Springfield had Wren’s.
“We were the premier department store,” said Linda Anderson, one of the Three Musketeers of buyers who traveled to New York in the 1960s and ’70s to buy merchandise for the store and its customers.
The three were among more than 30 former Wren’s associates who gathered for a reunion Sept. 10 to remember the store that was a centerpiece in the days when downtown Springfield was the city’s retail center.
Located for decades in what is now called the Bushnell Building, Wren’s history extends back to founder and Irish immigrant Edward Wren, whose brick mansion still stands on the west side of Limestone Street just south of McCreight Avenue.
Wren came to Springfield in 1877 to do business with Kinnane Brothers and continued on his own 15 years later when the partnership dissolved.
Known as Springfield’s merchant prince, Wren died in 1917. The store name carried on and was famous in later deciades for its holiday window displays, children’s productions and its focus on customers.
Wren’s became a part of Allied Stores before the 1980s brought a series of name changes to Rike’s, Shillito-Rike’s and Block’s. Eventually, the downtown store closed, and its Upper Valley Mall store passed on to Lazarus and eventually Macy’s.
The memory of Wren’s, however, remains a part of the rich retail history of downtown Springfield.
As the stories here show, associates’ voices are keeping that memory alive.
— Tom Stafford Staff Writer