Best Corner Drugstores in St. Louis, Missouri

If you drive through almost any neighborhood in St. Louis, you’ll notice something different about the brick buildings that sit on the corner of the street: they all have very large plate glass windows and doors that are catty cornered to the curb. The reason for this is that back before the age of the automobile, and right on up to the advent of the big supermarket, drugstore, and discount department store chains, practically every corner in the city had a corner market, drugstore, or tavern. Walk one block in any direction and chances are that you would stumble onto one of these establishments.

There were two corner drugstores in Lafayette Square where I grew up. Walking a block in either direction got you there. There was one on the corner of 18th and Chouteau that still had an old-fashioned soda fountain where you could get a deliciously sweet cherry Coke in a fountain glass with crushed ice. In the other direction was a Rexall that had a huge magazine rack with all of the latest comic books. The rest of the store was filled with greeting cards, candy, tobacco, and assorted knick-knacks. By the pharmacy counter sat several apothecary jars filled with mysterious concoctions. Back in those days, the pharmacists really were chemists, (as they still call them in Britain), and they formulated a lot of pills, powders, ointments, and syrups right there behind the counter. Now it just seems that all they do is count pills.