Historian's Corner



Charlene Cole
Sandy Creek/Lacona Historian
Historian's Corner
August 2, 2019

This photo taken some time between 1887 and 1892 and shows the building which later was Wheeler’s Drug Store in Lacona at the right and its “companion” brick block which was Halsey’s supermarket when it was destroyed by fire in 1967. When this photo was taken, the larger building housed the dry goods store of J. S. Robbins & Son, which had been built in the summer of 1887. C. D. Rounds Hardware Store had been constructed during the previous year, after he had purchased the former W. B. Fuller business lot.

(Fire had swept this area during 1885, destroying the buildings between the railroad track and the grist mill) December 22, 1892, an item in the Lacona column of the Sandy Creek News stated that, “The young men of Lacona have formed a citizen’s club with rooms over the brick store of Dr. Austen.” The Lacona village map on the 1889 Blankman map of Oswego County shows a “Drug Store – Dr. F. Austen, on the site east of the Central Hotel.

It is thought that this was the original business location and that some time between 1889 and December 1892, Dr. Austen purchased the Rounds Hardware Store. The drugstore front was altered in later years with a stairway to the second floor apartment added on the east side of the building.


Charlene Cole
Sandy Creek/Lacona Historian
1992 Harwood Drive
Sandy Creek, NY 13145
315-387-5456 x7
Office hours: Friday 9am to 2pm
www.sandycreeknyhistory.com