The big building in the center of town — at the Post Road/Taylor Place intersection, across from Main Street — has been many things.
It was a pharmacy: first Driscoll, then Colgan’s (below), and later Thompson’s.
(Photo courtesy of Christopher Maroc)
Those were old-fashioned drugstores. In addition to prescriptions, Band-Aids and the like, they sold magazines and paperback books. There was a lunch counter, with a machine to make “malteds” and “floats.”
It was a place where everyone could congregate: mothers, downtown employees, teenagers who walked there after school from Staples High, on nearby Riverside Avenue (now Saugatuck Elementary).
In the 1980s it was a gathering place of a different type: Ships. The restaurant served good, basic food. Ships was where you went to meet old friends, to take a break from shopping, after a movie.
The tables — and bar — were always packed.
(Painting by Al Willmot)
In between it was the site of Eddie Bauer, and a couple of other retail stores. Briefly, it housed a pop-up shop selling Halloween and Christmas gifts, and a 2-week sales outlet for Orvis.
Today it’s Tiffany.
That’s not a place to just hang out. And the prices are far higher than Colgan’s, Thompson’s, or even Eddie Bauer.
But this is the 20th anniversary for Tiffany in town. Their run rivals the drugstores that preceded it.
What that says about the Westport of yesterday and today, I’ll leave up to you.
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