Luger Furniture Company

Ferdinand Luger, founder of Luger's Furniture was born in Austria in 1831. He learned the cabinet making trade, prior to coming to America. In the early 1860's he moved to Wabasha, Minnesota and started a successful furniture factory with his brother. The Luger Furniture Company also owned a factory in St. Paul, Minnesota. Ferdinand Luger traveled the territory as a furniture salesman, and started a furniture store in Fargo in 1877. The original Luger Furniture store was located on the northeast corner of Broadway and N.P. Avenue in a building called Chapin Hall.
In the 1883, Luger built a new building at 716 Front Street, as well as a large brick warehouse at 14 8th Street South. The March 11, 1883 Sunday Argus announced the opening of the new store, and made the following description:

On entering the front door on the first floor you come in contact with an immense display of fine writing desks, office furniture of all kinds, sideboards, chamber suites, and in fact any and everything you can think of. Then looking around you see the handsome J. H. Dolliver, head salesman, who is always ready to show customers everything in the house. Then if you desire to examine something in the line of upholstered goods you get on an elevator and are taken to the second floor where everything in this line is kept. Next you go via the elevator to the basement, which is used as a repository for chairs of all makes and designs. The entire building is well arranged and specially erected and adapted for the furniture business on a large scale.

By 1898, the business had grown to such a size that larger quarters were needed, so a new building was constructed at 12-14 Broadway. The Fargo operation handled much of the furniture trade in North Dakota and northern Minnesota. As will all furniture stores of its day, Luger Furniture also sold coffins and employed a licensed embalmer and undertaker. The company handled much of Fargo’s early funerals until the this part of their business was sold to John V. Boulger and E. J. Hughes in May 1920. The Boulger & Hughes Funeral Homes is still in operation today. The building at 12-14 Broadway was the home of Luger's until 1959, when it was purchased by the adjacent Herbst Department Store.