BOSTON (AP) – Geraldine Graves is bidding goodbye, at least for now, to an old friend with whom she’s created happy memories for more than four decades.

Filene’s Basement has won its place in the hearts and wallets of countless shoppers like Graves with its allegiance to automatic markdowns and quirky bargain-hunting.

“I got a dress here back in the 1960s for 50 cents,” said Graves, a manager at a Boston nonprofit agency. “That dress lasted through the ’70s.”

Inflation has changed the math, but those kind of bargains were the norm at the store founded in 1908 by Edward Filene to sell off excess merchandise from his father’s department store upstairs.

That nearly centurylong run as a mecca for bargain bin junkies and tourists seeking a quintessential Boston experience is about to be broken. After the close of business Monday, the store isn’t due to reopen until sometime in 2009 – the owners aren’t yet saying exactly when a store renovation will be completed and the basement will be back in business.

The temporary shutdown of the store’s two subterranean floors will accommodate redevelopment of the former Filene’s department store building above ground in the Downtown Crossing shopping district.

A real estate developer plans a $600 million project to build a 38-story tower that will include retail, condominium, hotel and office space.

Mayor Thomas Menino, a regular Filene’s Basement shopper, had urged the store to temporarily relocate to vacant space nearby during the construction work above. But in June, the owner, Columbus, Ohio-based Retail Ventures Inc., decided against such a move because it couldn’t find a suitably large site nearby.

Boston leaders worry the temporary loss of Filene’s Basement will create a void in Downtown Crossing, which already saw last winter’s closure of the flagship Filene’s department store, a separate business entity from Filene’s Basement. Even more disappointed are die-hard Basement fans who now don’t know where to shop for the next two years.

In June, a posting on the Web site Craig’s List invited other Boston area residents to form a support group called “Survivors of Filene’s Basement Closure” with the plea: “What will the group do? I’m not sure, because honestly I can’t imagine life post-Basement. But my hope is that we can figure it out together.”

While there are 35 Filene’s Basement stores in cities as far away as Chicago, aficionados say there’s nothing quite like the original, with its lack of windows, crowded aisles and well-picked-over bargain bins of underwear and socks.

And then there’s the not-uncommon sight of shoppers partially disrobing to try on items in the aisles, rather than waiting in line for the communal changing rooms.

Some hope the renovation at the original store won’t cause it to resemble a glitzy Filene’s Basement that opened up last fall in Boston’s Back Bay. That store looks right at home in high-end neighborhood, and features doormen in caps and white gloves – touches that would seem alien at the original store, whose main entrance is next to a subway staircase.

“There are other Filene’s Basements, but they’re just like regular stores,” said Derick Mains, a 38-year-old Boston bartender who shops weekly at the original store. “You don’t get the bargain basement downstairs.”

Filene’s Basement says it invented a system in which the price tag on each item is marked with the date it hit the selling floor. Merchandise bears a current price and the future date of an automatic markdown price. The longer an item goes unsold, the greater the discount – leaving bargain hunters to weigh their desire for a better deal against the risk that someone else will buy an item before the price drops.

To try and beat the system, some shoppers have resorted to hiding items under other merchandise in hopes that it might still available when they returned by the next markdown date.

The original Basement is also famous for its twice-a-year “Running of the Brides,” where brides-to-be and helpers line up early outside the store. When the doors open, participants race toward racks that are sometimes stripped bare of cut-rate wedding gowns in as little as a minute or so – a spectacle that routinely draws national television news coverage.

In recent weeks, store aisles that were once packed with merchandise have been mostly depleted, and a closeout sale offered discounts as steep as 90 percent. More than 200 employees now must decide whether to return for the store’s reopening in a couple years.

The longest-serving employee is Sylvia Amenta, who started as a 17-year-old cashier in 1946 before working her way up. Now, the assistant store operations manager has just short of 61 years of service. The 77-year-old hopes to return when the store reopens, although not with her current 40-hours-a-week workload.

“I want to come back for a maybe a couple days a week,” said Amenta, who plans to take a break from working life during the temporary closure. “It’s like family in here. Filene’s Basement has been good to all of us employees over the years. I’m going to miss it, and everybody is going to miss it.”