Bondurant’s Pharmacy (1974)
In 1974, pharmacist Joe Bondurant collaborated with architect Daniel M. Brewer to create a building that would not only serve the medication needs of Lexington, Kentucky, but would serve as a visual advertisement for the services he provided. Designers created a building in the Mimetic form, a style that makes architecture look like a non-building thing. Mimetic architecture is useful as an advertisement, as the Duck Building and Haines Shoe House proved. It explains the business affiliated with the building, but it also serves as an attraction or destination. Bondurant Pharmacy, using a mortar and pestle design, evokes earlier years when pharmacists mixed their own medications. Today Bondurant’s Pharmacy is occupied by a liquor store, but the new owners got into the spirit of the building’s mimetic roots. They have painted it to look like a giant cocktail, complete with maraschino cherry poking out of the top.
