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Robert Gill recently purchased the Davies Reid building, which was built as Jackson Drug by his grandfather in 1937. The building has been out of the Gill family since 1978. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / BRADLY J. BONER

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When a water pipe starts leaking and workers are forced to shut off service to a downtown business, the event usually isn’t considered serendipitous.

But such was the case with Robert Gill when the line in the basement of the Davies Reid gallery and rug store on the Jackson Town Square sprung a leak some months back. When workers turned off the water, they also cut service to Gill’s building next door.

From the broken pipe sprung a conversation between Gill and the Davies Reid owners, who occupy the Jackson Drug building that Gill’s grandfather Robert Bruce Porter built in 1937. Although the Town Square landmark had fallen out of the Gill family portfolio more than three decades ago, the conversation about the leak led to an offer.

If Gill just bought his grandfather’s building back, he wouldn’t have to share the water line – he would own it all, Gill said of Davies and Reid’s observation.

“They sounded like they wanted to talk,” Gill said.

On March 1, the third-generation valley resident closed a deal that brought the landmark back into his family’s fold. Gill paid $4.5 million for the downtown property, according to court documents.

Its purchase could ensure that the stone Town Square icon is preserved as part of Jackson’s original flavor.

“It sounds very romantic,” Gill said of buying the stone edifice Porter built. “I didn’t want it to change or be torn down.”

While saving a building, Gill also helped rescue gallery owners Sharon Davies and Terry Reid from bankruptcy, which they declared to stem a foreclosure auction planned by Bank of America.

The purchase may even seal the future of an important corridor that includes artist Archie Teater’s old studio, now home to JC Jewelers, The Bunnery, the Teton Theatre and the old post office, now home to Astoria Fine Art, which all belong to Gill or his father, Ralph.

There are no plans to redevelop that stretch, Robert Gill said. In fact, he may try to return a little slice of Jackson to the way it used to be.

“If it’s feasible, I’d like [the building] to be the drugstore again,” he said. “I’m not promising anything. I might wake up six months to a year from now and realize I’m out of my mind. I think it is something the Town Square really misses.”

The building’s legacy stretches back almost 100 years to grandfather Porter.

Porter moved to the valley from Nebraska in 1914 when he was a young pharmacist to work at the first Jackson Drug on the east side of the Town Square in a building that now houses Leslie and Hines Goldsmiths. In 1922, he bought the pharmacy.



Famous for fountain

A foundation hole had been dug for a new building that would eventually become Jackson Drug at the northwest corner of the square. Porter turned the foundation hole into a basement in 1936.

With stones imported from a quarry in Idaho, Porter built the new building and opened the store in 1937. He moved the legendary soda fountain across the Town Square from its original location.

Bruce Porter ran Jackson Drug until his death in 1961. During his life,  he operated and expanded the Jackson Hole Hereford Ranch in South Park and acquired significant amounts of commercial property downtown.

Gill said Porter willed the drugstore to his oldest grandchild, Robin Brazelton, but she was killed in June 1966 in a car accident. A small portrait of the dark-haired teen, with a handwritten note on the back, still hangs in Gill’s home office.

After the accident, the Jackson Drug building went to her parents, Jeannine Brazelton and her husband.

Gill, 51, recalls spending many mornings before school in the drugstore where his father, Ralph, did the bookkeeping and managed the store. Ralph Gill wielded considerable political influence in the community, serving as Jackson mayor and a county commissioner.

Robert Gill mopped floors, made ice cream and hauled it upstairs from the basement. At the time, the drugstore served just five flavors: chocolate, vanilla, chocolate chip, strawberry and maple nut.

Gill said he doesn’t have one first memory of the building.

“It was just one of those things that was always there,” he said. “That was where Dad went to work every day for 20 years of his life.”

Throughout its years, Jackson Drug offered customers just about everything except groceries, including records, tobacco and Hallmark cards.

Long before The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar or Jackson Hole Wine Company, Jackson Drug was the only place in town that sold liquor.

In the basement, Porter cut his own glass, fashioned frames and made ice cream. Porter also used the basement to apply his apothecary skills.

The pharmacy acted as the concessionaire for the Teton Theatre, which was built in 1941 with stone from the same Idaho quarry. That lasted through the mid-1970s when the theater began selling its own treats.

Then, Brazelton and her husband divorced, and his uncle received the building in the settlement, Gill said. Jay Brazelton continued to rent the space to the Jackson Drug business. But it soon fell out of the family’s holdings.



‘It just happened’

Steve Schulz and Charlie Gaudet, bought the building in 1978 and continued to operate it as Jackson Drug until they leased it to Davies Reid in 2001. Davies Reid purchased it in 2005.

“It wasn’t like we were saying ‘the building’s gone,’” Gill said. “It just happened.”

Still, as someone with an interest in Jackson’s historic structures – he rebuilt Stephen Leek’s homestead cabin from 1898 – Gill always wanted the building. A hand-drawn sketch of Jackson Drug also hangs on Gill’s office wall, along with pictures of his grandfather.

This opportunity arose somewhat from misfortune.

Facing troubles with Bank of America on a package of loans, Davies and Reid put the building up for sale for more than $6 million. The price tag was too much for Gill to get serious about buying the property.

“It was out of my comfort zone,” he said. Still, “the desire to own it was always there.”

In late 2009, Bank of America sent Davies Reid to foreclosure, alleging the company owed about $2.76 million. Instead of allowing the bank to take the property to auction, the couple filed for bankruptcy and sought another way out.

Sometime during that ordeal, a pipe in the storied basement sprung a fateful leak. Workers shut water off at the curb at Cache Street, which cut off service to Gill’s building to the east. The owners of the two properties realized the buildings are on the same water line.

The shop talk became serious, and after some negotiation, they agreed on the price, which had to be approved by a bankruptcy court before the purchase could be finalized.

While Gill concedes he paid a hefty price for a family heirloom, the purchase was also a business decision.

“I own everything around it,” he said. “It was valuable to me to own all that as a whole rather than own either side of it and have somebody else own what’s in the middle.”

For now, Davies-Reid will continue on a two-year lease. Afterward, Gill thinks milk shakes and malt balls might still be a viable downtown business.

He envisions bringing back booths that lined the northeast wall of the building where he and friends used to drink sodas. Gill thinks he’s even located the old ice cream machine but won’t divulge its location.

He wants to buy it first.