Castner Knott Company was a Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

-based regional department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

 chain. The chain was in business for a century

Century

A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...

 from 1898 to 1998, in its later years as a division of Mercantile Stores Company

Mercantile Stores

Mercantile Stores Company Inc. until 1998, was a traditional department store retailer operating 102 fashion apparel stores and 16 home fashion stores in 17 states. The stores were operated under 13 different nameplates and varied in size, with the average store approximating . Store names...

.

Castner Knott's historic flagship location on Nashville's Church Street closed in 1996, while the remaining stores were among those sold to Little Rock, Arkansas

Little Rock, Arkansas

Little Rock is the capital and the largest city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 699,757 people in the 2010 census...

-based Dillard's

Dillard's

Dillard's, Inc. is a department store chain in the United States, with 330 stores in 29 states. Headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, Dillard's locations are concentrated in Texas and Florida; with a major presence in other states including Arizona, Iowa, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Missouri,...

, when it acquired Mercantile in 1998. The five high-volume mall stores (Bellevue Center, Cool Springs, Hickory Hollow, Green Hills and Rivergate) in Nashville, where Dillard's already had locations, were sold to Saks Incorporated and rebranded as Proffitt's

Proffitt's

Proffitt's was a department store chain based in Alcoa, Tennessee. On March 8, 2006, the Proffitt's and McRae's stores were converted into Belk stores. Belk acquired the two chains in July 2005 from Saks Incorporated.-Beginnings:...

, which resold them to May Company, who, in turn, rebranded these locations as Hecht's

Hecht's

Hecht's, also known as Hecht Brothers, Hecht Bros. and the Hecht Company, was a large chain of department stores located mainly in the mid-Atlantic and southern region of the United States....

 in 2001. In 2006, those stores were converted to the Macy's

Macy's

Macy's is a U.S. chain of mid-to-high range department stores. In addition to its flagship Herald Square location in New York City, the company operates over 800 stores in the United States...

 name as a result of the May Company

May Company

May Company may refer to several American businesses:*The May Department Stores Company, a defunct retail company acquired by Federated Department Stores in 2006**May Company California, a defunct California department store that merged with J. W...

-Federated Department Stores

Federated Department Stores

Macy's, Inc. is a department store holding company and owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's department stores. Macy's Inc.'s stores specialize mostly in retail clothing, jewelery, watches, dinnerware, and furniture....

merger.

External links

• Castner Knott reunion website, with details on history from former employees and vendors