Pharmacy Museum - America's First Licensed Pharmacist
Photo: Miguel Tremblay, CC0 (cropped)
A stop on New Orleans French Quarter Walk, a free self-guided tour.
This tidy Creole townhouse on Chartres Street was once a working apothecary. Its owner, Louis J. Dufilho Jr., is known as the first licensed pharmacist in the United States. He passed the exam required under Louisiana law in 1816 and later ran his shop here, in a building put up in the early 1820s, living upstairs above the counter.
Today it is the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, opened in 1950. Inside are hand-carved cabinets lined with old glass bottles, surgical tools that will make you wince, and a courtyard planted with herbs like the ones early pharmacists used. You will also see how 19th-century medicine mixed new science with old folk remedies, some of them more hopeful than helpful.
Look at the building's shape from the sidewalk: shop on the ground floor, home above, and a courtyard behind. That layout is the classic Creole townhouse, and you will see it again and again on Chartres and Royal streets. Check the website for current hours and tour times.
Getting here: Follow Chartres Street upriver (away from the cathedral) for two blocks, past Toulouse Street, to number 514 on your right.
Did you know?: The museum holds what it describes as the largest collection of pharmacy memorabilia in the United States.
Photo op: Cross to the far sidewalk to fit the whole townhouse, with its shop windows and upstairs balcony, into one frame.
More on Wikipedia: New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
Stops on this tour
- Jackson Square - The Old Parade Ground
- St. Louis Cathedral - Three Spires on the Square
- The Cabildo - Where Louisiana Changed Hands
- Pharmacy Museum - America's First Licensed Pharmacist
- Royal Street - Galleries, Ironwork and Street Music
- Preservation Hall - Jazz in a Plain Room
- Congo Square - Where the Drums Kept Sunday
- Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop - A Legend in Brick and Timber
- Old Ursuline Convent - The Quarter's Oldest Survivor
- Old U.S. Mint - Coins, Then Jazz
- French Market - Two Centuries of Trading
- Cafe du Monde - Beignets by the Square