We just heard from reader Elizabeth Manus that the magnificent Lascoff pharmacy on the Upper East Side is shuttering after more than a century in business. Today is its last day.
Click to see all my Lascoff photos
Elizabeth asked an employee why they were closing, but "he couldn't say. I didn't ask to speak with the owner, only signed the guest book and bought a few things at 50% off."
I wrote about the pharmacy here in 2009, saying, "In a city overrun by Duane Reades, sterile and bland, walking into Lascoff's Pharmacy on Lexington and 82nd is like being in The Wizard of Oz when everything goes from black-and-white to brilliant Technicolor."
Score one more for monochrome.
Oh Nooooooo! I thought for sure that their prescriptions dept. were tiding them over. Rich folk buying online from Walmart I betcha.
ReplyDeleteanother sad one. my grandmother used to have things delivered from Lascoff. they knew her, sent a monthly bill, and welcomed her by name when she'd walk in the store. a world that no longer exists.
ReplyDeleteAlmost unbelievable. My great grandmother shopped here. Amazingly, I saved an old Lascoff shopping bag from the '60s. It has a fabulous logo and a sketch of the entrance. I guess I'll have it framed.
ReplyDeleteWow. I took my 14 year old daughter in there 5 weeks ago to see what a pharmacy looked like before Duane Reade and the other chains killed them off. There was very little on the shelves and we only looked at the bottles and historical items on display. What a loss.
ReplyDeletewhy are they closing? this post is not complete. we need to know, as bad as the news may be. & what are they putting there? cell phone store? "verizon"? duane reade? a bank? we NEED more banks right?? an H&M? great, love those chains. waiting for the billboards. i used to stay on lex& e. 83rd st, 1980s/early 90s. nice. now i think the grossness of e.86st- is creeping down. any comments??
ReplyDeletewhat a gorgeous store- i hope those beautiful fixtures and artifacts will be saved
ReplyDeleteR.I.P. Lascoff, you were a glorious anachronism on the upper east side. I was afraid to go in there because I thought everything would be expensive and the sales personnel would bug me.
ReplyDeleteLascoff's sign dates to 1931, making it one of the oldest and most significant neon signs in NYC. If anyone reading this can help broker a deal to find a good home for the sign, please contact me via www.nyneon.org.
ReplyDeleteThe strange irony of this is that this pharmacy, at least visually speaking, wholly represents the design aesthetic that hipsters have been fetishizing for the past few years. Except its like, authentic.
ReplyDeleteMaybe if they just "discover" it, someone might think its brand new.
The American Sign Museum (www.signmuseum.org)is definitely interested in saving the sign . . . if no one in NYC steps up to do so. Can you provide any info as to whom we should contact?
ReplyDelete@ laura
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't really even matter what's going in to the spot because odds are it is going to be nothing like the spot it's replacing; and not in a good way.
I just walked past there and the sign is being dismantled, it looks like they're ripping off all the letters and detail on the face of the sign, when I asked what was going on the guys said the new owner wanted everything taken off the face, it's heartbreaking the sign couldn't somehow be saved
ReplyDeleteit's awful--i can't believe no one is stopping this, that the place never got landmarked.
ReplyDeleteLive near Lascoff's and just walked by (2AM Thursday morning), and the sign is still attached to the building. The cannot tell what was removed but the letters or perhaps the neon spelling "drugs" is gone, but the actual white printing is still there.
ReplyDeleteThere is a huge dumpster out front of the shop and everything it seems is being torn out of the store and rubbished. The leather chair (torn in one spot) was in there as was allot of wood and wooden objects (cabinets? fixtures?).
There is a huge old fashioned white metal "ice box" contraption still in back of the store. It looks like the old fashioned morgue coolers.
As of July 21 the brass awning at Lascoff's has been removed but not the sign. I spoke to the pharmacist at the pharmacy inheriting Lascoff's Rx customers, and he said the owner had been infirm in recent years, having run the place for over 40 years. Since he was having difficulty continuing to manage the pharmacy day to day he decided to sell the place. But it's unclear what kind of retailer will inherit the space or whether they will retain any of the Lascoff site's distinctive design assets like windows and sign. The vintage pharmacy interior has been completely scrapped so far. Sad.
ReplyDeletethanks M1035 for tracking down that info and sharing it. very sad indeed. this should have been saved.
ReplyDeleteI was sick to my stomach yesterday when I walked by and saw that the entire pharmacy had been gutted! A tragedy that the wonderful historical architecture and interior could not be preserved. Wonder what happened to all of the fabulous fixtures, furnishings and historical items.
ReplyDeleteDitto... sick to my stomach too. I've lived in this neighborhood for years and I have always admired that store and the beautiful sign. As with many other places, I often said to myself about Lascoff's "one day this place is going to be shuttered for good" and hoped that I was wrong. That day has come. I am really sad to see it go.
ReplyDeleteLooks like this is a listing for the cabinets from Lascoff Drugs: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321110825072
ReplyDelete