WHELAN'S DRUG STORE
Eighth Avenue and West 44th Street
FEBRUARY 7, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 67

This photograph, originally titled Modern Drug Store, depicts a new type of commercial enterprise. Replacing independent pharmacies that specialized in medicines, chain stores like Whelan's offered a wide array of low-priced toiletries, appliances, toys, candies, cigarettes, and, almost incidentally, drugs. In 1939, there were some 200 Whelan's stores in the country, half of which were in the metropolitan New York area. The trend was still new, however, with chain stores constituting less than 10 percent of the nation's pharmacy business.

This Whelan's was advantageously located in the heart of the theater district across the street from the new Lincoln Hotel. Like Abbott's photograph of the A & P store near Gramercy Park, the image documents major shifts in the city's consumer habits. Abbott's interior of a Bronx country store, by contrast, shows the endurance in outlying areas of traditional commercial enterprise.

Whelan's pioneered the chain store approach to selling pharmaceuticals, but it no longer exists. The store in Abbott's photograph occupied either the southwest or northwest corner of West 44th Street and Eighth Avenue; both buildings are extant and house, respectively, a souvenir shop and a coffee shop.

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