O'Neil's

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

O'Neil's began in Akron, Ohio, in 1877, when Michael O'Neil and Isaac J. Dyas opened a dry-goods store. From that local start grew the M. O'Neil Co., later known simply as O'Neil's: an Akron retail institution with enough ambition to help pull the city’s commercial gravity toward South Main Street.

May Department Stores acquired the business in 1912, but O'Neil's retained its distinct Akron identity. Its substantial downtown flagship, built in the late 1920s at South Main and State Streets, became a familiar block-long monument to the era when a department store could sell the whole wardrobe, the household goods, and a small dose of civic pageantry.

The chain expanded around northeastern Ohio, serving Akron, Canton, and surrounding communities through downtown locations, plazas, and malls. Holiday window displays at the flagship were especially memorable—a seasonal machine for producing wide-eyed kids, patient parents, and adults pretending they were only there for practical purchases.

In 1989, the downtown Akron store closed and O'Neil's remaining locations were merged into May Company Ohio, retiring the O'Neil's name after 112 years. May Company Ohio was subsequently folded into Pittsburgh-based Kaufmann's in 1993.

Our O'Neil's collection celebrates Akron department-store grandeur: the display-window theater, the polished sales floor, and the gloriously oversized confidence of a hometown retailer that once made an entire city block feel like its front door.