The wellness man and his rocky road
In 1876, a 22-year-old freshfaced kid from Ohio visited Santa Cruz, looking for the best place to establish his drug store. He’d eliminated San Francisco, which had better drug stores, and Petaluma, the state’s poultry capital, and San Jose, the state’s fruit capital. But Santa Cruz was a small town with a seasonal influx of tourists, and only two pharmacies: F.D. Scott’s in the Anthony block, and J.J. Hug’s Drugs on Pacific Avenue. The kid found space available in the brick Flatiron Building, a wedgeshaped structure at the head of Pacific Avenue and Front Street, central to the Lower Plaza. It was across the street from the town’s leading hotel, the “Pacific Ocean House.”
John G. Tanner’s inexperience and youthful optimism may not have impressed locals as offering much competition. He did come with a partner, Dr. John F. Christal, who lent the firm its gravitas. Yet instead of being called “Mr. Tanner,” he let people use his nick-name “Tan.” And “Tan” even had the impiety not to close on Sunday, although he did attend Methodist Sunday services, then opened after church. Those loyal to Scott or Hug soon found their loyalty tested on a late evening, or early morning, when Tanner’s was the only drug store open. Tan worked harder and longer in the belief a drug store was a medical necessity.
Blue collar industrial workers came to downtown mostly on weekends, to frequent its famous 40 Saloons. Workingmen visited the drug store, standing next to genteel folks wearing the White Ribbon of Temperance. Tanner’s great draw was establishing the first Soda Fountain in town, which became the popular non-alcoholic watering hole for the Temperance crowd, ladies and children, after church, school or shopping.
In those days all soft drinks were “patent medicines,” meaning health drinks. His “orange blossom phosphate” was quite popular with church members, although few realized it included a teaspoon of “medicinal alcohol.” This wasn’t Tanner’s secret prank, for even during Prohibition, it was permissible to sell beverages with an alcohol content less than 1.28%, and permitted hard liquor when used as
a base in medicines. In the 19th Century, whiskey was commonly found in medicine cabinets as a topical sterilizer, or taken by teaspoon or in dilution as an anesthetic, blood-thinner, decongestant, sore throat cure, and sedative. Tanner used 15-to-20-year-old bourbon, or homemade gin.
Tanner’s impact
A few years after opening the drug store, both the competing drugs stores had closed. Tanner’s drug store had windows facing the Lower Plaza and Front Street, but only solid doors facing the more traveled Pacific Avenue. To bring better light and visibility, Tanner installed the first corner show-window in town, which was a technological wonder in itself. He had to remove the northwest masonry corner on the first floor, and support the building’s second floor brickwork on a slender iron post, located inside the show window so the plate glass window could wrap-around the corner. The corner window would later be a hallmark of Frank Lloyd Wright, so it was quite ahead of its time in 1886.
In 1882, Tanner opened a branch Drug Store in Felton, and in 1883, Dr. Christal left the partnership and started his own drug store and soda fountain between Church and Walnut streets, which in 1884 became the still active Horsnyder Pharmacy. When the 1887 Masonic Hall was built on Pacific Avenue facing down Walnut Street, Tanner opened a branch downtown drug store and soda fountain, competing with Horsnyders for elegance. Tanner called it the “Model Drug Store,” promoted as the most beautiful west of the Mississippi, with plush carpets, marble counters, Tiffany lamps, stained-wood shelves and oil paintings. It served the “College Corners” section of Pacific Avenue between Walnut and Lincoln streets, where business colleges, seminaries, a teachers college and dancing academy clustered, with a large student population seeking non-alcoholic gathering places.
Tanner was a generous supporter of community improvements, and a member of numerous service organizations like the Foresters, Woodsmen of the World, Elks, Eagles, and the Knights of Pythias. His fun-loving personality made him a fixture at every ball and costume party, and neighborhood children would run to greet him when they saw him coming home, as he always took an interest in their play. He hoped for children of his
own, but giving one’s heart left it open to hurt. On Dec. 25, 1879, 25-year-old Tanner married Margaret S. Lawson, but she soon died without bearing him any children.
In 1887, Tanner joined F.W. Ely to buy the old Skinner farm, and subdivide it as “Bayona Park.” Tanner named the subdivision’s three streets: one after “Toledo,” the city of his birth; one “Anita” after his aunt Irene Anita; and “Olive” after the site’s olive orchard (Spelled “Oliva” by Italian residents). Bayona Park sat across the street from Bay View Elementary School, and had its own shopping corners and railroad depot four blocks south, with talk of extending the Mission Street trolley line to West Cliff’s “Bay View Race Track” at Fair and Wanzer streets (which never happened).
Harness racing
Tanner developed an interest in harness racing at Bay View Race Track, where the driver rides a two-wheeled “sulky” cart behind the horse. Tanner personally drove his own sulky horse “Ko-Ko,” named after the Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 comic opera “The Mikado.”
In 1893, people argued for a week whether Tanner would have any advantage as the first man ever to drive a sulky with inflatable tires. Huge crowds turned out for the match. Tanner beat Frank Gannon’s horse Pat in two heats, causing Pat’s driver to suspect this new sulky was an unfair technology, and refused to do the third heat unless Tanner removed the rubber tires. Under pressure, Tanner
replaced the tires with standard cart wheels, and the crowds went wild as Tanner still shot way out in front, winning easily.
On Sept. 19, 1889, Tanner married Ione T. Bowen in her Congregational Church, of which he became a member. Ione was born in Pescadero in 1865 to Eladist Bowen. Her father was killed near Half Moon Bay in 1873, leaving Ione’s mother Rosanna with five children to raise and a Gold Rush fortune to spend. So she moved to Santa Cruz, built the town’s first duplex at Church and Chestnut streets in 1877, and invested in real estate. (The duplex now stands on the south-west corner of Center and Elm streets).
Tanner’s daughter Irene Anita was born July 21, 1890, followed by Mildred Bernice on Jan. 10, 1891. In 1893 Tanner moved his flagship drug store from the Flatiron Building into the palatial new Hotaling Hotel. Then in 1894, a devastating fire destroyed the hotel and most of the TriCorner Block (bounded by Pacific Avenue Front and Cooper streets), yet leaving the Flatiron Building unscathed. In 1895, a grander version of the Hotaling Building was constructed as the St. George Hotel, and Tanner’s drug store reopened, with the magnificent Palm Court as the lunch room for his soda fountain. (A version of the Palm Court on its original site is now the skylight room of Bookshop Santa Cruz).
Tanner’s second wife Ione died March 29, 1895, and Tanner married his wife’s sister Mollie Bowen in 1896. To make a new start, Tanner moved his 234 Walnut
Avenue cottage back, and had LeBaron R. Olive design an Eastlake/Queen Anne-style home as Tanner’s wedding gift to Mollie. The interior wood trim, wainscot, doors and staircase were made of redwood burl. The front door was beveled glass, with a cathedral glass hall window. The home was completed in September 1896, to much acclaim. There was even a room for mother-in-law Rosanna Bowan.
But Tanner’s wife enjoyed their home for only three years, before dying Jan.13, 1899. Tanner married a fourth time May 22, 1901, to Dr. W.R. Cogdon’s daughter, Minnie Martha, in her Calvary Episcopal Church, of which he became a member. His daughters loved Minnie dearly, and she treated them as her own. But his late-wife’s mother Rosanna “was very bitter” daughter Mildred recalled, “and moved into one of her own houses, she owned four.”
On July 17, 1903, the family went on a picnic to Twin Lakes, and eldest daughter Irene wanted to have a picnic on her 13th birthday the following Tuesday. Irene didn’t feel well after they returned home. At midnight she went into convulsions, so Dr. Francis Morgan was called from across the street. Morgan said she was suffering from ptomaine poisoning, possibly from eating fruit. He stayed with her during the worst of it until she fell asleep at 4 a.m. But he was summoned back two hours later at 6 a.m., sadly arriving just after she died.
Shocking
When Tanner’s good friend, Major Frank McLaughlin, in the throes of grief, shot his daughter as she slept and took poison in November 1907, Tanner became uncharacteristically depressed. Then four months later in March, 1908, Tanner was again traumatized when a woman killed herself in his drug store. He seemed back to his old self later in the week at the Foresters’ lodge meeting March 26.
The following morning at breakfast, Tanner was stricken with sudden prostration. The doctor said it was uremia, which is blood poisoning caused by kidney damage. The symptoms had been mistaken for his reaction to recent disturbing events. That afternoon at 2 p.m. Tanner died at the age of 54. The community was in shock at the unexpected news. His 32-year-old drug store was the second oldest business in town. Daughter Mildred inherited the house and the Model Drug Store.