Billings & Stover Tear Out Soda Fountain To Handle Expanded Prescription Trade

Forty years of soda business apparently have convinced the owners of Billings & Stover, oldest pharmacy in the Square, that these modern fads have no future. Destruction of the marble fountain in the Massachusetts Avenue drugstore has been completed this week to make way for an expanding prescription department.

On the day in 1907 that Jeremiah J. Mahoney, present owner of the store, first came to work, the fountain was opened for business. Since then, the venerable establishment has maintained its conservative atmosphere, dispensing prescriptions in ever-increasing numbers and serving frappes and cherry phosphates to waiting customers.

Although admitting that "the soda business has never been better," Mahoney has been forced to take the fountain out in order to handle his greatly increased prescription trade. "We have had the confidence of our customers," said Mahoney, "and we must acknowledge it."

The prescription turnover, always the first concern of the store, has shown a fourfold increase in the last six years, seriously overtaxing the present facilities.

Before undertaking so revolutionary a step as removing the fountain, Mahoney polled his best customers to ascertain their reaction to such an apparent turning back of the clock. Overwhelming approval greeted his queries, as 97.3 percent of the clientele asserted that they would still continue patronage even if the fountain were removed.

Out of the demolition of the staid soda bar comes one constructive note for undergraduates. Participants in the exercise classes at the Indoor Athletic Building will be able to observe themselves in action in the near future, thanks to the gift of the now defunet large mirror behind the fountain to the University.