Cody Drug Store
1845
ADDRESS
Main Campus
13 Oenoke Ridge Road
New Canaan
CT
BUILT
1845
Originally located on Main Street, the Cody Drug Store offers a fascinating glance at one aspect of daily life in 19th-century New Canaan. The Drug Store retains its original fixtures, merchandise, and bottles
Samuel Silliman opened the first drugstore in New Canaan on Main Street in 1845. When Lucius Monroe purchased it in 1854, he renamed it the New Canaan Drug Store. James Cody, who worked as a pharmacist, purchased it from his employer in 1918, and the drugstore remained in the Cody family until the building was torn down in 1965 to make way for the widening of Main Street.
Artifacts in the drugstore tell the history of medicine – from the Kickapoo Indian who had come to market Indian herb medicines, to the “patent medicines” such as Pink Pills for Pale People, to Humphreys, the Veterinarian whose coding system for animal ailments was so successful that he developed one for humans as well.
