Wednesday, February 23, 2011

K&B Pharmacy (1955)


K&B Pharmacy, originally uploaded by regional.modernism.
In 1905 Gustave Katz and Sydney J. Besthoff opened the first Katz and Besthoff pharmacy at 732 Canal Street. [photo by Jeff Lamb]

In 1955 Katz and Besthoff comissioned Dreyfous, Seiferth and Gibert, architects to design a new K&B "self-service super drug store" with a "complete cosmetic department" at Napoleon and St. Charles avenues. The older store remained open during construction and was later razed to provide for parking. The signature "K&B purple" was ubiquitous on the firm's products, signage, shopping carts and bags. The business expanded throughout New Orleans and the Gulf South until it was sold to the Rite Aid corporation in 1997.

The building has since been razed and replaced with a banking outlet.

[Photo: 1972, New Orleans Virtual Archive, Tulane School of Architecture]

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thought you'd be interested in this:
http://curbed.com/archives/2011/02/23/perfect-midcentury-preservation-here-serial-renovators-look-elsewhere.php#new-orleans-modernism-8

Horse Renoir said...

I used to be able to access the New Orleans Virtual Archive. Now the jerks have allowed only Tulane-affiliated poeople to access the photos. I grew up in New Orleans and now live in Kansas, and those photos were so fascinating I could spend hours on end just browsing. Now only the well-heeled who go to Tulane can access them. I'm pretty ticked off.

Francine Stock said...

David,

Not true. No login is required to access the photos in the New Orleans Virtual Archive.

http://NOVA.tulane.edu

Cheers!

Francine

Horse Renoir said...

Francine, I can browse categories on the site, but the pictures are not showing up; they're coming up blank. Could it be something with my browser plug-in? Could it be my firewall is giving me a problem?

Francine Stock said...

David, You have made me aware of an issue that now we are going to work on. While LUNA functions really well from within the university's ethernet, we obviously have an issue with off-campus functionality. I just tried this at home and was stunned at how poorly it worked. So. Thank you for the heads up. We are working with LUNA and technology services to improve this situation SOON. Francine

AnnaZed said...

David! If you are still here. I lived two door from that store for part of my life and I loved that store.