There must be reasons!

And I want to know why, if they are so popular, the photographer stopped by on the slowest day of the year. Today, the university records 1,510 students were enrolled in 1934. That'd mean everyone was in and out of Benson's, every day, and this strains credulity.

I would have enjoyed watching an orchestra you could just stroll in and listen to for hours at a time, while meeting friends, getting food and candy and so on. It was probably a small band, but that would have been fine, too.

Benson's was, primarily, a drug store. (There were three, all clumped together on the same block.) These storefronts are long, narrow shops, and so you see pretty much the whole place in that photo, if you squint. They stayed open late on the weekends to serve students coming and going from dances. A few years later, in 1940, milkshakes cost a dime. Regular sandwiches were 15 cents. A ham and cheese was twenty, or you could splurge for a club sandwich for a quarter.

Previous | Next | Glomerata Index | Home