Oswald's Pharmacy celebrating 140 years in Naperville

A Naperville mainstay is celebrating 140 years in business this week with a ribbon-cutting for a major addition and a day of giveaways for customers.

Oswald's Pharmacy at 88 W. Gartner Road is marking the 14-decade milestone on Saturday with activities from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the store.

The event follows a ribbon-cutting at 4:30 p.m. Thursday to open a 4,600-square-foot addition that provides durable medical goods and home health care items.

All in all, "it's party week," for the long-standing pharmacy, says fifth-generation owner Bill Anderson.

"It's just a party to give back to the customers," he said about Saturday's event, featuring free hot dogs and soda starting at noon, free cake at 1 p.m. and face painting and tea samples from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Other elements of the event include a coloring contest, prize drawings, a magic show, free samples of a sugar-scrub skin treatment and goody bags with 140th anniversary commemorative coffee mugs.

The celebration will take place not at the original Oswald's location in downtown Naperville, but at the spot in Naperville Plaza where the store moved in 2004 to gain a larger space and easier parking for shoppers.

Started by two physicians in 1875, the store has been in Anderson's family since roughly 1877. It's seen a soda fountain, a cosmetics counter and a dominating display of Beanie Babies all come and go during its long run as a drugstore, and the business recently has begun selling more medical supplies.

That's why Oswald's spent four months this year building out a space next to the main store to sell things like walkers, wheelchairs, compression stockings, materials to care for post-surgery wounds, athletic braces - especially small ones for children - showers, bathtubs, toilets and lift chairs that help people easily stand up from sitting.

Customer demand has resulted in Anderson adding even more sizes and styles of these products than he anticipated when the addition opened last month, he said.

"We've brought in a bunch of wound care items that we hadn't been carrying," Anderson said.

The public is invited to both the ribbon-cutting, hosted by the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce, and the 140th anniversary celebration.

"We love this town, just as the generations before us loved it, and we want to commemorate that with a day of celebration," he said.

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