The Corner Store: The Original Live-Work Place

Vital Sites bought this distinctive, wood frame corner store in 2019 to save it from demolition. If you look past the plywood boards and mismatched paint scheme, you’ll find one of the last remaining wood frame corner stores in the Portland neighborhood – perhaps in Louisville – with many of its Queen Anne architectural features still intact, including that iconic turret with conical roof! It’s a design feature not commonly seen on corner commercial buildings of this age in West Louisville. Other late Victorian architectural details are also original to the building, including wood fish-scale shingles and arched porch brackets.

Hertel Pharmacy/Schweitzer Pharmacy in the Portland neighborhood, Louisville, Kentucky.

As of September 10, 2020, the building is one step closer to being listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with unanimous approval of the nomination at the Historic Landmarks and Preservation Districts Commission virtual meeting. The next step in the process is the Kentucky Historic Preservation Review Board meeting on October 13. If you’d like to view the draft nomination, scroll down to Jefferson County on the right-hand column here. It is officially nominated as the Hertel Pharmacy with Schweitzer Pharmacy as its “other name.”

Detail of the entrance to the residential side of the building.

Louis Hertel is the first pharmacist of record at the corner of 26^th and Bank Street in 1902 – he moved caddy-corner across the intersection. A brief notice in an 1897 pharmacy journal indicated he bought the lot “opposite his present property” and started building a new pharmacy. The address first appears in the city directory in 1902. He would sell the business to Frank J. Schweitzer, Sr. in 1909.

A circa 1942 photograph of the store, taken by Art Abfier and  published in a USA Today photo gallery on Portland on June 11, 2014.

When Frank J. Schweitzer, Sr. took over the pharmacy business, he had already worked as a pharmacist for 36 years at the corner of 15^th and Market, starting as a clerk in 1872. Brother Edward G. joined him as a clerk there for a number of years, and when Frank Sr. left for Portland, he sold to brother Henry.

Four Schweitzer brother pharmacists are listed in Louisville’s 1898 city directory.

Another brother, David, was also a pharmacist. It’s unclear why so many Schweitzers became pharmacists (two of Frank, Sr.’s sons also followed the family business), but the Louisville College of Pharmacy started in 1870. Perhaps they were in the right place at the right time.

1905 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of the intersection at 26th and Bank Streets. Hertel’s previous pharmacy (no longer extant) indicated with the red circle. (Library of Congress)

Frank Sr. was not even the first Schweitzer pharmacist in Portland. His younger brother, Edward G., started his business at 2000 Portland Avenue in 1891. This building was demolished about 2013, and was the subject of a Gardens To Gables post in 2015.

Katzman’s Pharmacy, no longer extant.

The similarities of the two pharmacies – about seven-tenths of a mile apart – were striking. The Portland Avenue corner store may have been a design influence for the one at 26^th and Bank. “Not only was it a lovely example of the whimsy and art that is the Queen Anne style, but it was a corner commercial building, a type that used to be ubiquitous in our towns, and too often now is preserved only in memories and black and white photos.”

Frank Schweitzer Jr. and wife, Nellie.

Frank Sr.’s son, Frank Jr., received his diploma from the Louisville College of Pharmacy in 1911 and became a licensed pharmacist after clerking for his father at the Bank Street store. Unfortunately, Frank Sr. died just a year later in 1912. Frank Jr. continued the pharmacy business at that location until 1950, when he sold to William Hall but continued to work there.  Frank Jr. died in 1970.

Frank Jr. and Nellie’s four children in front of the store in 1938.

At the time this corner store was built, it was common, economical, and more convenient for store owners and/or operators to live above their workplace, with family members often helping in the business. It’s an adaptive use for the building that still has merit today, particularly for the creative individual. One or two residential units redeveloped over a shared creative workspace is a reuse strategy that benefits both the building type and West Louisville redevelopment long term.

Detail of the facade of the Hertel/Schweitzer Pharmacy facade.

Find our more about Vital Sites’ Creative Corners idea here. If you’re curious for much more detail on the building and the Schweitzer family, check out the draft National Register nomination (Hertel Pharmacy under Jefferson County).

On September 17, 2020, Vital Sites is participating in Give For Good Louisville.  Last year, 500+ nonprofits raised $6.8 million! All donations to Vital Sites that day will support the stabilization of the Schweitzer Pharmacy building and the Creative Corners initiative. Register for their free virtual event that morning and hear historian Tom Owen talk about the history of the Portland neighborhood, plus updates on this building from Vital Sites staff.