Old Cincinnati Pharmacies (Sharonville, Reading, Montgomery: high school, pharmacist, store)

[webbbj]

Originally Posted by goyguy

No relation to Rahe's Meats, I take it. Wrong vowel!

I am not sure but there is a meat store in the small plaza named R&R Quality Meats.

[t45209]

Originally Posted by goyguy

I hope that diary was saved for posterity. I love seeing "ephemeral" stuff like that from previous generations of my family (especially photos. )
Teens are never satisfied with jobs, no matter what decade they reached that phase of their life in. Not to discount this relative's experience, exactly, but there's that to consider. The mentality that you can just stand around and wait to ring up a customer gets disavowed fast! And the manager might not appreciate your having four friends sharing "the latest" with you for hours either.

There could have been some of that, but she complained that the pay was horrible, the hours were long, and the customers were insufferable. She quit Igler's to go to work for the Tool Steel Gear & Pinion Co. on Township Ave in Elmwood, and stayed there through the war years. In stark contrast, Tool Steel was a comparative dream job for her. She loved that company.

[kjbrill]

Those of us who are old enough to remember the neighborhood pharmacy surely do miss them. Just like we miss the local grocery store, the baker, the butcher, and the rest. But few of us will go out of our way to support those still surviving.

I have to admit we still have a local, family owned pharmacy, Yost alive and well here in Mason. I also have to admit we are not current customers. We were for a number of years until we became too lazy.

Then the pharmacy at the grocery store just became too convenient. Drop the prescription off at Kroger, pursue our dinner for the day, and pick it up. Way too easy, one stop shopping. Yes, the Big Box store, or at least the local Supermarket did the small pharmacy in, along with the butcher, the baker, and the candle stick maker.

We can lament the demise of the family owned business and the people we used to know by name when we shopped there. The biggest loss is the ability to recognize which of our neighbors owned the bakery, the butcher shop, and the other small businesses around town. We knew them as both neighbors and business people. Our kids also knew their kids, perhaps the best benefit. That is a portion of society which has been lost. That close knit feeling of neighorhood is something which is gone, much to our chagrin.

[t45209]

Most of us are too young to remember Cincinnati's most successful drug store chain, Dow's Drugs. The first Dow store was on West Fifth street, operated by Edwin Dow, however in 1885 he took ill with tuberculosis and his 17 year old daughter, Martha Cornelius Dow was compelled to help see the family business through. Cora had been an aspiring opera student, but she gave that up to study pharmacy. By 1887, her father had turned the business over to her entirely, and Cora had graduated second in her class. By law she was still too young to dispense drugs, but she was rather an enterprising young woman. She moved the store and bought out the nearby competition. She introduced a soda fountain, and added novel departments like a perfume counter, cosmetics, and tobacco. This innovative approach was widely copied by other local competition, but Dow's remained king, or should I say queen?

By the mid 1890s, Dow's had at least seven locations in downtown and Walnut Hills. The Vine Street location was the first of its kind to be open 24 hours. Cora was a stickler for quality in her stores, and was unhappy with the ice cream her soda fountains were serving, so to solve that problem, she bought her own ice cream plant.

Dow's continued to prosper, and if you look at old photos of downtown, it seems like a Dow's was on nearly every corner. Sources vary on the number of locations, but Dow's had become the second largest drugstore chain in the country, and was larger than Walgreens. Unfortunately, though, like her father, Cora contracted tuberculosis and was forced to sell the chain in 1915. At her death that year, she left $700,000 to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Dow's continued to grow, although it's easy to assume that without Cora at the helm, things would never be the same. Dow's had about 40 locations by the start of WWII, and had even expanded beyond Cincinnati.

Eventually, it seems that the Dow's name faded in favor of the Rexall brand, of which Dow's had become an agent, and so the legacy of this pioneering Cincinnati woman has largely been forgotten.

[WILWRadio]

Why isn't "pharmacy" pronounced "Far Maysee"? :-) Always wondered about that.

[franke01]

There was a pharmacy in the strip mall at the corner of Silvercrest and Montgomery. It was opposite Westendorf's which occupied the other end of the building with several stores in between.

I remember getting Vanilla Cokes there on the way home from St Vincents about a million years ago!

[mike1003]

Barrow's Avondale then RR and Summit
Izzy Fleishman's downtown
Howard Katz's store on Mohawk
Sam Horwitz's Finley market area
Charkins on Vine

[kjbrill]

Originally Posted by mike1003

Barrow's Avondale then RR and Summit
Izzy Fleishman's downtown
Howard Katz's store on Mohawk
Sam Horwitz's Finley market area
Charkins on Vine

Lots of old names. Can't say I ever shopped in any of them. But I am sure many people did. The old time pharmacy is just another neighborhood business which has disappeared.

[kjbrill]

When I got to the age I needed a Medicare Part D insurance policy, I started with Humana. When my wife got to the same age I signed her up also with Humana. Their mail order pharmacy was convenient. But my wife takes several types of medications, I don't. Her Doctor switches the medications when he considers the current ones are becoming ineffective. Humana began to irritate me when they denied approval of some of the medications and kept advising some generic substitute to which the Doctor said NO! I even went so far as to contact the manufacturer of the medication and requested them to petition Humana for coverage.

I finally got fed up and started shopping for a new insurer. Now I do most of my shopping online. I emailed my wife's complete drug list to a number of insurers with Part D policies and requested they respond with a statement of coverage. The best response was from Aetna, all drugs covered. Now Aetna is in bed with CVS. We have a CVS right around the corner which is on our way to Kroger. They have been so easy to deal with. We have the Doctor provide us with 90 day prescriptions and basically a year's worth of refills. We get a nice phone call when our refill is ready for pickup. When the year runs out, they contact the doctor and request a new prescription. Dealing with them has been a pleasure. Not the same as a neighborhood druggist, but someone in CVS has required a customer oriented procedure. I assume that someone makes some big bucks.

[h Steve]

Stewart's Pharmacy on Worth Ave. Noorwood.