A Few Words about Eckerd Pharmacy
Do you remember Eckerd?
It's okay, I don't really remember it much either. Even if you have a really sharp memory, I find it's hard for us to remember the more mundane brands and buildings that have dropped out of our lives. After all, how many great memories and stories do you have from a pharmacy, compared to, say, a movie theater?
Eckerd was one such pharmacy that seems to evade my memory, despite the fact that I grew up down the road from one. For years, we would pop in for prescriptions and assorted bathroom and medical supplies, and I even remember having an extra-large tub of Eckerd Petroleum Jelly, which lasted many years longer than the company itself did. Despite its history as one of the country's largest chain pharmacies, it seems that Eckerd has become nothing more than a faint memory of a logo in my mind. So imagine my surprise when I saw that exact logo in Burlington, NJ, a full seventeen years after the company vanished from the map!
The Eckerd sign of Burlington, NJ-- closed for over 17 years, but miraculously standing strong!
I wanted to give a brief rundown of the company's history for this article, as well as an account of my experiences with it, however I realized that I know and remember basically nothing about Eckerd. I consulted the company's Wikipedia article for some help here, and I'll be providing the most basic summary of their story for you.
Eckerd began in 1898, and was a private company for most of its life. Surprisingly, it was purchased in 1996 by none of the than JCPenney, who held onto the company for eight years. In 2004, JCP decided that pharmacies weren't really their thing anymore, and sold it to two companies. The first company was CVS, which immediately turned its newly purchased stores into even more CVS locations. The other was a company called the Jean Coutu Group, which operated their Eckerd stores for three more years, before selling them to Rite Aid. They swiftly followed the example set by CVS, and turned all of their stores into Rite Aid locations, rendering the brand completely defunct by 2008. By that point, all Eckerd stores were either closed, or operating under a new owner and name.
In the 17 years since, I haven't seen the name "Eckerd" anywhere. Nobody's mentioned it, nobody's attempted to revive the brand, and nobody tends to fondly reminisce about their local chain pharmacy the way they do about other bygone chains, like Blockbuster Video and Howard Johnson's. I think that's what made so surreal to happen upon this giant freestanding pharmacy building, practically unchanged since the day it closed in the late 2000s.
Despite all of the time that had passed, the message alerting patrons to their new location still stood tall beneath the enormous road sign for this long-gone Eckerd pharmacy. It was such an incredible sight to see! It was a real surprise to stand beneath the giant logo of a business I'd all but forgotten about, and to know that it had been sitting here in broad daylight for nearly two decades while the rest of the world moved by. It may be 2025 at the time of me writing this, but on this little plot in New Jersey, it was still 2008. Barack Obama had just been elected president, Iron Man was making waves as the newest movie from Marvel Studios, and a pharmaceutical company over 100 years old was taking its final bow as Rite Aid took over their remaining locations.
Whenever I visit one of these "stragglers", regardless of its purpose, (retail, restaurant, entertainment, etc,) I tend to leave with a very specific feeling. It's a strange one to describe, but for lack of a better term, it's like I just climbed through an old photograph and momentarily back into time. So many businesses, where people worked, supported their families, and perhaps even made a good memory or two along the way, disappear without a trace when they close their doors. Getting to witness physical proof of those businesses and memories, existing as they once did, is always a very special experience for me. Even if in this case, I'm just looking at an old pharmacy that I can't even go inside of.
Some odds and ends worth mentioning--
- While I did visit this location recently, (Sunday, September 28th, to be exact,)the photos I used here are over a year old! I took the featured photos on July 30th, 2024, and I had no reason to take new photos as the property looked the exact same this week. I make an effort to only write about places that still exist, and can be visited today, so I didn't want to share this story or these photos until I could go back and confirm everything was still standing as it was in 2024.
- To my knowledge, there are no other former Eckerd Pharmacies in existence that still display their road signs. If this is incorrect, please let me know and I'll update this with more accurate information. But as far as I can tell, this is the final remaining Eckerd store sign visible to the public!
