Taylor anchored West County Center until it closed in June 2006, and Sears anchor boxes across the metro have since gone dark, including the one at Mid Rivers Mall.

What happened to Famous Barr?

It became Macy’s. Federated Department Stores acquired the May Department Stores Company on August 30, 2005, and on September 9, 2006 the Famous-Barr nameplate was retired along with Filene’s, Foley’s, Hecht’s, Kaufmann’s, Marshall Field’s and the rest of the May regional banners, all converted to Macy’s. The stores did not close that day; the sign changed. Several of those buildings, including the Galleria store that opened as Famous-Barr in 1991, still operate as Macy’s.

Is Macy’s or Dillard’s higher end?

Neither is a clean answer, because it depends on the store and the department. Dillard’s tends to run a deeper better-brand assortment and less aggressive everyday discounting, so full-price tickets often read higher. Macy’s runs a heavier promotional and coupon cadence and folds a Backstage clearance shop into some locations. Compare the specific department you care about at the specific address, not the logos.

Which mall in St. Louis is considered the best?

It depends what you need. The Saint Louis Galleria in Richmond Heights is the largest at about 1.2 million square feet and pairs the metro’s biggest department-store footprints, with Dillard’s near 330,000 square feet and Macy’s around 265,000. West County Center in Des Peres is the only one still listing a Nordstrom. On the Illinois side, St. Clair Square in Fairview Heights keeps three department stores under one roof.

What are the best shopping areas in St. Louis?

For department stores, the clusters are Richmond Heights, Des Peres, Mehlville, St. Peters and Fairview Heights, Illinois. For independent shops it is a different map: the walkable business districts in Kirkwood, Maplewood, Webster Groves, the Delmar Loop, Cherokee Street and Historic Main Street in St. Charles. Most locals end up using both — the anchors for services and sizes, the districts for anything they want to be unusual.

Can I return an online order at a department store counter?

Usually yes for items the retailer sold itself, and that is the fastest refund you will get. Bring the packing slip or pull up the order in the app. The exceptions worth knowing: marketplace items shipped by a third-party seller often have to go back by mail, and large items such as appliances and mattresses typically follow a separate policy with its own window and possible fees. Check the order confirmation before you load the car.

Do department stores still do alterations and gift wrap?

Many do, but it varies store by store and is no longer a safe assumption. Alterations are usually attached to menswear and formalwear, with a fee schedule and a turnaround measured in days rather than hours — call before a wedding week. Gift wrap desks come and go with seasonal staffing. Phone the department directly and ask about cost and turnaround before you buy the garment.

About the Author: The St Louis Near Me Directory Team
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.

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