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Morse 'L' Drugs Closes After 84 Years In Rogers Park

By Linze Rice | July 28, 2017 6:23am
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Morse "L" Drugs at 1407 W. Morse Ave. first opened in 1933.
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DNAinfo/Linze Rice

ROGERS PARK — The red neon "pharmacy" sign that usually glowed from Morse "L" Drug's storefront turned off for the last time Wednesday, as the businesses closed for good after 84 years in the neighborhood.

The independent pharmacy, which opened at 1407 W. Morse Ave. by Herman Goldenson in 1933, was one of the few remaining family-owned drug stores of its kind. Patients' prescriptions were transferred to the Walgreens at 7410 N. Rogers Ave.

"It's sad, after [almost] 85 years," said Al Goldberg, who has owned the building where the pharmacy is housed since 1999. "They'd survived ... there used to be a lot of independent drug stores."

On Thursday, a handful of former employees were emptying the store, including the shiny golden medicine cabinets that lined the top of the shop's walls.

Until his death in 1989, Goldenson worked as a pharmacist at the store. He was 80 at the time he died. 

He and his brother Raymond opened the pharmacy after graduating from the University of Illinois in 1929. The Goldenson name remained on the storefront until its close.

For many years after that, the shop was headed by long-time pharmacist Michael Gersten, a relative of the Goldenson family. 

He sold the business in 2016 to another pharmacist at the shop, Kunjan Shah, who Goldberg said was "excited" to keep the store going.

But within the year, Goldberg said one of the pharmacy's biggest clients, Thresholds, a behavioral health and social services organization, ended its relationship with the drugstore.

The impact on the business proved fatal, Goldberg said. 

Emily Moen, a spokesman for Thresholds, said over the years the organization experienced a "wonderful partnership" with the drug store, who was sensitive and caring to the agency's clientele, many of whom experience a range of complex health issues.

Moen acknowledged Thresholds accounted for a "significant" percentage of the pharmacy's overall business, but said Thresholds has been working toward a different care model that involves more integrated services all in one space.

To do that, it has partnered with Genoa Pharmacy, which specializes in behavioral health medicine and is lat Thresholds' 4423 N. Ravenswood Ave. office.

Morse 'L' Drugs has "been really great over the years, we'll really miss the people and wish them well," Moen said. "They were all very good to our clients. ... We hope they land on their feet."

Throughout the years, Morse "L" Drugs had weathered competition from other nearby pharmacies, including an Osco and other drugstores on the same block.

City records also show after October 2016, when its business license expired, no other licenses were issued for the pharmacy's address, though it continued serving clients until it shuttered. 

With the store's closure comes not only the loss of business, but the loss of a reliable tenant, Goldberg said. 

He hopes whoever takes over the spot will have the same passion for and dedication to the neighborhood as the pharmacy had. Preferably, he would like to see the storefront go to a "unique" retailer who can enrich Morse Avenue.

"We don't know who we're going to get there, but we want to get a good tenant in there that will be a benefit to the neighborhood," Goldberg said. "I'm saying up front: I don't want any dollar stores or convenient stores."

Photos by DNAinfo/Linze Rice.​