Shreveport's West End

The corner building at Texas Street and Pierre Avenue once housed Peyton's Cut-Rate Drugs.

In most cities along the Red River, destructive city planning -- a bad idea from the last half of the last century -- can be easily discerned, and ironically enough, you can see it from your car window. Downtown cores were waylaid in favor of the "strips" and shopping malls, and the malls and strip roads are now neglected in favor of strip malls that hug the interstates. There are a multitude of examples, but one of the most obvious ones is Sherman (Grayson County, Texas), where its downtown's shopping moved to Texoma Parkway (the location of Sher-Den Mall & Midway Mall), and which is now almost completely abandoned for the corporate monoliths that reside at the intersection of US 75 & US 82.

Shreveport (Caddo Parish, Louisiana) is another brutal example of this practice. Before Texas Avenue/US 79/ US 80 was usurped by Interstate 20, Shreveport's "West End" was a strip that featured a number of businesses, where convenience shopping by car fueled its architecture and siphoned business from downtown (puns intended!). Shreveport's West End is now an archeological relic, and one of its most obvious tombs is Peyton's Cut Rate Drug Store.

B.F. Peyton, the proprietor, incorporated this structure/pharmacy with other partners, naming the business/location the West End Drug Company in 1908. It was one of the first businesses in the city's "West End," which advertised itself a half century later as a "City within Itself." I believe the trolley reached here and later, of course, the development was a good thoroughfare for consumers in their cars.

Throughout the years, the structure was known as Peyton's, and it remained under Peyton's ownership at least until his death in 1945, if not beyond. The building rented advertising space on the top as the "most prominent location in town;" leased the upstairs rooms; rented retail space; and The Shreveport Times once kept a "Want ad branch office" inside.

By the late 1960s, crime had reared its head in this portion of Texas Avenue, where the West End was cut off from town by that blasted Interstate. Of course I blame that beast of a road. It's alienating. I believe the mounting crime and isolation led to the closure of the drug store.

Today, the neon signs have been removed from the two story building at 1872 Texas Avenue, but luckily, the structure still stands. Behind Peyton's skeleton is Herby K's, one of Shreveport's longest-serving restaurants. Luckily, its existence has begun revitalization attempts along Texas Avenue. Art venues, clubs, and street vendors are bringing people back to the long-neglected strip, so we'll see what will happen to this building in the next few years.

Peyton's Drug Store supplied the pharmaceutical needs for the Kansas City Southern employees, as mentioned in this 1924 report in the Shreveport Journal.

West End Drug Company, later re-named Peyton's Drug Store, was one of the first businesses in the car-friendly strip center along Texas Avenue, called West End, in Shreveport. This advertisement inside The Times of Shreveport from 1950 encourages shopping in this district, calling it a "city within itself" and showcasing its reliance on cars.