J. B. White

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

J.B. White & Co. began in Augusta, Georgia, in 1874, founded by Irish immigrant James Brice White. What started as a dry-goods concern on Broad Street grew into Augusta’s big downtown department-store ritual: apparel, furniture, housewares, appliances, and the occasional everything-under-one-roof retail flex.

The company’s historic Augusta flagship was rebuilt in 1924 and became synonymous with Broad Street shopping. Under the slogan “Augusta’s Pace Setter,” J.B. White sold the useful, the fashionable, and the gloriously unnecessary—because no proper department store should make customers choose between a sewing machine and a new outfit.

By the 1980s, the chain operated several stores in Georgia and South Carolina. Its downtown-era flagship had given way to Regency Mall in 1978, and the Augusta operation moved again to Augusta Mall in 1998. That same year, Dillard’s acquired parent company Mercantile Stores; Dillard’s says it acquired J.B. White’s nine remaining stores, ending the J.B. White nameplate.

Our J. B. White collection celebrates the polished bags, bright counters, dependable gift departments, and Broad Street memories of an Augusta retail original. Department-store grandeur may have left the building, but the ghost still knows where the good escalator was.