{"id":196251,"date":"2026-03-18T11:56:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/196251\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T11:56:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:56:06","slug":"webbs-city-was-st-petes-most-unusual-drugstore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/196251\/","title":{"rendered":"Webb’s City was St. Pete’s most unusual drugstore"},"content":{"rendered":"

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Rui Farias says Webb\u2019s City in St. Petersburg was his playground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Founded in 1926, Webb\u2019s City was said to be the most \u201cunusual drugstore,\u201d a one-stop-shop department store with a mix of excitement and cheap deals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

Webb’s City launched about 100 years ago in St. Petersburg, by founder James “Doc” Webb
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For more than 40 years, it was an extremely popular shopping center with 77 departments and more than 1,500 employees\u00a0
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It was a precursor to Walmart, offering a large variety of items at low prices. As shopping centers and big corporations grew, popular businesses dwindled and it closed in 1979
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Webb’s City offered families an ‘experience,’ showcasing live mermaids, dancing chickens, and kissing bunnies\u00a0<\/p>\n

The executive director of the\u00a0St. Petersburg History Museum<\/a>, Farias grew up in the city and says he would often hang out at what was dubbed the \u201cworld\u2019s most unusual drug store.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just weird,\u201d Farias joked.<\/p>\n

Webb\u2019s City was the brainchild of James \u201cDoc\u201d Webb, a man who dropped out of school at 9 years old and launched Webb\u2019s City about 100 years ago.<\/p>\n

Webb fashioned his store as a one-stop shop for anything and everything local families might need.<\/p>\n

It was Walmart and Amazon before either came into existence. You could grocery shop, pick up medication, get a haircut, have work done on your car, and sample household furniture \u2014 all in one place that offered everything for less.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis motto early on was \u2018stack it high and sell it cheap.\u2019 The gentleman who started Walmart took that from him and ran with it,\u201d said Farias.<\/p>\n

But low prices and a large variety were only two of the appeals. Webb\u2019s City was also part store, part circus.<\/p>\n

On any given day, you could see kissing bunnies, watch dancing chickens, take in a live mermaid show or enjoy a free circus in the parking lot.<\/p>\n

Webb\u2019s City wasn\u2019t just a place to shop; it was an experience. And Webb was the ringleader.<\/p>\n

Farias compared his memories of Webb to P.T. Barnum, the legendary showman who co-founded the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was definitely a showman,\u201d Farias said. \u201cTook the rules and bent them a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was also an innovator. Steve Diasio, CEO of the\u00a0School of Creativity and Innovation<\/a>\u00a0in St. Petersburg, compared Webb to tech mogul Elon Musk, while also likening him to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Leonard da Vinci, and Pablo Picasso during an interview with\u00a0Spectrum Bay News 9.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say beyond revolutionary,\u201d said Diasio, who teaches some of Webb\u2019s creative concepts at his school. \u201cHe was a person who had a vision of what we now know as Amazon and Amazon Prime.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more than 40 years, Webb\u2019s City was a St. Petersburg landmark. You could see advertisements for the shopping center, which peaked at 77 departments and spanned 10 blocks, in states around the country.<\/p>\n

But by the late 1970s, the rise of the shopping mall led to Webb\u2019s City\u2019s demise. It closed its doors for the last time in 1979.<\/p>\n

Its legacy, though, lives on. Webb\u2019s City is often mentioned as having one of the first express lane checkouts \u2014 think \u201c10 Items Or Less\u201d \u2014 and boasted one of the first escalators in West Florida.<\/p>\n

It also lives on in the memories of customers like Farias, who spent so many Saturdays at the shopping center asking his mother to get a haircut because it came with a free ice cream cone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever you talk about Webb\u2019s City, there\u2019s always this little twinkle,\u201d Farias said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Rui Farias says Webb\u2019s City in St. Petersburg was his playground.\u00a0 Founded in 1926,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1595,767,1011,2031,274,558,770,104,1190,9073,115,139,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278],"class_list":["post-196251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-arts-entertainment","tag-app-community","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-local-business","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-community-news","tag-entertainment","tag-human-interest","tag-jeff-butera","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}