Richard Goldstein (in car) opened Mt. Lebanon Pharmacy in 1967. He paid $1,815 for a Volkswagen Beetle and used it for deliveries.

From left, employees Joe Butler, Don Macoy, Angelo Ruggerio, Sylvester "Bud" Rich and John Tobin.

McGrath grew up in the home her parents
bought in 1939. Today the house is owned by
the fourth generation of her family. She has
fond memories of the 1950s and 1960s in Mt.

Lebanon. “It was a wonderful place to grow
up,” McGrath says. “That’s a time
when people had large families and
there were just kids everywhere.”
Some of her favorite haunts as a teenager were
Gardners record store with its free listening
room at 636 Washington Road, now Little To-
kyo, and Mandell’s Drug store at 727 Washing-
ton Road, now The Fabric Place. Mandell’s had a
soda fountain with a soda jerk making concoc-
tions for customers. “We’d go in there and just
have a good time,” she says. “We’d buy cherry
sodas for a nickel.”
Richard Goldstein, Lawncroft Avenue, re-
members the drug store soda fountains well, as
his first job was a soda jerk.

“I made chocolate sodas for the governor of
36 Mt. Lebanon Magazine | JAN/FEB 2020
Pennsylvania and the mayor of Pittsburgh,” he says. He worked for Schil-
ler’s Pharmacy in Shadyside while he put himself through pharmacy school
at the University of Pittsburgh.

Born in Shadyside, Goldstein moved to Mt. Lebanon in 1967 when he
bought his first drug store at 319 Castle Shannon Boulevard, and renamed
it Mt. Lebanon Pharmacy. Goldstein bought a Volkswagen Beetle for de-
liveries for $1,815. Then he hired some enterprising high school seniors to
work for him.

“The first thing I did was throw out the soda fountain,” he says. “Baby
boomer kids mobbed the place.” Times were changing by the late 1960s,
and soda fountains were a thing of the past. Instead he offered cosmetics
and pre-packaged ice cream.

In 1978 his pharmacy moved into the old Mandell’s on Washington
Road. He covered up the original Carrerra glass and added an awning. It
remained a pharmacy until 1991 when Goldstein retired from the drug
store business and went into hospital pharmacy.

The Fabric Place, which has the space now, recently updated its exterior,
removing the awning and brick facade in favor of a clean white porcelain
look. Once again it resembles the look of the original Mandell’s Pharmacy
from 1939.

Fact checking: Mike Cahall, The Historical Society of Mount Lebanon
Selected Photos: Jim Wojcik, Historical Society of Mount Lebanon,
lebohistory.org/washington-road/