A staple of downtown Bellefonte for more than seven decades is closing up shop this month.
The last day of business for the pharmacy at Plumb’s Drug Store, 105 N. Allegheny St., will be Monday, April 17, while the retail portion of the store will be open for a short period after that to clear out stock, owners John and Margie Luckovich wrote in a post on the business’s Facebook page.
The store will hold a 50% off sale on all over-the-counter and gift shop items. Prescriptions for existing customers will be transferred to CVS, 127 S. Potter St. in Bellefonte.
“It is a sad day in the 72 years serving the community,” they wrote. “It has been a pleasure to serve you the last 49 years. A special thanks to many employees over the years.”
Edward L. Plumb Jr. opened Plumb’s Drug Store in 1951, and in some ways it has been a time capsule — from friendly, familiar faces behind the independent pharmacy counter, to the soda fountain that has persisted for the enjoyment of generations of community members.
John Luckovich, like more than a few Bellefonte teens, got his first job working at Plumb’s while in high school. He returned to work at the store full-time as a pharmacist in 1974, after attending the same pharmacy school as Plumb.
Fellow pharmacist Eugene Sebastianelli bought the store when Plumb retired in 1981. When Sebastianelli passed away in 2012, Luckovich purchased it.
“There have only been three owners and we all knew each other on a personal level. … It was kind of like passing it from one family to the next,” Luckovich told Town&Gown in 2020.
Family is how Luckovich described his shop’s clientele, telling T&G that as large pharmacy chains took over from small, independent businesses, Plumb’s maintained its personal touch.
“I felt there were too many people here in Bellefonte that … are like family,” he said at the time. “They’re not customers. They’re like family to me. Since I came in ’74, I’ve seen probably close to four generations of families. When I came, it would’ve been someone’s great-grandfather or great-grandmother, grandfather and grandmother, then their parents and them, and now their kids. You get to know them all, where they live, what they do, their jobs. It’s a very personal relationship you have with your customers. They say nothing ever changes, and I don’t know what else I’d want to do.”
Plumb’s will be the second independent drug store on Allegheny Street to close in the last several years. Parrish Apothecary closed its doors across the street in 2019 after 129 years in business.
