Now & Then: Cody Pharmacy
Samuel Silliman opened the first drug store in New Canaan on Main Street in 1845. Nine years later, Lucius Monroe purchased it and renamed it the New Canaan Drug store. Doctors came to dispense medicines and Monroe did, too.
By the later part of the 19th century, the drug store had become something of a social center of the town. It had a soda fountain with a marble counter, home-made ice cream, round ice cream parlor tables and chairs, hair oil for men, women’s cosmetics, mortars and pestles, Magic Hoodoo Ant Paper, various powders and fragrances, bottles, stuffed birds, jars of rock candy and licorice, cigarettes, cigars, snuff, school supplies, and toilet paper. It had an early typewriter, a brass cash register, a scale and the first telegraph in town. It was the unofficial Democratic Party headquarters.
James Cody worked as a pharmacist, and was able to purchase the business in 1918. The pharmacy remained in the Cody family until it was torn down in 1965 to allow for the widening of Main Street. At that time, the current addition to the 1825 Town House at 13 Oenoke Ridge was built, and the contents and fixtures were installed there. The Cody pharmacy is now one of the historic museums owned and operated by the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society.
“New Canaan Now & Then” is presented in partnership with the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society.
I fondly remember Cody’s Drugstore walking in seeing huge apothecary jars. Quaint sad to see it removed during 1965, as George Cody NCHS classmate 65 could account. Also, worked in several departments at Sillimans Hardware Store across Main during high school, holidays in paint dept w/ George Paggy, Lydia Carlson Batterson, housewares, Tony Williams, Garden Dept hiking turf builder plus to customers cars under GM Mr Robert Moat from Pound Ridge. No pants allowed simply skirts. Interesting time. Holidays were crazy fun. Great memories