The H. & S. Pogue Company was a Cincinnati, Ohio based department store founded by two brothers, Henry and Samuel Pogue. They first came from Ireland to Cincinnati and worked in their uncle’s dry goods store. They later were able to buy him out and H. & S. Pogue Dry Goods Company was established in 1863.
Renowned architect Samuel Hannaford was chosen to design the company's flagship store at the busy corner of Fourth and Race Streets in 1916, the result being a graceful Edwardian structure with an impressive six acres of selling space. Pogue's stayed under direct family management for nearly a century, until 1962 when Pogue's was purchased by Associated Dry Goods Corp, at that time the third largest retailer in the United States with such nameplates as Lord & Taylor, Caldor (discount store), and Loehmann's in addition to the 16 regional chains including Pogue's. Suburban expansion, financed by ADG, then became possible and Pogue's locations were soon to be found in each of the leading suburban trading centers: Tricounty, Northgate, and Kenwood Malls in Ohio, and Florence Mall in Kentucky.
During its heydey of the 1920s to the 1960s, Pogue's was well-known by generations of Cincinnatians for their elaborate Christmas displays, including the Enchanted Forest in the Carew Tower arcade with "Pogie and Patter," artificial deer wired with microphones into which children would whisper their Christmas wishes. In the store's fourth floor auditorium, a miniature train wound through a holiday wonderland, convenient to the Toys, Books, and Music departments.
Pogue's several restaurants were also popular with downtown shoppers and business people. The Ice Cream Bridge was created from the soda fountain of a demolished pharmacy in the Cincinnati suburb of Mariemont, and functionally connected the store's Fourth and Fifth Street stores on the second level of the Carew Tower arcade. In fact, each level of the store's parking garage (still in use for Tower Place Mall as of 2011) was named for a flavor of store-made ice cream available at the Ice Cream Bridge. More formal dining was available at the Camargo Room on the store's fourth floor, where an elaborate dinner buffet was served each Monday and Thursday when the downtown store offered extended hours.
During Pogue's final years, a fashionable champagne-and-pate' bar was opened on the Main Floor in a revived Housewares department known as the Fourth Street Market. When Pogue's was merged into L. S. Ayres in 1983, Fourth Street Market became its own brand and was featured in all larger Ayres' stores and was also branded on a line of private-label gourmet foods.
As the age of the carriage trade department store slowly drew to a close, ADG merged Pogue's and Louisville's Stewarts Dry Goods with their Indianapolis based L. S. Ayres stores in 1983. Three years later, in October 1986, ADG itself was acquired in a US$2.2 billion merger with May Department Stores. The four suburban locations were sold to Hess's or JCPenney in 1987 and 1988, and the downtown store shuttered. The Hannaford building on Fourth Street was demolished to make way for Tower Place Mall; the street level of the Carew Tower section of the store was subdivided into various nameplates of The Limited, Inc, conglomerate and the second floor converted to offices.
A Facebook page for fans and former employees of the H. & S. Pogue Company was started in 2010 as "H&S Pogue Company of Cincinnati."