Sterling Drug Store

This red brick storefront has anchored Old Town Scottsdale for a century. Dr. Walter Lawson built it in 1921 to serve a growing farm village, and it housed the Sterling Drug Store, later the Scottsdale Pharmacy, until the Saba family bought it in 1948. As the town remade itself into the West's Most Western Town, the Sabas remade the building to match, and their department store and later Western-wear shop have occupied the old druggist's rooms ever since. It is a small record of how Scottsdale traded farm-town practicality for a carefully styled frontier image.

What the plaque says

Built in 1921 by Dr. Walter S. Lawson to serve a growing farm village, this red brick building housed the Sterling Drug Store for twenty-seven years, later the Scottsdale Pharmacy, until the Saba family purchased it in 1948. Remodeled to reflect Scottsdale's chosen image as The West's Most Western Town, Saba's department and Western stores have occupied the old drug store ever since.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Museum — 8.6 mi
  The Native Southwest, told in the first person
• Taliesin West — 9.1 mi
  Frank Lloyd Wright's desert masterwork, grown from the ground it stands on
• Phoenix — 9.2 mi
  The fifth-largest US city, built on the canals of a thousand-year-old one

More markers nearby

• Winfield Scott Memorial — steps away
• The Little Red Schoolhouse — steps away
• Our Lady of Perpetual Help — steps away
• Herb Drinkwater — steps away