The store was started by Kersey Coates and William Gillis in the 1860s in the then Town of Kansas at the corner of Missouri Avenue and Main Street.

In the 1890s, it opened a new building occupying a full block along East 11th Street from Walnut to Grand, designed by the architectural firm of Van Brunt & Howe.

It soon became the prime attraction on the city's main retail thoroughfare, popularly known as "Petticoat Lane," and became famed for its Tea Room.

Although the store attempted to expand, opening a branch on the Country Club Plaza in 1925 (enlarged in 1963) and purchasing the Bundschu store on the courthouse square in Independence, it could not keep pace with changing retail fashions and settlement patterns, and in 1968 it closed, with the loss of 800 jobs.

Until December 2015, a restaurant called EBT, at 103d Street and State Line Road near I-435, housed memorabilia from the store.