Gem Pharmacy Had Books for Lending

William J. Starbuck arrived in Fullerton in the 1880s to open a drugstore, but he wound up doing more than that.

In a dirt-road town with ambitions to become a city, the Gem Pharmacy on the south side of the 100 block of East Commonwealth Avenue became the city’s telephone exchange, soda fountain, social center and general dry-goods outlet.

Perhaps because Starbuck was so interested in education--he was a member of the city’s first school board--he installed a bookcase in his pharmacy, stocked it with books and set chairs and a sofa nearby to encourage readers. He called it a “traveling” library, meaning people could borrow the books.

It was the city’s first library. Soon others passed the hat to start a reading room above the bank downtown in hopes of luring boys away from saloons.

The first municipal library opened in 1907, another in 1942 and the current main branch in 1973. Today, Fullerton has two library locations, a bookmobile and 250,000 volumes.

Starbuck, shown with his wife in his drugstore, top photo, in 1892, was honored by having a street named after him, but it has since been renamed Valencia Drive. His legacy persists in the present-day library, where the original drugstore bookcase is on display, shown above with curator Cathy Thomas.

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