Gwynn’s of Mount Pleasant has crossed the Cooper River.

The family-owned luxury department store opened Gwynn’s on King on Oct. 29 at 154 King St. in downtown Charleston, The Post and Courier reported. It is the company’s first store beyond its Mount Pleasant flagship at 916 Houston Northcutt Blvd.

The King Street shop is starting with Brunello Cucinelli men’s and women’s clothing and fine jewelry, according to the newspaper. The second floor holds a bar and a private shopping suite. The company’s website describes that floor as a salon with private shopping suites and a full bar, and it offers complimentary transportation between the two stores. The third floor is an apartment that can be rented month to month, The Post and Courier reported.

A longer road than planned

Gwynn’s owners bought the three-story building in December 2024 for $3.1 million through Nomis 154 LLC, county records cited by The Post and Courier show.

When the family announced the expansion in April 2025, it planned a renovation that would add an elevator, restore the facade and install larger windows and doors, with an opening expected in spring 2026, the newspaper reported then. By July 2026, the store was targeting a late-summer debut, What Now Charleston reported. It opened at the end of October.

Marshall Simon, who has led the business since 1990, told The Post and Courier in 2025 that the company had looked at King Street for years. During former Mayor Joe Riley’s tenure, the owners discussed buying the building at the corner of Calhoun and King streets, a site that a buyer from Roswell, Georgia, later acquired and leased to Walgreens, the newspaper reported.

“The criteria was ownership and the right location,” Simon told The Post and Courier this fall.

A shoe in the ceiling

The renovation turned up an unexpected tenant. Contractors found an antique woman’s heel hidden in the ceiling, The Post and Courier reported.

Historians believe the shoe dates from the 1890s to the 1910s and was hidden as a “concealed shoe,” a good-luck tradition among immigrant families, according to the newspaper. Brittany Lavelle Tulla of BVL Historic Preservation researched the building’s history, and Virginia Theerman, a textile historian at the Charleston Museum, helped date the shoe.

Madison Simon, Marshall Simon’s daughter, and her father put the shoe back in the wall in a glass nook where shoppers can see it, the newspaper reported.

“It’s become a part of our story,” Madison Simon told The Post and Courier.

Three generations

Gwendolyn and Norris Ward founded Gwynn’s in 1967 as a 600-square-foot women’s clothing boutique on Coleman Boulevard, The Post and Courier reported in 2025. In the 1970s, the shop moved to Moultrie Plaza and added menswear, children’s clothing and gifts.

In 1991, the company bought 1.2 acres next to the Village Pointe shopping center and built its current store, which opened in 1992, according to the newspaper. The flagship carries labels including Jimmy Choo, Tory Burch and Tom Ford, The Post and Courier reported.

The Wards’ daughter, Lynn Simon, and her husband, Marshall Simon, later bought the store, What Now Charleston reported. Madison Simon, the third generation, is the company’s vice president and brand ambassador, according to The Post and Courier.

The founders did not see the opening. Norris Ward died July 3 and Gwendolyn Ward died Sept. 12, The Post and Courier reported.

The company’s website calls Gwynn’s “the Lowcountry’s only full luxury department store.”

The neighborhood

The new store sits on a stretch of lower King Street that already draws luxury shoppers. In 2025, The Post and Courier noted that St. John, Gucci and Louis Vuitton operate inside The Charleston Place hotel nearby, with Berlin’s and M. Dumas & Sons a few blocks south. Croghan’s Jewel Box was then renovating 155 King St., across the street, and the jeweler moved its store there in June 2025, What Now Charleston reported.

Madison Simon pointed in 2025 to the Four Seasons hotel planned a block away as a draw for visitors. That project’s timeline has since slipped. Its developer, Strategic Property Partners, said in September that it plans to break ground by the end of 2026 and targets completion in 2030.

For now, the Simons are running two stores on opposite sides of the Cooper River, with a shuttle between them.