Peoples Drug

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Peoples Drug Stores began in Washington, D.C., in 1905, when Malcolm “Doc” Gibbs opened a store at 824 Seventh Street NW. The chain grew from that bright-signaled neighborhood pharmacy into a familiar Mid-Atlantic fixture: prescriptions, cosmetics, candy, cameras, magazines and the occasional lunch-counter pause from the outside world.

Washington served as the company’s early headquarters city, while Alexandria, Virginia, became its corporate base in the mid-1970s. By 1970, Peoples operated 252 stores across the District of Columbia and ten states. The formula was straightforward and mighty effective: put a drugstore where people actually lived, worked, waited for buses and needed aspirin immediately.

The corporate plot thickened in 1975, when Lane Drug acquired Peoples; the businesses were formally merged in 1976 under the Peoples name. Canadian conglomerate Imasco acquired the chain in 1984. In 1990, CVS acquired Peoples, then kept the locally resonant banner over the doors while it renovated stores and absorbed the operation.

In April 1994, CVS began replacing Peoples signs, ending nearly 90 years of the name in everyday retail life. The pharmacies remained, naturally. The neon-era neighborhood personality? That was harder to refill.

Our Peoples Drug collection celebrates the corner-store institution that supplied the region with remedies, toiletries, film processing and a little dependable civic scenery—before the corporate mothership swapped its sign for three letters.