Vintage Chicago Tribune: Walgreens has been the backdrop for our city's history

Chicago Tribune

13-03-2025

Charles Rudolph Walgreen Sr., son of Swedish immigrants, moved here from Dixon, Illinois, just as people from around the globe arrived for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Walgreen struggled, however, to keep a job that excited him. It took a near-death experience in Cuba while fighting with the Illinois National Guard for Walgreen to pursue a slower pace of life.
What Walgreen found at 4134 Cottage Grove Ave., on the first floor of The Barrett Hotel, was a shabby, dimly lit apothecary owned by Isaac W. Blood. Though poorly stocked and short of customers, Walgreen realized the South Side store's potential. Through hard work and innovation, the 20-something saved up enough money to buy a partnership in the business. For a while it was known as Blood-Walgreen before Walgreen bought it outright and had the name 'C.R. Walgreen, R.Ph.' placed in gold letters above the store's entrance. The year was 1901 and the establishment became the very first Walgreens location.
Today, Deerfield-based Walgreens has more than 12,500 locations across the United States, Europe and Latin America. Last week, the company announced it is being acquired by a private-equity firm for $10 billion, which will take it private.
As Tribune photo editor Marianne Mather looked through the Tribune's photo archive she realized that much of the city's history has been intertwined with the Walgreens chain. Here's a look back at some of what she discovered.
Summer 1919: Race riots
By then incorporated as Walgreen Co., the drugstore became popular in the early 1910s for its speedy drug delivery known as the 'two-minute drill' — in which the items were at a nearby customer's door before they ended a phone call to the pharmacist — and its elegant soda fountains that not only served fizzy, nonalcoholic drinks but also hot meals during colder weather.
But it was a long, hot summer in 1919 that would give Walgreens and other local businesses a front seat to the city's most violent racial conflict that became known as 'Red Summer.' Seventeen-year-old Black boy Eugene Williams was stoned to death on July 27, 1919, at 29th Street Beach at Lake Michigan after he floated into a swimming area designated for whites.
Williams' death played a pivotal role in inflaming existing racial tensions that led to a weeklong race riot that left 23 Black and 15 white people dead. More than 500 people were injured and hundreds homeless due to arson.
The 1919 riots 'didn't seem to make it into the timeline alongside titanic stories about Fort Dearborn, Jean-Baptiste Point du Sable, the World's Columbian Exposition, the 1968 riot, Richard J. Daley, or Harold Washington,' wrote Eve Ewing in her book of poetry '1919.' In fact, only a small marker on the beach near the spot Williams was killed commemorates the days of rioting that followed.
April 7, 1933: Beer boom
Walgreen's introduced in April 1933 a perfume bar for women, which was believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. The amenity joined chocolate-dipped candies and employee Ivar Coulson's chocolate malted milk shake — which was invented in 1922 at the Loop store, 17 E. Washington St., before becoming available at all 33 outlets in 1923 — as early Walgreens mainstays.
But that same month, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act into law and the Prohibition era neared conclusion. For the first time in 13 years, thirsty Chicagoans could legally buy a beer and enjoy it in public — even at Walgreens.
1945: World War II's end
Walgreens survived the Great Depression — while opening four stores at the 1933 Century of Progress on Northerly Island — and saw its first change in leadership with the death of Walgreen Sr. on Dec. 11, 1939. Charles R. Walgreen Jr., who had earned a pharmacy degree from the University of Michigan, was tapped to take over.
Writing kits, comic sheets, playing cards and smoking tobacco were inexpensive options at Walgreens stores to mail to service members stationed overseas during World War II. But when Victory in Europe Day arrived, the drugstores closed for business on May 8, 1945, to celebrate with the rest of the city.
Walgreen Jr. led the company's change to a new concept that was sweeping the nation post-World War II, called self-service retailing, where customers could choose products from shelves by themselves. Previously, most retail goods were kept behind the counters and store employees would gather products for customers. Stores were becoming larger and carried a wider variety of merchandise.
By the early 1960s, Walgreens had established its own line of vitamins and supplements, packaged prescription medication in childproof containers and hosted a call-in show with a doctor on WBBM radio.
Three generations of the Walgreen family were at the opening of the more than 20,000-square-foot outlet at Harlem-Irving Plaza — the chain's largest at the time — on Aug. 20, 1964.
September 1966: Fills 150 millionth prescription
The fiscal outlook for 1966, according to Walgreen Jr., would be a 'very good year,' he told the Tribune. With the debut of Medicare, Walgreens expected to benefit from a greater number of prescriptions filled.
In the company's 65th year, it expected to open 48 outlets and was recognized for filling its 150 millionth prescription.
Oct. 29, 1979: State Street Mall opens and Walgreens location looks to benefit from foot traffic
Mayor Jane Byrne was at State Street Mall (stretching from Wacker Drive to Congress Parkway, which is now known as Ida B. Wells Drive) on Oct. 29, 1979, to lay a ceremonial paving stone. A week of celebrations featured a polka band, dancing dalmatians, trick unicyclists and members of the Honey Bears, the cheerleading squad for the Chicago Bears, passing out chrysanthemums, the Tribune reported.
The city hoped that the $17 million project would revitalize the downtown shopping district and increase property values.
Sept. 6, 1984: 1,000th store opens
The opening of Walgreens' 1,000th store at Dearborn and Division's street on the city's North Side on Sept. 6, 1984, was attended by Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and husband-wife actors Cary Grant and Barbara Harris. The Tribune's 'Inc.' column took note of Harris' 'enormous sapphire and diamond ring' and called it inappropriate for the 9 a.m. event.
Grant, then 80 years old, attended the event on behalf of Faberge, which was a major supplier of goods for the chain.
The decade started energetically for the company, which filled its 500 millionth prescription in October 1980 and became the first drugstore chain to top $2 billion in sales, according to 'Pharmacist to the Nation: A History of Walgreen Co.,' written in 1989 by Tribune reporters and father-son duo Herman Kogan and Rick Kogan.
March 2020: Coronavirus pandemic
As Americans navigated shutdowns and the disappearance of goods like toilet paper and Clorox wipes from store shelves, Walgreens became a frequent destination for quick trips to buy face masks, household supplies and medication. Others booked appointments for their first COVID-19 screening or vaccination at the chain.
Walgreens emerged from the pandemic, buoyed in part by its key role in providing COVID vaccinations for Americans yearning to emerge from lockdown isolation. 'The role of the pharmacist and local pharmacy is now more vital than ever,' then-CEO Roz Brewer said in October 2021.
Want more vintage Chicago?
Thanks for reading!