as "a sweet song about Dawn of the Dead." Anchor stores The Monroeville Mall's original anchor tenants at its opening in May 1969 were the Pittsburgh-based Joseph Horne Company, Gimbels, and JCPenney. A freestanding Montgomery Ward store would also arrive in the 1970s; however, it would close by the mid-1980s as part of a restructuring plan at the time. In 1970, the entire Gimbels chain was purchased by the tobacco conglomerate BATUS. In 1986, after years of declining sales, BATUS announced that Gimbels was on the block. Unable to find a buyer for the entire chain, BATUS closed down the entire Gimbels Pittsburgh division, selling or closing all locations. Some of the more attractive mall locations, such as the Monroeville Mall, were taken over by the St. Louis-based May Department Stores Company for its Pittsburgh-based Kaufmann's division. This effectively caused the shuttering of the entire Gimbels Pittsburgh division. The Monroeville Mall location was closed, completely renovated and expanded into the building's unused third floor, before reopening as Kaufmann's. In 2006, when the May Department Stores Company was purchased by Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores, this store was acquired by Boscov's, as Macy's was already located in the former Horne's location at the opposite end of the mall. In October 2008, Boscov's closed their Monroeville store as part of a bankruptcy plan. The Joseph Horne Company, owned by the New York City-based Associated Dry Goods Corporation, operated in Monroeville Mall until 1994. It would be renovated and expanded, utilizing the store's unused third floor, over the course of its operation through the years. In October 1986, the May Department Stores Company merged with Associated Dry Goods. May promptly sold the Horne's chain to a group of local investors. In 1995, Federated Department Stores acquired Horne's and renamed all former locations under its own Lazarus regional nameplate. In 2005, Federated eventually merged all its divisions (including the former Joseph Horne/Lazarus locations) into Macy's as part of a nationwide rebranding program. JCPenney was the last original anchor at the Monroeville Mall. From 1969–2012, it operated its original store in the center of the mall; however, by late 2012 it opened in a smaller location on the upper two levels of the former Boscov's building, as the existing department store anchor was demolished to make way for the 12-screen Cinemark Theatres and in-line shops, which opened in the fall of 2013. H&M has also committed