Drug Stores, Soda Fountains, and Five & Dimes

/ Kimberly

Musical accompaniment: If You Want to Sing Out by Cat Stevens

 

Today’s selection is all about drug stores! Drug stores were extremely popular beginning around 1895, and usually were not limited to pharmaceuticals. Often they were hangouts for kids and teenagers, especially if there was a soda fountain! Most stores sold other common things like hardware and candles.

This beautiful picture of Washington DC’s Peoples Drug Store No. 5 was taken between 1915 and 1930.

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Here’s a shot from 1920. It’s still the Peoples Drug Store but not the same one. Possibly No. 4? I think this was a grand opening, which is why the police were there.

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I’d love to go look around inside! I couldn’t find an internal picture, but I did find a couple of other pictures of different drug stores.

This is the a New York drug store at Pennsylvania Station, circa 1910.  This one looks pretty cluttered! It’s got beautiful light fixtures.

 

Here’s a 1913 picture of G.W. Armstrong drug store. This is much more orderly than the Penn Station store. I believe this was taken in Colorado, but I’m not positive. Do you suppose this store had gaslight? The light fixtures are glowing!

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I’m not sure if it’s the glare or if this floor is sparkling clean. It looks like somebody worked hard on it. This was likely in Detroit, Michigan about 1910.

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S.C. Cocke Drugs in Fort Wayne, Indiana, circa 1905. What a wonderful looking place this is!  You can have a soda while someone fills your prescription!

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And here’s one in San Juan, Puerto Rico, circa 1905. This drug store belonged to Alfonso G. Zerbi. It looks very boutique!
I wonder if the two guys on the left worked there or were just customers.  They look very dapper.

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Okay, last one. Look at that beautiful cash register! This is W.B. Danforth Drugs, circa 1905, in Wilmington, Delaware.

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7 thoughts on “Drug Stores, Soda Fountains, and Five & Dimes”

  1. If you zoom in on the Michigan drug store picture, you can detect two young men who are partially transparent. They were evidently not in the shot long enough to appear fully in the photograph.

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  3. My boyhood town had a pharmacy with a dwindling soda fountain business as well as a small restaurant that had a soda fountain. (Gosh, did I like the cherry cokes from a soda fountain and the root beer floats.) Today, the former is an art gallery and the latter is a coffee shop with “Trading Company” in its name.

    Another retail business with a soda fountain carried over from the late 1800s and early 1900s was the 5¢ &10¢ stores. F. W. Woolworth’s and Ben Franklin’s were the two national chains. Woolworth’s started from a single store in the 1870s, finally going out of business in 1997. Ben Franklin’s started in 1870s as well and also disappeared due to bankruptcy in 1997. I sat at the soda fountain counter of a Woolworth’s in 1984/1985 in downtown Atlanta. It was a great lunch spot; the three-decker, turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich on toasted bread was outstanding.

    There are a few 5¢ &10¢ stores in business today. One is Vidler’s in East Aurora, NY:

    https://www.vidlers5and10.com

    Some others are listed on Vidler’s blog: https://www.vidlers5and10.com/blog/8-of-the-oldest-5-10-stores-still-open-today

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    • There are some of those stores in Asheville. There was a great “General Store” near where I lived in North Carolina, in Belmont. When I wrote this I tried to find another hardware/general store I visited in NC but I couldn’t find it. I believe it was in Mooresville. I talked to the owner and it was a family business that opened in the early 1900s. It had a big striped awning out front. They still had the original telephone there. The phone number was something like 14.

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