More from my neighborhood...

It has been a while since I wrote about another longstanding business (and/or landmark!) in my neighborhood, and I’ve been meaning to write about this one for a while: Lascoff and Sons Pharmacy, which has been in business since 1899 and located in its current little castle on the corner of 82^nd and Lexington since 1931.  The building used to be an ordinary brownstone, but when Lascoff remodeled it to house his expanding business he was inspired by sixteenth and seventeenth century apothecary shops.  Hence, gothic windows and turreted doorway!  The windows now display not only Italian soaps and sunhats, but also school-project-style poster boards that provide history and trivia about the store: for instance, they sold leeches to Salvador Dali for him to use as models for his paintings!

 

The interior is also remarkable – you can see pictures here, on the Forgotten NY Website – as well as remarkably quiet.  I’ve never seen more than one other customer in there at a time, which worries me a little, though I suspect that the family still owns the building and that they do much of their business via delivery.  Still, I always make a point of buying something, because I’m sentimental about pharmacies and miss the days when they were family-run.  In the suburban town where I grew up, I think there used to be five – a couple in the commercial blocks around the train station, and a few more in the commercial blocks near the post office and municipal center.  My family patronized one in the train station area, and we quickly got to know the pharmacist quite well.  I always loved it when my mother had to pick something up at the pharmacy, because I was completely amazed by a glass case that extended along the entire right wall of the store and displayed glass bottles of eau de toilette and fancy round soaps in all colors.  The shelf opposite this case was just as exciting – it held things like Kneipp’s herbal baths (I couldn’t guess what they were for, but I thought they must be wonderful) and a rack of lipsticks.  When I was around twelve, however, I realized the difficulty of going to a drugstore run by a pharmacist who knew my mother: as I offered up a handful of crumpled dollar bills to buy a frosted pink lipstick that I viewed as being absolutely illicit and very probably immoral, I was struck by the sudden fear that he was going to tell on me!  I decided that from then on I would add to my secret beauty stash from businesses on the other side of town.

Eventually, my parents stopped going there too, because in the early nineties their health insurance company sent them to a discount pharmacy for prescription drugs – and then to a larger chain after that – and one after another, each of the family-run pharmacies in that town disappeared.  I felt (and still feel) really sad about it; not only did I spend many, many happy hours staring at those glass cases filled with luxury toiletries that no CVS will ever replicate, but to be a pharmacist seemed like a good, solid, profession, one where you could have your own small, reliable business serving neighborhood families who would always need something: aspirin or toothpaste or a heating pad or prescriptions.  Now the pharmacists that I glimpse behind the counters at Duane Reade (now owned by Walgreens) or CVS always look weary and a little depressed, and I don’t think that I’m just reading that into their expressions.  At a minimum, I can say that I’ve never once seen one of those pharmacists looking happy.  And there’s certainly no more, “Oh, hello Mr. So&So!  Is your wife feeling any better?”

Last winter, I stepped into a new store I noticed in my parents' town that was selling a lot of upscale toiletries.  The man behind the counter came over to help me, and somehow my use of the word “goo” led to the revelation that I’d grown up there, which led to his asking me if I remembered the pharmacy he used to run – the one that was right next to a Grand Union supermarket, now also gone.  “Oh, yes!” I cried, “the perfume case was to the right of the door, and the hairbrushes were along the wall to the left…” for he ran the nirvana of all pharmacies for the sort of girl who feels that buying perfume is a much more desirable sign of oncoming womanhood than buying a training bra (a mortifying experience at best).   His shop was very swanky indeed; the entire front part of the store was dedicated to upscale toiletries, perfumes, bath products, and things like barrettes and make-up cases.  No Coty eau de toilette for him, he carried Chanel, and in fact I’m quite certain that I bought my first bottle of “real” perfume (Coco Chanel – both a huge splurge and a dangerously strong fragrance for a teenager) in that store.

But I digress.  The former owner of this fancy pharmacy was very eager to chat about days gone by, and why the family pharmacies in my hometown are now extinct.  “The insurance companies killed us,” he said.  “There was no way to make money any more with the drug plans – only stores like CVS that are big enough to make money off of other things could survive.”  And indeed, a CVS now flanks each end of the town, and with the exception of one small discount pharmacy in a little shopping area along a major thoroughfare, that’s it.

In my neighborhood in Manhattan, I notice a better survival rate of the old chemists.  I wonder how much of this has to do with building ownership, or if the surrounding community is simply more stable and loyal – or wealthy?  There’s Lascoff’s, there’s Eisler Chemist on the corner of 79^th and Lexington, and a handful of other small druggists dot Lexington Avenue as you walk downtown towards Bloomingdales.  I greatly appreciate the fact that they’re still here, and so I try to patronize them when I need something basic.  Lascoff’s doesn’t have a big supply of practical items, so because I don’t have prescriptions to fill I buy enormous bars of fancy soap there for $7.  I know, I know, that sounds like a ridiculous sum of money for a mere bar of soap, but I just checked, and drugstore.com is selling bottles of Dove body wash for $8.99, and I’m sure my big bar of soap lasts at least as long AND saves me from using another plastic bottle.  And of course, I tell myself that spending the extra money is my contribution to the neighborhood.  May Lascoff’s and Eisler’s and their ilk live long!

Comments

[Melissa]

Nice post!