Walgreens has been a fixture in America since the early 1900s. It has always been a great place to go for basic drugstore needs, candy, prescriptions and beauty products. You may recall walking into a Walgreens decades ago. Maybe you were greeted by the automatic open gate at the entry. Once past that, the nose was met with melange of smells produced by the candy and cosmetics sold there.
Maybe the scent of Karmelkorn wafted in from the mall. If your go-to memory is from the 1970s, add the smell of cigarettes, ubiquitous at the time.
The first Walgreensdrug store was opened in the Bronzeville district of Chicago in 1901. By 1913, three stores had been added to the roster. A fifth store opened in 1915, followed by two more in 1916. In 1920, when national alcohol prohibition began, there were at least 20 stores. These were boom years for Walgreens: During prohibition, doctors were allowed to prescribe liquor to address such symptoms as teething, asthma, diabetes, indigestionand depression. Doctors would collect $3 for each script written, and pharmacists would sell a pint of whiskey for $3. Adjusted for inflation that comes to $86.26 for a bottle of Old Grand-Dad.
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Walgreens was raking in the big bucks, which enabled the company to increase expansion into other states. The first Walgreens in Sioux Falls opened in 1930, three years before the end of prohibition.
It was announced on April 8, 1930, that Walgreens would be opening its new store in the space at 207 S. Phillips. The next month, a $6,000 renovation had begun. New tile floor was being installed, along with all of the latest modern equipment a drug store needs. Shelves were installed for medicines, cosmeticsand candy, as well as a soda fountain and counter. The company aimed to give the Sioux Falls customer an experience unequalled by the other drug stores in town.
The grand opening was on June 7, 1930. Shoppers who spent over a dollar that day were given a gift box filled with trial-sized products. With this grand opening, Walgreens became a fixture in downtown Sioux Falls. At the time, the model for drug stores was full-service, and this early Walgreens store was no exception; if a customer came in for aspirin, the clerk behind the counter would retrieve it. For customers needing help in any department, there was a clerk to assist. More labor is needed for this model, and it seems alien by today’s standard. The store remained in this location until June1951, when it moved to 104-106 S. Phillips.
The design of the new, much-larger store reflected a more modern trend in drug store design; the self-serve drug store. Lewis had been doing this since 1942, and the model had quickly become the norm. In the years to follow, Walgreens began expanding into western South Dakota.
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On May 14, 1967, Walgreens announced the opening of a new location in the much-anticipated Western Mall. The new location occupied 17,000 square feet in the new, 404,000 square-foot retail center. The new store opened April 7, 1969, and featured over 50 departments and the Grill Room Restaurant. Cosmetics and prescription departments were expanded, and televisions and radios were added, among other items.
In 1971, the downtown Walgreens store closed. The new store in the Western Mall was able to handle the business, and a lot of the shopping traffic was diverted to the new mall from downtown, anyway. This location would last until 1989.
In 1975, the Empire Mall was built, and in 1980, the New Town Mall. Both of these new shopping centers diverted stores and traffic from the Western Mall. In 1989, Walgreens was one of the most profitable stores in the Western Mall, and the corporation said that, although it was making money, the nearest sister store was more than 80 miles away. Delivery trucks were most efficient when they could serve several locations. Walgreens announced the closing of the store in January 1989. It would be 10 years before a Walgreens would again serve this community.
Walgreens announced in 1998 that two new stores would be built in Sioux Falls. In February of 1999, a new store was under construction at 57th and Cliff. Two weeks later, construction began on a store at 12th and Kiwanis. Both stores opened in 1999, and more would be added. Today there are five Walgreens locations in Sioux Falls, and it’s hard to recall a time when they were absent.
