Jacob’s Pharmacy exists no longer, not a splinter of wood from its counter nor a brick from its wall.
The Marietta Street landmark was disassembled, then replaced with a bank, which today is the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.
But the legendary birthplace of Coca-Cola shimmers back into being Monday, May 16, to mark the 130th anniversary of the birth of the Real Thing.
The Coca-Cola Co. will cloak the Georgia State University school building in a 50-foot-high scrim painted to look like Jacob’s Pharmacy, circa 1886, while dedicating a historic plaque outside the building.
(To see a gallery of historic Coca-Cola “homes,” go to MyAJC.com.)
The plaque will commemorate the one-time watering hole where Atlanta’s most recognized product was first mixed with fizzy water and served to a customer.
Coke archivist Ted Ryan said Jacob's was less like the modern version of a drugstore and more like a general store where Atlantans could shop for patent medicines, have prescriptions filled, buy a bottle of hair tonic or the day's newspaper, and sit down at the fountain and enjoy a cool soft drink and a conversation.
“I compare it to Caribou Coffee,” said Ryan. “The only thing missing was Wi-Fi.”
As Ryan spoke, he was strolling up the crest of Marietta Street, past the location of the boarding house where John Pemberton established the Pemberton Chemical Co. and first came up with the "secret formula" for a caffeine-infused sugary syrup that would cure headaches. Pemberton's boarding house is now a parking deck and a sandwich shop called Just Around the Corner, the shop adorned, naturally, with a sign for Coca-Cola.
“Imagine yourself here in August,” said Ryan. “You’ve just walked down this dusty, cobblestone street, and you want a cool drink.” To get that drink, you’d step inside Jacob’s, at the corner of Marietta and Peachtree. Saloons in 1886 had gone dry, according to historian Franklin Garrett, giving soda fountains a splendid window of opportunity.
Each month, Pemberton supposedly hauled a gallon of that syrup two blocks, from the converted boarding house to the pharmacy. By 1904, the company would be selling a million gallons a year.
As the company expanded, it moved from headquarters to headquarters, up and down Marietta Street, a few blocks up Peachtree and down Edgewood, all within the compact borders of downtown Atlanta. Ryan gave a walking tour of those different “homes,” a tour that offers insight into the growth of the company and of Atlanta.
107 Marietta St.
This birthplace was a converted boarding house where Dr. John Pemberton and his partners (including Frank Robinson) developed the Coca-Cola formula in 1886. New owners returned the manufacturing equipment to the site in 1887, making it the first and third home of the soft drink.
Jacob’s Pharmacy
Listed as 2 Marietta St. in 1886, and as 14 Marietta St. today, this became the second center of syrup-making, and was the first place that Coke’s famous product was mixed with carbonated water, at the soda fountain that Willis Venable operated inside Jacob’s drugstore.
47 Peachtree St.
After Asa Candler bought the company from Pemberton in 1888, he moved it to his own building on Peachtree, in a location that is now a grassy resting spot inside Woodruff Park.
42 1/2 Decatur St.
The company lived here for two years, on the second and third floors of a structure that is also gone, replaced by a Georgia State University classroom building.
77 Ivy St.
An old residence on what is now Peachtree Center Avenue housed the growing company from 1893 to 1898. Like the street name Ivy, the house is also gone.
Edgewood Avenue at College Street
Candler declared that the triangular, flatiron-style building he constructed here in 1898 would be “sufficient for all our needs for all time to come.” Coca-Cola grew out of the building in 11 years. College Street has been renamed Coca-Cola Place, and the structure, truncated for an unknown reason, now houses a Subway sandwich shop. Inside the shop is an image of the building in its former glory.
56 Magnolia St.
Built in 1909 at the level of the railroad tracks in the “gulch” west and south of Marietta Street, this street and structure are also both obliterated. According to Ryan, the location is beneath what is now the plaza outside the Georgia World Congress Center.
310 North Ave.
Finally, in 1919, Ernest Woodruff, president of the Trust Company of Georgia, led a leveraged buyout, purchasing the Coca-Cola Co. for $25 million. The next year, he moved the company to its present headquarters on North Avenue, near Georgia Tech.
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