During the Florida Land Boom of the 1920′s a man in his twenties, by the name of James Earl “Doc” Webb, moved to St. Petersburg and opened a drug store in 1925. It would become huge before the store closed in 1979. The drugstore would cover 7-10 city blocks.
According to Holly Atkins, James got the nickname Doc because he made his own drugs such as Sorbo-Rub, Indian Wahoo Bitters and Doc Webb’s 608. This was only the beginning. His store eventually had 77 different departments including prescription department, surgical supplies, cosmetics and toiletries, Furniture City (covering seven floors!), a florist, a dry cleaning plant, a service station and automobile association, a bank service, a dance studio, an ice cream plant, a coffee roasting plant and, of course, Doc’s Original Drugstore.
When the land boom ended in Florida, a forerunner to the Great Depression, that didn’t stop James. He kept his store open and had deep discounts to keep his customers. He even held circuses and small fairs in his parking lot. He dropped some of his prices so low that Bristol-Meyers took James to court for selling their toothpaste below retail price. It went all the way to the Florida Supreme Court where it was ruled in James favor. A few years later some distilleries also took him to court for the same reason. The court again ruled in his favor.
The drug store survives the Great Depression but according to Florida’s Lost Tourist Attractions it just wasn’t enough. St. Petersburg was losing it’s status as Florida’s tourist capital and began a long slow spiral downward. In 1974 James sold all his shares in the drugstore and retired. The company went bankrupt in 1979. What did Webb’s City Drug Store leave us with? They invented the 10 items or less speedy check out lane. I’m sure there were plenty of people with a cartload of items in the speedy checkout though.
Very nice history lesson. I’ll be thinking of Webb next time I go through the 10 items line at Publix.
Thanks for this post! I love reading about past businesses and how they made a go of it.
Ahh, yes! Good old Webb City. Growing up in St. Pete/Pinellas Park I can remember my mother taking me there when I was little. I remember being fascinated by the mermaids! One time when I was about 9 years old I got separated from my mother [I prefer to think that she was the one that got lost] and eventually wandered back to where she had parked the car and climbed in and fell asleep waiting for her to come back. After an hour or so she came back to the car and I caught you-know-what. Thinking I had been jidnapped she had called the cops and they had been scouring the store from top to bottom looking for me. Eventually one of them wondered if I could have gone back to the car so she checked and their I was.
They had mermaids! What did the store not have?
Thinking back on times when I got separated my parents and working in retail now. I think a lot of children look at it as my mommy/daddy is lost and not us.
Thanks for sharing your story. I love reading them.
I used to work there back in the sixties.. The Electric shaver dept, drug store, cosmetics,cigarette dept , telephone operator, fur dept and oh yes the candy dept. I met my husband there worked together and have been married 42 years .. It was the place to see!!..