Collections and Exhibits

Original bottles and supplies grace the Gothic Revival shelves and counters	Account books and ledgers illuminate the Apothecary’s history

The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum is noted for its outstanding collection of shop furnishings, apothecary bottles and equipment, and archival materials, many still in their original location.

When the Apothecary closed during the Depression, in 1933, the doors were simply locked, preserving the contents for history. The building re-opened as a museum in 1939. Over 8,000 objects, including pill rollers, mortars and pestles, drug mills, and hand-blown medicine bottles with gold-leaf labels, were left in place. Medicinal herbs and paper labels remain in their wooden drawers. Large show-globes from the mid-19th century remain in the windows.

The first floor room of 107 S. Fairfax Street was fitted out in the Gothic Revival style around 1835, and still contains the apothecary furnishings of that period. On the second floor, wooden boxes, hand-lettered with numbers and names of herbs and medicines, line the walls and shelving. This supply room also contains tins, hand-blown bottles and paper labels for packaging the drugs.

The Apothecary has a spectacular collection of archival materials, including journals, letter and diaries, prescription and formula books, ledgers and daybooks, orders and invoices, and stock certificates. The names of famous customers appear in the documents, including Martha Washington, James Monroe, Nelly Custis and Robert E. Lee. According to an 1802 letter from Mount Vernon, “Mrs. Washington desires Mr. Stabler to send by the bearer a quart bottle of his best Castor Oil and the bill for it.”