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Photograph of Walgreen Drama Center, April 6, 2023, by Raymond Tsai
Was the Man Behind the Walgreen Drama Center the Right Namesake for the Building?
Was the Man Behind the Walgreen Drama Center the Right Namesake for the Building?
by Raymond Tsai
With its towering glass cube entrance and 100,000 total square feet, the Walgreen Drama Center, home of the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre, and Dance (SMTD)’s Theatre & Drama Department, is one of the most prominent buildings on U-M’s North Campus ("Walgreen Drama Center"). The building’s namesake, UM alumnus Charles R. Walgreen Jr., was a man of similar stature in the world of business and retailing. Besides being an alum of UM's pharmacy department, the only connection to the SMTD is the $10 million donation Walgreen made to the university, aiding in the drama center’s construction and giving it its name ("Charles Rudolph Walgreen, Jr."). This brings up the question: does a mere donation deserve a building name?
“Charles Walgreen Jr.,” Photo Courtesy: nytimes.com
Charles R. Walgreen Jr. was born on March 4, 1906 to the founder of Walgreens. The name Charles was ranked fifth in popularity for total male births in that decade (“Top Names of the 1900s”). Although his name was not a unique one, what Walgreen achieved in his lifetime and the legacy he left were remarkable. Walgreen began working for his father’s Chicago drug store as a delivery boy in 1915, when it was considered a “true small family business” (Worldt). Graduating from the University of Michigan in 1928 with a pharmacy degree, he continued to work for his father and in 1939 took over leadership of the company (Pinto).
Under his leadership, Walgreens became America’s closest representation to a national drug chain (Pinto). In addition to dramatically increasing the company’s yearly sales from $72 million to $903 million (Pinto), he also spearheaded several retailing shifts that swept the country after WWII (Walgreen Company). When stores with slower sales were suffering due to the war, Walgreen led his company toward self-service retailing. In this concept, customers chose their own products from the shelves, rather than having a clerk collect them, as was previously done (Schmeltzer et al.). Walgreen also decreased the industry average of pharmacists’ working hours from 66 to 40 (Worldt), and the changes he made to his company influenced the rise of supermarkets, shopping centers, and chain drug stores throughout the U.S. (Pinto). Four years after his retirement as chairman, Walgreens became the first drug store with annual sales exceeding $1 billion ("Walgreen Company").
The first Walgreens. Photo Courtesy: chicagotribune.com
"Shortly before he died in 2007 at the age of 100, he donated ten million dollars to the University of Michigan. That gift provided the means to build the Walgreen Drama Center (including the Arthur Miller Theater)" ("Ann Arbor").
Walgreen's son Charles "Cork" Walgreen III was also an alumnus of UM who followed his father's footsteps in giving to the university. Cork "donated $2 million to the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy to endow a professorship devoted to researching the socioeconomics of health care policies. He also served the College as a longtime member of the Dean’s Advisory Committee," accoding to Cork's obituary posting by UM's College of Pharmacy.
It seems there is a growing trend among universities to reconsider building names based on the legacy of the namesakes, and the University of Michigan is no exception. Research conducted by The Michigan Daily found that as of 2021, only one building in the entire university was named after a person of color and only twelve after women (Dougall & Juliano). The issue is being addressed and debated, as is evident in the renaming of the Randall Laboratory Addition after pioneering black physicist Homer A. Neal (Gerdes). The discussions on campus don't stop there. According to the University Record, U-M will be “creating a task force to develop a community-engaged process for diversifying the names considered for campus spaces, facilities, and streets” (Love). The statistics, however, are lopsided, not only on the issue of race and gender. The Michigan Daily also found that although 24 percent of U-M buildings were named after donors and 25 percent after alumni, only 10 percent were named after professors (Dougall & Juliano). It appears that the buildings were mostly named because of the fame of an alum or the money of a donor, rather than the practical contributions of those who labored within and for the university, which begs the question: what exactly merits a building name?
Charles Walgreen Jr. made a great contribution to the world through his innovation in retailing, however, there is no visible tie between his work and the Walgreen Drama Center. The question of what merits a building name is being considered throughout the campus and across the nation. It is hopeful that in years to come, buildings will be named after not only those with large donations, but also those with meaningful contributions to the university.
Works Cited
“Ann Arbor: Charles Rudolph Walgreen, Jr..” Local Wiki. https://localwiki.org/ann-arbor/Charles_Rudolph_Walgreen%2C_Jr. Accessed 20 April 2023.
“Charles Rudolph Walgreen, Jr..” Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/3382381.
“Charles Walgreen Jr..” The New York Times, 13 Feb 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/obituaries/13walgreen.html. Accessed 7 Apr 2023.
Dougall, Jared, and Juliano, Christian. “Daily Research Finds Only One Building Named after Person of Color, 12 after Women.” The Michigan Daily, 7 Dec. 2022, https://www.michigandaily.com/news/administration/daily-research-finds-only-one-building-named-after-person-color-12-after/.
Gerdes, David. “U-M Renames Randall Laboratory Addition After Pioneering Physicist Homer A. Neal.” LSA Physics, 20 May 2022, https://lsa.umich.edu/physics/news-events/all-news/search-news/u-m-renames-randall-laboratory-addition-after-our-late-pioneerin.html. Accessed 4 April 2023.
Love, Lauren. “University to Launch Several New Anti-Racism Initiatives.” The University Record, 20 Oct. 2020, https://record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-to-launch-several-new-anti-racism-initiatives/.
Pinto, David. "A life worth celebrating." Chain Drug Review, vol. 29, no. 5, 5 Mar. 2007, pp. 1+.
Photo of the first Walgreens Drugstore. Chicago Tribune, 6 May 2014, https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-walgreens-historic-photos-20140506-photogallery.html. Accessed 10 Apr 2023.
Gale Academic OneFile, https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=umuser&id=GALE%7CA160166827&v=2.1&it=r. Accessed 25 Mar. 2023.
Schmeltzer, John, et al. “Charles R. Walgreen Jr.: 1906 - 2007.” Chicago Tribune, 21 Aug. 2021, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-02-12-0702120196-story.html.
“Top Names of the 1900s.” Social Security, www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/decades/names1900s.html. Accessed 2 April 2023.
Tsai, Raymond. Exterior photograph of Walgreen Drama Center. 6 Apr 2023. Author’s personal collection.
“Walgreen Company." Encyclopedia.com. 21 Mar. 2023 https://www.encyclopedia.com/economics/economics-magazines/walgreen-company. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023
“Walgreen Drama Center.” University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, 15 Sept. 2022, https://smtd.umich.edu/facilities/walgreen-drama-center/.
Worldt, Jeffrey. "Charles R. Walgreen Jr.'s legacy." MMR, vol. 24, no. 4, 26 Feb. 2007, p. 10. Gale Business: Insights, https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=GBIB&u=umuser&id=GALE%7CA160420540&v=2.1&it=r. Accessed 25 Mar. 2023.
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