Walgreen’s Goes South

Mexico City’s 400-year-old Casa de Azulejos (House of Blue Tiles) has been a private palace, the Jockey Club, the Russian Embassy, the Japanese Embassy, a dormitory for homeless newsboys, and, since 1919, the home of Sanborn’s, most famous American business in Mexico. Last week the store in the old palace became the 416th link in the Walgreen drug chain. In its first venture outside the U.S., Walgreen’s paid $2,500,000 to Ohio-born Frank Sanborn, 76, for the drugstore he founded 43 years ago with $10,000.

Walgreen’s got far more than a drugstore. Sanborn’s is now a restaurant. It also sells clothes, furniture, imported perfumes, etc. It is also a wholesale agency for 29 U.S. manufacturers, and has over 1,300 native craftsmen under contract. Total Sanborn income: 20,000,000 pesos ($4,000,000) a year.

Frank Sanborn had first startled the Mexican drug business by refusing to pay doctors a percentage on prescriptions he filled. His next innovation: an American soda fountain. By 1919, when Sanborn’s moved to the Casa de Azulejos, it had become a favorite gathering place for Mexicans and American tourists alike.

Old customers hoped that Sanborn’s would not become just another Walgreen’s store. Anyway, as a historic monument, nothing in the Casa can be changed without Government permission. Sanborn even had to get an okay to hang pictures. Said Walgreen’s vice president and treasurer Robert G. Knight: “Sanborn’s is unique and we’ll keep it that way.”