The Niagara Apothecary was an apothecary in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, established no later than 1820, and is now a National Historic Site of Canada. It was operated by a series of successive owners, most of whom had apprenticed under the preceding owner. In the 1960s, it was purchased by the Niagara Foundation, which targeted the building and its contents for preservation. It was purchased by the provincially-owned Ontario Heritage Foundation in 1969, which undertook a preservation effort culminating in May 1971, when the property was re-opened as a museum.
The museum is rendered as a typical Confederation-era apothecary. It is operated by the Ontario College of Pharmacy, and receives about 100,000 visitors annually.
Background
In the 1960s, there was increasing interest in Ontario for the historic preservation of buildings to prevent their demolition. In Niagara-on-the-Lake, an economic decline that began in the late 19th century left the town with plenty of its early buildings, no "unsightly factories, warehouses, or tracts of undistinguished workers' housing", and a "pre-industrial, upper-class streetscape". The end of World War II sparked development, so at a town planning board meeting held on 5 February 1962, a proposal was made to establish a local heritage organization. Later that year, after lobbying the Government of Ontario, provincial legislation was passed to charter the Niagara Foundation.
This foundation soon requested the federal National Historic Sites Service to conduct an architectural survey of the town. It was accepted, and became a pilot project for the national inventory of historic buildings. The local survey was conducted by architect Peter John Stokes, who was the "foremost architectural historian" of the province at the time. He identified "interesting old buildings", among them Field's Drugstore, owned since 1921 by increasingly ailing proprietor E.W. Field. From the 1860s until the survey was conducted, only minor exterior modifications had been made to the building, and its interior fixtures and layout had remained "remarkably intact". Fearing that the store would be sold, the Niagara Foundation approached the Ontario College of Pharmacy (OCP) in 1963 to propose a partnership to preserve the building and its contents. The proposal was accepted, with the OCP considering the site for a museum of pharmacy history.
Field retired in 1964, and the partnership rented the store and obtained right of first refusal to purchase the property. Lacking funds to make the purchase when Field died the following year, in December 1965 the partners secured a promise from James Auld, the provincial Minister of Tourism and Information, that the provincial ministry would acquire the property, enabling the Niagara Foundation to exercise its option. Two years later, the Ministry of Tourism and Information still had not acted on the minister's promise, so the partnership undertook its own plans for restoration. The success of the Canadian Centennial anniversary celebrations throughout Canada that year provided impetus to fund similar projects provincially, and in July a provincial grant of $15,000 was made to the Niagara Foundation, which it used to discharge its mortgage.
In early 1968, the Ontario Heritage Trust (OHF) was established, and restoration of Field's Drugstore became its first project. It solicited and received commitment from the federal government to cover half the cost of the restoration project, and on 10 July 1969 the OHF purchased the property from the Niagara Foundation.
Restoration
On 8 August 1962, Stokes had identified and catalogued a number of sites for the survey he conducted of potential local heritage sites. In the catalogue, he noted that Field's Drugstore was "of historic significance to the town" and to "restore if possible". Among the features he cited were the building's façade, intricate wood carving, cabinetry, and "ornate plaster-work".
In April 1970, the provincial OHF and the federal Indian Affairs and Northern Development department signed a contract to fund the CA$38,000 project (). Stokes was hired to manage the project. With little information about the site having been published throughout its history, Stokes referred to photographs from 1905 and later, and the underlying physical attributes present in the early 1970s, to guide the restoration. The goal was material authenticity of the restored site, using paint colours and finishes that would have been present in the 1860s. Missing parts were made by obtaining similar material from another building of the same era using techniques employed at the time.