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Fairhaven Pharmacy 1929 NW Corner of 12th & Harris | Painting by Lanny Little
| A one-story concrete building with basement and a stucco exterior was built in early 1929 by pharmacist, George Finnegan, who jokingly referred to the building as the "shortest shopping tower south of Alaska”. Finnegan’s original building occupied 1113-1115 Harris Avenue while an adjoining structure at 1111 Harris was financed and constructed by Diedrich H. Ebeling for his Washington Market which had occupied an older wooden building on that site since 1923. |
| The pharmacy was located on the prominent corner of 12th and Harris with a dry goods store between it and Ebeling’s meat market. The three storefronts shared a common facade. The history of this prominent local pharmacy is chronicled on the north wall of the building with an "established” date of 1889. The D.P. Mason Drug Company opened at 1708 12th Street in December of 1889 and was purchased in 1891 by David Alverson. In 1895, Alverson moved the Fairhaven Pharmacy to the southwest corner of the Mason Block (now Sycamore Square). The business was then sold in 1900 to Fred Offerman. |  | | George Finnegan had been employed by the pharmacy as a delivery boy and in 1906 purchased the business from Offerman. He subsequently moved the drugstore to the Monahan Building in 1915 and opened an adjunct business, the Busy Corner, in the Terminal Building at 11th and Harris.
 | After constructing his new building on 12th and Harris in 1929, the Great Depression brought financial woes to the big-hearted Finnegan who had always served his customers on credit, and those customers were now unable to pay their bills. Saving business from collapse was Charlie Larrabee, son of successful investor and philanthropist, C.X. Larrabee, who offered to buy the building and charge a reasonable rent to allow the pharmacy to survive. | | Following Finnegan’s death in 1939, Rene LaCasse, another former delivery boy, like Finnegan, purchased the business, and in 1942, bought back the building from Larrabee. Continuing the tradition of delivery boy to pharmacist, the business passed from LaCasse to Gordon Tweit in 1962, and finally from Tweit to Robin Johansen in 1991. Unfortunately, delivery boys are no longer employed by the Fairhaven Pharmacy.
| The historic pharmacy at 1115 Harris closed for business in October 2015, and Gordon Tweit, pharmacist and local historian, closed his beloved museum in the basement.
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For many years Fairhaven Pharmacy shared the "shopping tower” of George Finnegan with Two Padres, now El Agave Mexican Restaurant, at 1111 Harris.
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|  | Home furnishing and decoration store, Current and Furbish has occupied the corner pharmacy location since 2016. | Gordon Tweit, pharmacist and local historian, passed away in 2018.
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