Monday, April 27, 2026

In Altadena, Webster’s Pharmacy Turns 100

[Photo credit: Keira Wight Creative]

The Altadena pharmacy — which its owners say is the community’s oldest operating retail business — held its centennial celebration Saturday, 16 months after the Eaton Fire forced a six-week closure

For six weeks after the Eaton Fire, Webster’s Community Pharmacy went dark.

The pharmacy, which its owners say has operated on Lake Avenue since 1926 — making it Altadena’s oldest continuously operating retail business — marked its 100th anniversary Saturday with a free, four-hour centennial celebration from noon to 4 p.m. at 2333 Lake Avenue.

The milestone comes 16 months after the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which destroyed more than 9,400 structures and killed 19 people according to Cal Fire, and forced the pharmacy to close for approximately six weeks. During that time, co-owners Meredith and Michael Miller coordinated with a neighboring Pasadena pharmacy to keep prescriptions flowing to their customers.

“We weren’t allowed back into the building for several weeks,” Miller said in a previously published interview. “We immediately coordinated with a neighboring pharmacy in Pasadena to ensure our patients continued to receive their life-saving medications without interruption.”

Webster’s reopened February 17, 2025. On Saturday, it turned 100.

The celebration drew county leaders, local vendors, community artists, and longtime customers to Lake Avenue for an afternoon that included live music, food from Altadena restaurants and food vendors, a marketplace of local artists and creators, pet adoptions through the Pasadena Humane Mobile Adoption Center, and hands-on children’s activities hosted by the Altadena Library’s Curiosity Connection. Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger was among the officials in attendance.

“Cheers to 100 years, Webster’s Community Pharmacy! I’m proud to join the Altadena community to celebrate the hope this beloved business represents,” Barger wrote on social media following the event.

Webster’s was founded in 1926 by Harold “Frank” Webster, who purchased an existing pharmacy on North Lake Avenue and renamed it. Webster’s son, William “Bill” Webster, eventually expanded the business across multiple storefronts on the same block. Meredith and Michael Miller purchased the pharmacy from Bill Webster in December 2010, rebranding it Webster’s Community Pharmacy and adding services including vaccinations, prescription delivery, and a modernized gift shop.

Altadena is an unincorporated community in Los Angeles County and has no city government; oversight of the area falls to the county Board of Supervisors.

The pharmacy’s role in the community deepened after the fire. In July 2025, Webster’s opened a Village Post Office inside its Lake Avenue location after the Altadena Post Office at 2271 Lake Avenue was damaged and closed in the fire. The U.S. Postal Service partnered with the Millers, with support from county and community leaders, to restore mail services to the neighborhood. Miller said the community had asked directly.

“The fire hit, and everyone knows that since that time, life has changed dramatically for all of us,” she said at the post office opening last July. “We lost our post office, and the community asked us, ‘Is there a way you could ever do it again?’ It just felt incumbent on us to do this. You know we’re a fixture in this community, and we want to help our customers in any way we can.”

A longtime customer put it plainly in an interview with CBS Los Angeles on Saturday. “This is the perfect place to come and find gifts and get your prescriptions and get anything you need and it’s always been right down the street from my home,” the customer said.

On Saturday, Miller reflected on the years behind her. “We’ve been through everything possible in the last hundred years and specially in the last few years,” she told CBS Los Angeles. “So we’ve been hanging in there and just doing what we do best. Which is helping people walk through times of goodness and times of badness.”

Webster’s Community Pharmacy is located at 2333 Lake Avenue in Altadena. The pharmacy’s website is websterspharm.com.

A century ago, Frank Webster opened a drugstore on a street still served by red cars. On Saturday, the neighborhood he opened it for came back to Lake Avenue to celebrate. Many of them are still rebuilding. They showed up anyway.