Gerdt Furniture closing Castleton location

Gerdt Furniture & Interiors is closing its Castleton store after 26 years of selling sectional sofas, dinette sets and other furniture from the location.

The store is liquidating its merchandise and is marking down prices as much as 70 percent.

According to the company’s website, Gerdt is selling its Castleton building at 8602 Allisonville Road.

A member of the Gerdt family could not be reached Wednesday morning to comment on the closing.

Gerdt’s original and remaining store in Southport will remain open.

Edward Gerdt, a detective for the city of Indianapolis in the 1950s, opened the Southport store in 1959 after saving enough money to realize his dream of operating his own business.

The store sold mattresses before broadening its inventory to include furniture.

In the beginning, Ed was the only salesman and two of his four sons made deliveries. His wife, Ethelynne, completed a course in interior design and became the store’s designer.

Responding to customer requests, Gerdt opened the Castleton store in 1986. In 1992, it moved from its original location in Southport into a larger, 50,000-square-foot south-side store.

In 1999, Gerdt added a warehouse in Greenwood to create more showroom space at the two stores.

The Castleton location isn’t the first Gerdt store to close. The company opened a 65,000-square-foot store along U.S. 36 in Avon in late 2006 but shut it in August 2009 as sales softened during the recession.