Frost Bros. is gone. The Vogue Shop is gone. Joske's, once one of the largest department stores in the state, is gone too. All three were fixtures of the shopping district that used to sit around Commerce and Houston Streets downtown, the place San Antonians rode streetcars to when a new coat or a formal dress required a trip to town. Julian Gold, a family-run specialty shop founded the same era those stores thrived in, is still standing on McCullough Avenue in Olmos Park; its Love Token Fall Trunk Show was scheduled for September 23 and 24.
The Golds moved their operation to McCullough Avenue in 1962.
From Downtown to Olmos Park
According to San Antonio Magazine, Julian and Dorothy Gold opened their namesake shop in 1945 on North Main Avenue, a dress store that also carried coats and a handful of separates. It was one entry in a downtown retail scene crowded with competitors doing the same thing at larger scale. Frost Bros., The Vogue Shop, and Joske's were competitors in that retail scene.
By 1962, the Golds had moved their operation to 4109 McCullough Avenue, into Olmos Park's small, self-contained business district. The building sits in the same Mediterranean Revival style that shaped much of Olmos Park's original 1920s plan, a look the neighborhood's founders favored for the estates going up around it.
Frost Bros., The Vogue Shop, and Joske's don't operate anymore. Julian Gold does, from the same McCullough Avenue address it's held for over sixty years.
The Family That Never Sold
The store has stayed in one family's hands the entire time. Bob Gurwitz, who married Julian and Dorothy's daughter Gail, took over operations in the 1960s and is credited with building the shop into the regional name it became.
"I don't want to sell it."
In a 2015 SA Woman report, Gurwitz said this about the business's future. James Glover joined the company in 1988 and worked directly under Gurwitz before eventually taking over as president and CEO. Glover's daughter, Courtney G. Percy, now serves as the company's vice president of marketing. She grew up in the store, worked in its gift-wrapping department as a teenager, and her mother works there too, as one of the buyers.
As San Antonio Magazine reported, Percy said, "We like to consider ourselves a generational experience." It's a workforce with real tenure behind that claim. Julian Gold employs 66 people across its five locations today, and some have been on staff since the 1990s.
What Started as Coats and Separates
The inventory has changed with the decades in a way that tracks fairly closely with how American women dressed. What began in 1945 as a shop selling dresses, coats, and a few separates expanded by the early 1970s into more sportswear and coordinated pieces, reflecting the styles of the moment. By the 1980s, hats and cosmetics had been added, and ownership had settled on a broader idea: outfit a woman head to toe rather than sell one category well. That approach eventually built the store's reputation for carrying designers like Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera.
A bridal salon now occupies the second floor. A small menswear section rounds out the ground level. The amenities that set the store apart from bigger retailers early on, complimentary gift wrap and on-site alterations, are still part of the pitch.
The store also expanded well beyond San Antonio. Locations opened in Corpus Christi and Midland during the 1950s, Austin in 2002, and Lubbock in 2022.
| Location | Open Since |
|---|---|
| San Antonio (Olmos Park) | 1945, moved to McCullough Ave. in 1962 |
| Corpus Christi | 1950s |
| Midland | 1950s |
| Austin | 2002 |
| Lubbock | 2022 |
The five stores were added over several decades, and the business remains owned by the same family that opened the first one on North Main Avenue.
The September Trunk Show
Julian Gold's Love Token Fall Trunk Show was scheduled for September 23 and 24, featuring faux fur coats and sweater coats built around the craftsmanship and design the store has staked its name on for eighty years. Trunk shows aren't new territory here. The shop has hosted them for decades, along with fashion shows built around Fiesta season, and past events have brought in outside names like shoe designer Donald Pliner, who once made an in-store appearance to consult with customers directly.
The fall show follows a spring one. Julian Gold hosted a KASTEL Fine Jewelry Trunk Show in May, built around gemstones, diamonds, and pearls. Two seasonal trunk shows a year, spring and fall, is close to the rhythm the store has kept for most of its history, not a one-off tied to an anniversary year.
This year happens to be the 81st since the Golds opened their first location, following a full 2025 marked by the company's "80 Years of Elegance" campaign and events across all five stores.
The Rest of the Fall Calendar
The trunk show has wrapped, but McCullough Avenue's fall calendar continues. Olmos Park City Hall is hosting its Halloween event on October 31 from 5 to 7 p.m., with treats, a costume contest, and sign-ups for the city's Bike Rodeo. It's a short walk from the same business district Julian Gold has anchored since 1962, part of the same small-town rhythm that's kept the neighborhood's commercial core intact while so much of San Antonio's downtown retail scene didn't survive the transition to a car-dependent, mall-driven city.
Julian Gold remains a family-run shop at its McCullough Avenue location, after decades of change in San Antonio retail.
If Olmos Park's habit of holding onto what works, in its retailers as much as its architecture, is the kind of place you want to understand before you ever need a real estate agent, Cory Bakke has been walking this neighborhood's streets for longer than most trunk shows have been running.
