Bygone Business: Lucille Shoppe

For 27 years, the place on Main Street for stylish women to buy clothing was the Lucille Shoppe at 400 S. Main. Robert and Lucille Warren opened the store on October 17, 1946 in the Rochester National Bank building at Fourth & Main (now Chase Bank). The retail clothing trade was not unknown to Lucille Warren; her father, Fred B. Carpenter, had succeeded Louis Finsterwald and Harry Bigger as Rochester's menswear merchants, and her brother, Hilburn, had followed her father into the family business.

In 1952, Lucille's moved to the Masonic Block, where the shop became the neighbor of the venerable Carpenter's Men's Wear. The Warrens added the Boys 'N' Girls Shop to the retail mix in 1964, thereby creating a block of stores that could cater to the clothing needs of the entire family.

For an entire generation of Rochester families, the Lucille Shoppe and its adjunct children's wear store were a popular place to find that special “outfit.” But in November 1973, Lucille's and the Boys 'N' Girls Shop bowed to the enormous economic pressure that nearby shopping malls and discount stores had brought to bear on the Main Street shops and closed their doors.