K&B vs Eckerd (and Walgreens vs Rite Aid) (New Orleans: shopping centers, design)

[wardwhirlboromarlpool1955]

How many stores (approximately) did Eckerd have in New Orleans? I know K&B was the preferred drugstore of most residents by far, but I found a very old-looking former Eckerd store on Carrollton Ave. A Walgreens is next door to where it used to be but appears to not have been part of the Eckerd, which now is a Sherwin-Williams paint store. Could the Walgreens have been a Weingarten's supermarket at one time? That was a chain based in Houston that started around 1964 and was bought by Safeway circa 1984. Or perhaps what now is the Sherwin-Williams was an Eckerd liquor department, but the Walgreens was the rest of the Eckerd?

[alsidw]

The Walgreens used to be a Winn Dixie Grocery in the shopping center.

[wardwhirlboromarlpool1955]

Thanks so much! I was also wondering... could the Eckerd next door have actually started as a K&B, but was sold to Eckerd in 1997 when the rest of the K&B chain was sold to Rite Aid? Coincidentally (or maybe not?) Eckerd made a huge acquisition that same year, when they bought Thrift Drug/Fay's drugstores in PA and NY. Also, could the Eckerd have been a CVS for a short time (after Eckerd), but perhaps CVS mounted a "pane" sign in a square box on the front of the store, in contrast to the letters directly stuck to the facade used by Eckerd, so the CVS sign didn't leave a stain when it came down but the Eckerd sign did?

[wardwhirlboromarlpool1955]

Did Walgreens have stores in New Orleans in the 80's if not earlier? I know they entered Houston (they came from Chicago) no later than 1984, but perhaps was not interested in a smaller city such as New Orleans. But Eckerd must have been here in at least the 1970s as they started in Florida. Also, did either Walgreens or Eckerd have soda fountains (or ice cream served on the premises) at their New Orleans stores long ago?

[Jimbo_1]

That Walgreens on Canal street has been open since 1938. According to this article, When did Krauss, Walgreens, and Woolworth's open on Canal Street? | Blake Pontchartrainâ„¢: New Orleans Trivia | Gambit - New Orleans News and Entertainment, it was the fifth one to open in Louisiana and it had a soda fountain. It still has that 1930s look, https://maps.google.com/?hl=en&ll=29...63.01,,0,-7.95.

Also there used to be an Eckerd at Canal street and Jeff Davis.

[wardwhirlboromarlpool1955]

Could this shopping center (on Carrollton) have been built before 1955? Or maybe even before 1950? I wonder because shopping centers, and most retail establishments that resemble at all how we know them today for that matter, didn't really exist until after WWII. And I suspect this is a late 1940s shopping center, due to it having so many small stores clustered together but no large anchor, not to mention the style of glass the Eckerd/Sherwin-Williams windows have. This Virginia ABC liquor store has the same style of windows, and opened circa 1948: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFevY0y4v8c

Also, I happened to notice in Google Maps and Bing Maps that the design of the shopping center with this ABC (this is Arlington VA near DC, and a CVS is next to the ABC store) is VERY similar to the design of the Carrollton site, but the center here in New Orleans is twice the size of the ABC building in Arlington. Isn't it ironic that both of these just happen to be below the Mason-Dixon line, yet most Southern states in between Louisiana and Virginia are so rural they don't even have much in the way of shopping centers at all? The Atlanta area of Georgia, most of Florida, and to a lesser extent, parts of North Carolina are exceptions however.