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Washington, D.C., circa 1921. "Warehouse, People's Drug Store." Next door to the Knights of Columbus Evening School Garage in what seems to be the auto-repair district. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.
Seen previously on Shorpy here.
The old warehouse was "preserved" in the most nominal sense; parts of the exterior walls were incorporated into a larger, rather ungainly building that now occupies the site. That's why the phrase "Peoples Building" appears on the south side of the top floor, as seen in the view below.
Noting the painted-out portions of the two patent medicine ads, one might suspect that once emblazoned there were the names of diseases or disorders for which said nostrums had proved to be of negligible efficacy.
[Perhaps a more likely explanation is that portions of the sign were in a color that were invisible to the photographic emulsion on the glass plate, as we have seen before. -tterrace]
Peoples Drug Stores were still here when we moved to the DC area in 1986. But in just a few years, they were bought by CVS. The charm we tend to remember of those older, smaller, chains is probably just nostalgia, though.
A couple of run-of-the-mill model Ts on the left, but an interesting looking speedster on the far right. Maybe a home-built body?
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