Most vintage photos of stores (at least, the ones I come across) are nearly always of the exterior, so it makes for a refreshing change of pace to see inside. This one shows us what the interior of a Thrifty Drug Store in Santa Monica looked like on January 4, 1937. I’m surprised to see that it looks like the lunch counter filled nearly half the store. That’s a lot of valuable floor space, so I’m guessing it was busy with hungry customers all day long.

** UPDATE** – This location was at Fourth Street and Wilshire Blvd, which came down in the 1980s.

Debbie M said: “At least even up into the 50’s & 60’s when I remember my local Woolworth’s had a respectable size lunch counter still intact & busy, I don’t think there was as vast a proliferation of the variety of various sundries available in chain drug/variety stores (makeup, otc medicine, small clothing items (underwear/socks/hats/t-shirts etc), household goods (light bulbs, paper goods, batteries etc) competing for shelf space, but filling local work force tummies for quick hearty & fairly cheap meals was still very much in demand. So lunch counters were still very popular. Then McD’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s etc started popping up everywhere, and product variety expansion started competing for floor space…bye bye lunch counter. My Woolworth’s back then even had room to house parakeets, canaries and little turtles & lizards for sale…pre chain pet stores.”