The Great Depression

A winter scene from 1939

ACPHS entered the 1930s still reeling from the stock market crash of 1929, which had serious repercussions for the school, its students and its graduates. With enrollment down and tuition too steep for many attendees, the College struggled to attract new students. By the fall of 1937, ACPHS had developed a four-year Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy, hoping to increase the professionalism and prestige of the pharmacy degree, which had suffered greatly during Prohibition.

In 1930, the population of Albany was 127,000, with 2,000-4,000 Albanians out of work and roughly 25 percent of the population looking for jobs. At ACPHS, the numbers mirrored what was going on all over the country. There were 150 graduates in 1928, but only 54 students enrolled for the 1931-32 session. By graduation time, the Class of '32 had dropped to only 38 members.

After the move to the New Scotland Avenue building in 1927, tuition had been raised from $100 for the Ph.G. and $125 for the Ph.C. to $250 and $300, respectively, a substantial jump. Books averaged about $52 to $65 depending on the program. But higher tuition meant fewer students could afford to attend and the College was struggling.

A 1930 letter written by the ACPHS Alumni Association Board to Warren Bradt, President of the ACPHS Board of Trustees, discussed the financial affairs of the College and asked that the Board devise a way to raise funds to pay off College debt and augment the endowment.

Members of the Class of 1931

"Despite the unemployment problem now facing the country, our 1930 grads are actively engaged in pharmaceutical pursuits," said an article in the Mortar and Pestle . But it wasn't easy.

During the 1920s, Ray Boles '20 had been making $3,500 a year as partner in a Chestertown, N.Y., drugstore that sold cosmetics, Adirondack souvenirs and ice cream in addition to "prescriptions that cost $2 to $3 tops." Boles rose at 6:00 a.m. every day to make ice cream, crank- ing out batches every 10 minutes to make up to 40 gallons a day. He put in 14 hour days and worked every holiday, including Christmas. In spite of his diligence, his salary took a nosedive during the Depression, plummeting by $1,000 a year.

And Boles was one of the lucky ones.

An article in the Mortar and Pestle claimed that "many top notch students are working for $1,200 year." In the same article, pharmacy was called the "most unrenumerative profession in the U.S. ," by Charles A. Smullen, a special investigator working for the Pharmacy Bureau of Research, who visited 3,500 retail druggists in 1930.

The Freshman lab, 1932

Mortar and Pestle stated that, although the profession would "never reach a peak of prosperity as it existed prior to 1929 . a man who spends 3-4 years in College should receive a decent minimum wage."

The grim financial picture forced many Albany residents to seek an escape from reality.

It was the golden era of movies; the Palace Theater, one of 20 movie theaters in the city, opened in 1931 with seating for 2,800. Works Progress Administration, created in 1935 by President Roosevelt, was responsible for a tremendous upsurge in recreational facilities in Albany . Between 1936 and 1939, 25 public parks, skating rinks, a golf course, Bleeker Stadium, Lincoln Park Pool and several public baths were constructed, many of which were utilized by ACPHS students for school sports and in their leisure time.

There was plenty to do both on- and off-campus. The activity fee of $35 covered clubs, sports and three class dances: the Freshman and Senior Hops and the Junior Prom. Under the direction of William Haber, the College Orchestra, a.k.a. "Banjo Bill and his Pill Rollers," provided the music for post-basketball game dances in the school's auditorium. Decked out with colored lights and maroon and white streamers, the room was filled with students swaying to the strains of the latest foxtrots and songs such as "Collegiate Sam" and "Making Whoopee."

Phi Delta Chi fraternity, 1931

The first Press Club Whirl, a fundraising dance held in 1931, benefited a new library at the College as well the school's other literary endeavors, Mortar and Pestle and Alembic Pharmakon .

In their free time, students dined on "hamburg steaks at The Wagon," "almost smothered from tobacco smoke" at Proctor's Theater, dated "St. Rose girls," "sniffed the lilacs in back of Bender Lab," took the "night boat" from Albany to New York City and admired "the observatory in the moonlight" (Dudley Observatory, founded 1852, was then located across from the College).

Beginning in the fall of 1930, the new Student Council, consisting of Dean Mansfield and two representatives from each Ph.C. and Ph.G. class, had the responsibility for evaluating all "social, athletic and literary endeavors" and assigning funds to each. Some, including track, cross country and the "boy's swim team," were discontinued due to lack of interest while others, such as handball, were added. Wildly popular in the New York City area, where thousands of courts were constructed in the five boroughs during the 1930s, handball was introduced to the College by Willard Canfield '32. A court for single-wall handball was created in the gym and a whopping 50 students joined the team .

The 1932 ACPHS baseball team

The men's basketball, rifle and tennis teams continued to compete while the "maroon and white sluggers" used the fields at the "Lincoln Bowl" and Ridgefield Park .

One of the school's oldest and most popular organized sports was bowling. Even after 10 years, students and faculty alike still gathered at Schade's Bowling Academy to watch "Professor [Francis] O'Brien, with that big cigar in his mouth, throw his famous snake snap." Toward the end of the decade, as the number of women students began to increase, they also participated in bowling and ACPHS took up a full eight lanes.

The 1934 ACPHS women's
tennis team

Some "girls-only" activities were voted in as well, most notably tennis and swimming. Formed in 1933, the swim team met Tuesday evenings at the YWCA, though the yearbook noted "no channel swimmers yet." Gertrude Ederle, who in 1926 became the first American woman to swim the English Channel , had an enormous influence on women throughout the country. Citing her as their inspiration, more than 60,000 women earned American Red Cross swimming certificates during the 1920s alone.

In addition to doling out funds for activities, the Student Council also voted on other issues, including protocol for the wearing of the mandatory "garnet and white" caps or "beanies" worn by each freshman. After much debate it was decided that "freshmen be permitted to remove their caps in lectures, recitations and labs but must [keep them] with them and present [them] upon request to upperclassmen."

The 1933 freshman class,
with required beanies

The fortunes of the fraternities at the school continued to wax and wane throughout the decade, with some becoming inactive and then revitalized depending on membership numbers. The Alpha Theta chapter of Phi Delta Chi formed at ACPHS on April 13, 1931, with 21 charter members. The chapter grew out of the Alpha Chapter of Epsilon Phi, which had been established at ACPHS in 1917 but wished to nationalize. By 1936, the group was known as Phi Delta Chi Pharmaceutical and Chemical Fraternity.

Kappa Psi Pharmaceutical Fraternity opened a new house on Mercer Street in 1931 and, by 1936, had another fraternity house in the residential section of Madison Avenue. The "Ropes" had a busy schedule with an annual roast in the Heldeberg Mountains and dances held in the Rainbow Room of the Kenmore Hotel or aboard the Paradise , a boat moored in the Hudson River at Troy .

Kappa Psi house, Madison
Avenue, 1936

An Interfraternity Smoker sponsored by all three frats was held in 1938 "for probably the first time in the school's history." There was some talk of inviting Lambda Kappa Sigma Sorority, according to the yearbook, "but it was felt it was 'for men only' and obviously it would be a bit inappropriate." With only a few members, the school's sole sorority sponsored more sedate activities such as Bridge Teas and Halloween and Christmas dances. Whether they lived in a fraternity house or not, with no residential facilities on campus most students at ACPHS rented rooms in the city of Albany. A 1934 Mortar and Pestle survey showed 49.9 percent of students rooming and boarding in Albany and stated that 2-6 students living together could get by on $5 a week.

"Club Woodlawn," right in the neighborhood, was one such communal domicile that was the site of lots of activities and parties. When funds allowed, students congregated at the Fountain Grille and Tap Room on New Scotland Avenue or the Boulevard Cafeteria on Central Avenue to grab a bite to eat.

The Boulevard Cafeteria, 1937

Especially during the Depression, which dragged on until 1941 and the start of World War II, many students could not afford to rent in Albany and commuted in each day, sometimes from quite a distance.

When Russell Denegar '43 began classes at ACPHS in 1938, he commuted from Germantown , N.Y. , by train. After arriving at Union Station in Albany , Denegar, who later became Associate Dean of the College, hopped a trolley on Broadway and rode up Madison Avenue to connect with the New Scotland Avenue bus. Classmates Walter Henning of Rhinebeck and Allan MacCollam of Kingston took the same train, though MacCollam had to take a ferry across the Hudson to catch it!

In spite of his struggle to pay his tuition, Denegar remembered that "the College was as bad off financially as myself and was reluctant to dismiss anyone as long as there was hope that payment might be forthcoming." Although he was sure others were in the same predicament, it seemed to him that Miss Glavin, ACPHS's longtime Registrar who had been with the College since 1918, "spent most of her time pursuing me."

In addition to the Depression, Prohibition, until its repeal in 1933, was another issue that continued to affect ACPHS.

In an Alembic Pharmakon survey, 54 of 55 polled students did not approve of Prohibition, which had seriously tarnished the image of pharmacists. Because they were legally allowed to dispense alcohol, "pharmacy has attracted a large amount of pseudo-pharmacists, many of whom were former liquor dealers" and a "stigma rests upon the entire profession," said a 1931 Mortar and Pestle article. Another article that same year claimed "a pharmacist is nothing more than a dignified bootlegger."

For this reason, both students and faculty strongly felt that standards must be raised and began to advocate for a four-year Bachelor of Science degree that "would go a long way toward giving pharmacy the respect it should have."

By 1932, 38 states had compulsory four-year courses for pharmacy colleges. ACPHS followed suit in 1937 and introduced its own B.S. that fall, creating a sophomore class for the first time in the school's history. The B.S. offered more liberal arts and sciences with history, English, psychology and sociology in the curriculum in addition to comparative anatomy and zoology. It also fully met the requirements for pre-med, pre-osteopathic and pre-law certificates, and strove to eliminate the surplus of pharmacists with stricter entrance requirements.

"Prof" Edwin C. Hutman '91

The courses of instruction in the new program fell into the departments of Pharmacy, Material Medica, Chemistry and Economics, which included offerings such as pharmaceutical sign writing, bookkeeping and commercial law. Courses in pharmaceutical and scientific German, political science and mathematics also were added.

1937 also brought some sad changes for ACPHS, most notably the death of longtime faculty member Edwin Cunningham Hutman '91. "Prof" Hutman taught at the College for 35 years and, according to the yearbook, died "in the saddle" while proctoring an exam.

Hutman's death meant the temporary demise of Mortar and Pestle , as he had been the paper's long-time advisor. It was replaced for a short time in the late '30s by the Dame Rumour, "published biweekly by the co-eds of ACPHS-Union" and reflective of the burgeoning number of young women at the school. In the 1938-39 academic year, the Catalog noted that "girls who do not wish to enter the field of retail pharmacy may prepare themselves for the position of hospital pharmacist" and a Clinical Laboratory Technician track was added to the Pharmacy program, the precursor of the Bachelor of Science in Medical Technology that came in the 1940s.

The program's curriculum included sterilization and media preparation, pathology, histologic technique, bacteriology, serology, biological chemistry, urine analysis and hematology in addition to the regular pharmacy subjects. Graduates of the program, conducted largely at neighboring Bender Laboratory, earned the B.S. in Pharmacy and, upon the completion of laboratory and practical hospital work, a Clinical Laboratory Technician Certificate.

The late '30s in general were a time of few activities, clubs and sports at ACPHS. Before it stopped publishing, articles in Mortar and Pestle decried the lack of school spirit. Even the class banquets were not well attended, perhaps due to the cost. The activity fee was lowered from $35 to $20, probably due to the decrease in services and the financial affairs of many students.

At ACPHS, the Orchestra, Glee Club, tennis and swimming all bit the dust during the decade and were replaced by pastimes such as the Camera Club, Student Pharmaceutical Association and yearly trips to the Eli Lilly plant in Indianapolis . By 1939, even handball was gone, replaced by ping pong, made newly popular with the formation of the U.S. Table Tennis Association in 1935. Students played in the boys' lounge in between classes, competing against top players Arnold Shapiro and Leo Katzman.

"Everyone goes down to smoking room to watch ping pong and play the radio-victrola," said the yearbook.

The Throop
Pharmacy Museum, 1938

One exciting new addition to the school in 1938 was the historic O.B. Throop Drugstore, which was moved "lock, stock and barrel" from Schoharie , N.Y. , and reassembled at ACPHS as a pharmacy museum. Located near the modern Union Pharmacy at the College, it occasioned one writer to note that "two flights of stairs span more than a century of the art of pharmacy." The old store, established in 1800 by Jabez W. Throop , had colorful show globes in the windows and was stocked with apothecary jars and drawers filled with remedies like bloodroot and boneset. The '30s also brought several of ACPHS's alumni into influential new roles.

Francis O'Brien '20, who had received his Master's degree in 1936 and was working on a Ph.D. at Fordham University , was promoted to head of the Department of Pharmacy in 1939 and eventually became ACPHS's Dean in 1943. The College's 1927 building now bears O'Brien's name.

Arthur S. Wardle '00

Also in 1939, long-time Board of Trustees Chair Warren Lansing Bradt died and was succeeded by Wardle had been on the ACPHS Board since 1914 and also served on the State Board of Pharmacy and as President of the New York State Pharmaceutical Association. ACPHS's 1956 Wardle Wing honored his decades of service to the Board.

Another ACPHS graduate made his mark not only on the College, but on the world as well. Rudolph Blythe '31 established the first pharmaceutical laboratory in the United States during a long career with Smith, Kline and French. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on the time-release capsule. In a classic understatement, the 1931 yearbook noted, "Rudy has a future if he keeps on at his present rate." In 2000, ACPHS's administrative and library wing was dedicated to Dr. Blythe, who served as a Trustee of the school. Dr. Blythe died in July 2005 at the age of 95.

Arthur S. Wardle '00. As ACPHS entered its next decade, some of the College's most influential leaders were sowing the seeds that would shape the school's destiny for years to come.