By William Bork
The "Balentine building" on the northwest corner of Montezuma and Gurley streets in downtown Prescott is currently occupied by the Christian Book Store and adjacent businesses. However, from the mid-teens to the mid-1940s the "Owl Drugstore" perched on that corner and watched Prescott change.
Back on July 14, 1900, downtown Prescott was almost completely destroyed by the fire which ravaged the business district. Before the fire, structures were a melange of frame and other wooden buildings with a few brick structures thrown in that dated as far back as 1864. After the fire, brick buildings became the prescribed legal standard in the City of Prescott.
Two of the new century's first structures stood on opposite sides of Gurley Street on Montezuma Street - the Burke Hotel (now Hotel St. Michael), and the shoe and clothing store of Joseph W. Wilson (now the Balentine Building).
As soon as the Burke Hotel building was at a stage in it construction which made the corner of the basement accessible from Gurley Street, Fen S. Hildreth opened a drugstore there. Later he moved upstairs into the first floor corner by a coffee shop. By 1903 or 1904, Hildreth was in trouble with his creditors. Albert William Bork, my father, was a young pharmacist in St. Paul, Minnesota who had suffered an attack of typhoid fever and remained in a weakened condition. His physician recommended that he avoid the severe winters of the north by finding employment in the Southwest. The Goodrich-Gamble corporation in St. Paul was one of the creditors of Hildreth, and they asked Bork to take over in Prescott. Other creditors, apparently with larger sums owed by Hildreth, had asked another druggist, Leon C. Corbin, to take over on their behalf. The partnership of Corbin & Bork, Druggists, was thus formed and took over from Hildreth.
The precise chronology of the many changes and manipulations of things at the Owl need some careful research, but the entries in the early of the directories (c.1905) at the Museum show Ed Shumate as owner-operator of the St. Michael Hotel. Shumate also owned a candy and ice cream factory and store at ground level on South Montezuma Street just south of the hotel.
In 1915, Joseph W. Wilson, owner of the clothing store across Gurley, died of a heart attack and his widow was unable to continue the business. When the building became vacant, the now prosperous young druggists and Ed Shumate decided to form a new partnership and established what they had earlier named the Owl Drug & Candy Company in Wilson's old building. The new firm occupied the basement with its candy and ice cream factory. Upstairs at street level the drugstore was on the left hand side as one entered the building from the corner. The retail bakery, candy store, a soda fountain with booths were on the right. There was also a wide entrance into a spacious dining room and restaurant area. This business became the center of Prescott's social and cultural activities into the 1940s. The Prescott Rotary Club, chartered in 1921, held their monthly meetings at the Owl and each year they hosted a luncheon for the high school graduating class. The Owl opened its doors at about eight in the morning and shut down at one the next morning. The bakery, ice cream, and candy factory kept traditional hours of such businesses with breadstuffs available from early dawn.
Ed Shumate through some sort of legal and financial manipulations took over the firm with his son Harry and his wife Nora. My father became a hired druggist and for a time he worked with the Wingfield Commercial Company in Camp Verde and later with a small drugstore in Wickenburg. He also worked as a substitute pharmacist at other drugstores in Prescott. Later, he contracted a duodenal cancer and died on March 9, 1921. Corbin left Prescott for California. His wife, who had always been fascinated with Hollywood doings, managed to have her daughter Virginia Lee become the first childhood movie star in Hollywood with a leading role in "Jack and the Beanstalk."
The story of the Owl would not be complete without mention of Nora B. Shumate (Mrs. Ed Shumate). When I knew her in the mid-20's she lived over the store in an apartment in the St. Regis Hotel, which I believe she also managed. It was said by frequent customers that she was the real brains of the whole operation. Nora was usually serving the public in the business establishment as cashier, but she also kept things in the food service and catering on an even keel. The family residence of the Shumates was at 201 S. Marina Street, but Nora usually lived in the downtown building.
The Owl Drug & Candy Company was not only a drugstore, a bakery and pastry shop, a fine restaurant and meeting place, but also a kind of vocational education and training center. There was a need in our community for this type of service since Prescott High School stuck mostly to academic functions and included only a few courses in typing, shorthand, bookkeeping, and accounting. One can recall that some of the youngsters prepared at the Owl for careers in the food industries. Most notably was Frank Hee, a member of the Prescott High School Class of 1925, and a companion of mine from about the first grade through the high school where he played football. After high school he worked at the Owl under the direction of Myers, a fine baker, confectioner and pastry cook. He became an expert like Myers and went on to work in a principal hotel in Oakland, California. He headed the food service at that hotel, I believe, for at least 25 years until his career was interrupted by abdominal cancer. The Bashford-Burmister general store, Goldwater's, the Bank of Arizona and the Arizona Mine Supply Company were the centers of employment for young men and women in the community along with the Owl. Not many families in those days could afford to send their sons and daughters to colleges and universities, although some did attend normal school or received scholarships to the University of Arizona.
If you are one of the few who remember pre-War Prescott, the Owl is probably foremost in your mind. However by the mid-thirties there were other eateries and meeting places you might recognize. When the Hassayampa Hotel opened in 1927, and the Great Depression altered our small town society in the thirties and World War II began, the Owl slowly lost its function as a downtown meeting place and social center. With the national changes that economic depression and war brought, coupled with the fine dining rooms at the St. Michael and the Hassayampa, the Owl's days were numbered.
After the restaurant and food factory activities were no longer functioning, the drugstore was taken over by other operators. When I returned to Prescott in 1980, after 50 years in an academic career in the United States, Mexico and Peru, the old Owl had become the Rohrer-Bloom Drugstore. All that remains of the former configuration can only be recalled in the minds of a few persons of advancing age. Those very few people can look at the windows in the south wall and only picture the early establishment. The Owl was an important institution in community history.
Today's drugstore dispenses medicines and provides products which are almost exclusively manufactured and received in their formal state and ready for the patients. The pharmacist is no longer a formulator from the "simples" of the Pharmacopoeia as in 1905. As the building that held the Owl at the corner of Montezuma and Gurley changed its druggists watched the evolution of the drug industry. Early national drug companies such as Rexall Drug and the more modern distributors of today such as Walgreens and supermarket chains have almost completely pushed out the small town pharmacist like the one that stood on the corner of Montezuma and Gurley all those years ago.
William Bork is a long time resident of Prescott.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (pb150f3i7). Reuse only by permission.
The Interior of the Owl Drugstore around 1920. The Owl, serving as a social and economic center of town, provided goods and services as well as jobs and training for the up and coming students.