In 1981, Allied closed Read's landmark downtown store, leaving behind a boarded-up building as a reminder of Bridgeport's brighter past. It moved the store into space recently vacated by
Gimbel's at the nearby
Lafayette Plaza Mall in downtown Bridgeport. In 1983, Read's opened a New York location in the
Jefferson Valley Mall in
Yorktown Heights. Around 1985 its television and radio
commercials featured the
jingle, "Reads, Your Something Special Store". Read's operated in its hometown of Bridgeport until 1987 when Campeau Corp. of Canada, which had bought Allied Stores earlier, merged it into Allied's sister division,
Jordan Marsh of
Boston, Massachusetts, and the stores subsequently took on the Jordan Marsh name. In 1987, Campeau acquired
Federated Department Stores of
Cincinnati, Ohio and operated it in conjunction with Allied. As a result of the overall decline of Bridgeport's downtown shopping area, the Lafayette Plaza Jordan Marsh store closed in 1991, and all but the Trumbull and Jefferson Valley stores were closed by 1993 under the
Federated/
Allied Stores bankruptcy filing. In 1993, these remaining two stores at Trumbull and Jefferson Valley were converted to the
Abraham & Straus nameplate when that division of
Federated Department Stores merged with Jordan Marsh (as they were in the New York Metropolitan media market, they could operate more efficiently regarding advertising under the A&S name). In 1995 after Federated acquired
Macy's, it consolidated its A&S/Jordan Marsh division into
Macy's East and renamed the two former Read's stores with the Macy's moniker. The former Read's Trumbull location was abandoned in 2006, when Macy's relocated into the former
Filene's store in the
Westfield Trumbull shopping center upon the completion of the merger of the Federated and
May Department Stores chains. Only the Jefferson Valley Mall store that Read's opened in 1983 has continually operated as a department store to present day. == Read's Artspace, Bridgeport==