High atop the facade of the old Sears store on the downtown Jacksonville square is a reminder of the building’s original occupant.
There, on a large gray stone are block letters that read: Andre & Andre.
Andre & Andre [pronounced AN-dree, not ON-dray] was the name of one of the largest locally owned stores ever located in Jacksonville.
The home furnishing business began in 1898, when brothers Harry and Bert Andre, a couple of young entrepreneurs, decided to buy the carpet, wallpaper and curtain business of S.A. Fairbank, a longtime Jacksonville merchant.
At first, the Andres continued to sell the line of merchandise that had made Fairbank successful. But, by 1905, the firm had added furniture and stoves to its offerings and was on its way to becoming one of Jacksonville’s largest retailers.
When the Andre store opened, it had only 2,880 square feet of floor space in one room of a building at 48 N. Side Square. But, by 1924, the Andres had made enough money to construct a 47,000-square-foot building on the same site, a structure occupying one-third of a city block. This is the building that housed the Sears for many years.
Old advertisements from the Jacksonville Daily Journal give some clues of the variety and the quality of goods the firm carried. The ads often were the largest in the paper and listed everything from baby carriages to bird cages and living room suites to lawn swings.
The Andre & Andre firm’s reputation for handling quality goods apparently was widespread. A story in the Daily Journal in 1936 claimed that the business had shipped merchandise to practically every state in the nation and to China and Germany.
The success of Andre firm did not come without some trying times, however. No fewer than three times, the business was either destroyed or heavily damaged by fire.
The first blaze occurred in 1898, soon after the business opened, and the third and final fire happened on a frigid January night in 1924, a disaster that led the Andres to have their next building constructed of fireproof materials.
In November 1936, the Andre brothers decided to lease their three-story building on the north side of the square to Sears, Roebuck & Co. and continue their business in much smaller quarters on East Court Street.
Bert Andre died in 1943, and his older, Harry, passed away in 1949.
This Way We Were story was first published Oct. 25, 1999.
