The entire facebook group from Murray, Iowa are all in a tizzy. What they thought that it was, isn't. An older photo of a drugstore on main street of Murray was identified as the Coleman's Drug Store. It does look a little bit like it but it isn't, The great nephew of the owner of that store says it is not his uncles place of business. I actually think it is the store across the street, Power's Drug. There were actually two drug stores, no pharmacists worked in either store, while I was in high school. The 60's was the era that they both were in business and one of them could have originally looked like this. I remember they both had back doors to the store rooms. One of them had built in shelves with sliding glass doors that would hold asprin and other cold medicines. Laxatives and lotions for bee bites and things like that lined the shelves.
There is a guy sitting there with his suitcase which tells me he is waiting for a train. The woman in the back must be cleaning the tables. The window at the back would have gone to the alley which makes it the other drugstore. Both places of business did have swirling seats at the counter when I was young and those could have been added later of course.
All in all it is a fun photo. It is a piece of history that has been captured in time. What time we don't know but it looks like all of those kind of business back in the early 1900's. The fun part will be if the folks my age will eventually have a person speak up and tell us the real identity of the business in Murray, Iowa.
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8 comments:
I think I have seen this photo before....perhaps on a Sepia Saturday post? Good detective work identifying the image.
I love the look of old drug stores, especially when they had a lunch counter. They always take me back to my childhood when Grandma would take me with her shopping downtown and we'd have lunch at Woolworth's or Grants. I liked twisting back and forth on the stool. They weren't of the same period as the one in your photo, but the feeling is similar.
Oh I do like a quandry. And isn't Facebook a fantastic tool for sharing a dilemma such as this. What do they call it? Crowd sourcing..that's it. I just love the ability of the web to help you pose such problems as this and hopefully eventually find an answer.Don't you just wish you could see the bottles/cans on the shelf more closely to see what they are?
I remember the soda fountain that was in the drugstore of my hometown in the mid-1950s. The drugstore looked kind of like that, with glass cases on the side opposite the soda fountain.
I am always pleased when someone tells me I have a location identified incorrectly. So many places look alike and we often don't record exactly where we were. Old photos like yours remind us to be more careful.
So nice to have a little mystery and know that folk are in a 'tizzy' about it. There is nothing like this scene in my own younger days in UK, no drugstore, no soda fountain.
It's so easy to assume in family and local history, so great when people are 'brave' enough to stand up and say 'that is wrong'. I hope someone comes forward and solves the mystery.
I love a little controversy - it seems counter intuitive but it helps to clarify everything really.
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