Front Street, Bath, ca. 1910
Item 108614 info
Penobscot Marine Museum
Swett’s Drug Store, at the corner of Front and Elm Streets, was in a block with other busy stores and a theater in downtown Bath in 1910.
Lewis B. Swett opened this drug store in 1891 and later a branch at Centre and Washington Street. It sold wholesale and retail drugs, over-the-counter remedies, sodas, cigars, and other merchandise, offering some products with a 25 to 33 percent discount. Swett liberally used the store's exterior walls to advertise his goods.
In the years after the drug store closed in 1924, a bakery, camera store, variety store, and other drug stores occupied the building. In 2021 Dot’s Ice Cream Parlor occupied the corner.
The Singer Sewing Machine store, at 162 Front Street, was next door to Swett's, with tobacco, confections, and furniture stores beyond. The Columbia Theater, easily identifiable from a distance by its coming events posters, was on the second floor above 176 to 186 Front Street. It burned in February 1907 but reopened between 1912 and 1919. In 1919 it advertised “Special Photoplay Productions, Local Entertainments.” For a time it coexisted with the Columbia Hotel across the street.
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