The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-08-02
"DR. KNOWS" rs NO MORE.
A Drug Store Long q Landmark OF the
Ninth Ward Demolished.

Another old landmark Of the Ninth ward
! has been demolished in the march of inn
| provemen and six-story apartment
| house is to be erected on the site of DIR.
Knox's drug store, at the northeast corner
of Bedford and Carmine streets. All that
now remains of this former landmark,
opposite which for many years liberty
pole stood, is vacant lot,
At the close of the civil war when mill
tary men and former volunteer tiremen
were dividing the political honors, the
Tammany Hall County Convention nomi-
mated for Coroner the late Cornelius Flynn,
everywhere known in the lower part of
the city as Soldier Flynn. He was elected
and he chose as his physician Thomas G..
Knox, who had conducted for many years
an old-fashioned drug store at the corner
of Bedford and Carmine streets. No one
knows exactly the date of its stablish-
ment, but it had baen in existence at least
quarter of century when DR.. Knox
was appointed Coroners Physician nearly
forty years ago.
The drug store was of a style unusual
in New York and peculiar to the Ninth
ward. In the front, facing on Carmne
street, WAS counter at the end of which
was a fountain with two spouts, one for
root beer and the other for sarsaparilla
two beverages very popular at that period
in the old Know Nothing ward, as the Ninth
was called.
In the rear of the store was PHYSICIANS
office, fitted up with medical books and
household pharmacy and in this store at
ali % h.,I nd ri, IN, . ha
ing DR.. Knox usually could he found, not
only TO prescribe for patients. but to supply
them with medicines as required on the
premises.
On two opposite corners there were
saloon and an undertaker's store, and the
neighborly Ninth warders in Bedford.
Morton, Commerce, Hancock Down
ing, Jones, Congress and other streets
would divide their preferences, some meet
ing in the saloon, some in the undertaker's
establishment and some at the corner drug
the vicinity that those who frequented
most regularly the drug store for the inter-
change of views and gossip proved, AZ a rule,
the longest lived.
After serving for three years as Coroner's
Physician DIR, Knox was candidate for the
office of Coroner, and he had as his COM
patitor Richard Croker. Croker was de-
feated; Knox was elected, and he served for
three years as Coroner, maintaining mean
while his drug store at Bedford and Carmine
streets, selling as heretofore root beer
and sarsaparilla, receiving the professional
visits of patients and prescribing for them
as circumstances required.
With the march of improvement some of
the methods of this old drug store, a type
of other old drug stores in the Ninth ward,
yielded somewhat TO the exigencies Of prog
ress In addition to root beer and Sarsa-
parila, soda water was sold, and instead
Of the desultory and accommodating sal.
of postage stamps sign made it's appear
ance on the front window to the effect that
a sub-st alton of the United States Post
Office Department had been established
there
Carrnine street, which forms the con-
nection between Varick and lower Sixth
avenue, has in recent years lost its dis
tinctive American character and has be-
come a miniature Grand street, almost
wholly devoted TO small shops and stores
kept by Hebrew dealers, and there has been
a like change in the streets which Carmine
bisncts. the native American inhabitants
being superseded by Russians and Italians
very largely.
Advancing years and declining trade led
DR.. Knox TO abandon the business. and the
old landmark at the corner of Bedford and
Carmine streets is. therefore, no more.