HUNTINGTON -- Today the old building at 703 7th Ave is
home to the
Cabell-Huntington Health Department, but for more than 50 years it
housed a pharmaceutical warehouse.
In 1914, W.S. Vinson of Huntington and Walter C. Price of Charleston
organized the Huntington Drug Co.,
a wholesale pharmaceutical firm. Both men
were well-known local pharmacists. Initially the fledgling
business was
located at 216 8th St., but about 1920 the two owners moved their company to
the corner or
7th Avenue and 7th Street where they built a sturdy four-story
brick structure that still stands today.
In 1929, Vinson and Price sold their business to the McKesson & Robbins
Drug Co. Known today as
simply McKesson, a Fortune 500 company, the giant
pharmaceutical firm began in New York in 1933
when John McKesson and Charles Olcott began importing drugs and chemicals and selling them wholesale.
Twenty
years later, the New York-based company was renamed McKesson & Robbins
when
Daniel Robbins because a partner.
Beginning in 1929, McKesson & Robbins used its Huntington warehouse and a
fleet of delivery trucks to
distribute wholesale prescription drugs and
sundries to independent drugstores in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky.
In 1987, McKesson & Robbins announced it was closing the Huntington
warehouse,
deeming it too small to continue operating efficiently. The closure
rendered 20 employees jobless.
In 2005, the former warehouse became the new home of the Cabell-Huntington
Health Department
when the department's previous building on Hal Greer
Boulevard was demolished to
make way for an expansion at Cabell Huntington
Hospital.
The Health Department's name is now displayed over the building's 7th
Avenue entrance.
But the McKesson & Robbins name can still be faintly seen
atop the structure's back wall.