Building 19
chain of discount stores in New England, United States
Building #19 was a New England chain of discount closeout retailers that operated from 1964 until it declared bankruptcy in 2013. At the time of its bankruptcy, it had thirteen stores. The family that owned the chain later reopened two of the former locations as a part of a new business, The Rug Department, that was limited to rugs and related merchandise. However, these locations in Norwood and Burlington closed in 2014.
The “closeout stores" had been known throughout New England for selling an eclectic assortment of items at drastically discounted prices, as well as self-effacing advertising that made fun of the founder, Jerry Ellis. Many of the items were factory irregulars, discontinued models, post-expiration-date, damaged, or less than perfect in some other way, but some new merchandise was offered as well. The stores capitalized on the quick cash flow needs of other businesses, obtaining most of their merchandise from fire sales, overstocks, customs seizures, liquidations, bankruptcy courts, and dumpster diving.
On November 1, 2013, Building #19 Inc. and a number of affiliated companies voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts. Ellis said that the business had been "on a downhill slope for 10 years", and attributed its failure to Internet competition, overseas manufacturing, and improved fire protection of warehouses.
“Building 19” enters the record as chain of discount stores in New England, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Building, chain and discount can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4986446. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 2013 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Building 19” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.