Faxon, Horton & Gallagher Drug Company (Fountain Lofts)

 

 

It may have since been dubbed the Eisen Building, and at present, the Fountain Lofts Apartments, but the brick beauty at 7th and Broadway will forever be remembered for its original tenants. The Faxon, Horton & Gallagher Drug Co was a widely successful Kansas City, Mo.-based business with a massive clientele in nearly all of the western states.

 

New York-native (and Kansas senator) James Clark Horton met Frank A. Faxon in Lawrence, Kans., where both had relocated. In 1878, the pair and a Mr. B.W. Woodward (the third cofounder of the company) moved to Kansas City, organizing Woodward, Faxon & Co. Woodward left in 1897, and it became the Faxon, Horton & Gallagher Drug Co. In 1906, Horton would retire; Horton was removed from the company name at that time.

 

The three were great friends. Horton, in his official resignation letter, typed, “I can hardly find words to express the high regard in which I shall always hold my friends, Mr. Frank A. Faxon and Mr. John A. Gallagher, with whom I have been so long and so pleasantly associated, each year only increasing my confidence and self-esteem.” Faxon and Gallagher amicably purchased Horton’s share of the company and continued a prosperous business producing toiletries, face creams and perfumes in the same building the three had had built in 1903.

 

Faxon became deeply involved in the Kansas City community. He cofounded the Kansas City Commercial Club, sat on the city’s council, and held the presidential position in the Wholesale National Drug Association. In his spare time, he advocated better conditions in schools and workplaces.

 

The Faxon, Horton & Gallagher Drug Co was committed to Faxon’s own personal motto – “Make Kansas City a good place to live in.”