Retro New York: The Parksville Pharmacy

Welcome to the Parksville Pharmacy

There’s been a pin on my Google map at the location of the Parksville Pharmacy, in the Sullivan County town of Parksville, New York for years. I first noticed the old building’s hunter green panels and weathered signage on Instagram. The look of the old building had all the makings of a place that was once a cornerstone of a community.

During one of our cold weather drives near the town of Liberty, we wheeled through what is left of Parksville to finally visit the map star in person. When we arrived, though there were some buildings and homes that were clearly still used and lived in, the town seemed like it was surely a shadow of it’s former self.

Throughout the course of my life, I’m not sure just how many times I’ve passed the now ghost town’s exit off of Route 17. And I’m amazed that I never caught a glimpse of the old store.

There was absolutely nothing going on.

The facade of the old pharmacy carries a sense of its former grandeur into the present. It must have been a looker in it’s day.

Remnants of a former gas station across the street from the pharmacy..

I remember gas station lights like this from when I was a kid. Seeing it filled me with a funny sense of longing and… loss? Maybe that isn’t the right word, but whatever the sensation was, I felt it in my belly. In some strange way it almost felt like a broken heart.

My memory transported me back to gas stations of my youth with the ding-ding hose bells, colorful triangle-shaped flags, rotating brand signs, and these melancholy lamps hanging over the pump island.

There is something so wonderful about the signage, the coloring, the building that houses the old Parksville Pharmacy. It’s nothing short of a miracle that the Coca-Cola signs and the lettering have managed to remain in place.

One day I hope to return to find life returned to the old girl.