Eckerd Corporation
General merchandise & pharmacy
Eckerd Corporation was an American pharmacy retail chain headquartered in Largo, Florida, and toward the end of its life, in Warwick, Rhode Island. At its peak, Eckerd was the second-largest pharmacy chain in the United States, with approximately 2,802 stores in 23 states as far west as Arizona.
An independent chain for most of its existence, Eckerd was purchased by JCPenney in 1996. Following years of losses and failed attempts to turn around the company, the chain was divided in 2004, with 1,271 of its stores, and its mail-order business, sold to competitor CVS, and the remainder acquired by Jean Coutu Group through its U.S. division. Jean Coutu sold the chain to Rite Aid in 2007, and its name was phased out soon thereafter and replaced with the Rite Aid name. After Rite Aid's subsequent 2025 bankruptcy and liquidation, all or most of Eckerd's final retail footprint at dissolution became absorbed by CVS, anyway.
History
Eckerd was founded in September 1898, by 27-year-old Joseph Milton Eckerd and Z. Tatom in Erie, Pennsylvania. In the company's early years, it operated at 1105 State Street in downtown Erie as the Erie Cut-Rate Medicine Store, focusing on cheaper prices than the competition. In 1912, Eckerd and Tatom sold their original store to Eckerd's sons and moved to Wilmington, Delaware, establishing a new store. From Delaware, the chain expanded to New York, North Carolina, and later Florida.
“Eckerd Corporation” enters the record as general merchandise & pharmacy. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Eckerd, Corporation and General can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eckerd Corporation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.