5438 Penn Ave: Lackzoom Acidophilus
I must have passed it a thousand times or more. Certainly I’d noticed the white terra cotta facade and its odd trapezoidal shape, canted in such a way that it doesn’t quite align with the street, like a mis-set bone.
But it wasn’t until very recently that I happened to actually look up and take in the detail above the doorway/windows. Two names (?) permanently formed into the ceramic tile that read like ancient runes, some hep jazzcat jive, or a preposterous stage name: Lackzoom Acidophilus.
The small, two-story building at 5438 Penn Avenue turns out to have been the one-time laboratory and corporate headquarters for the lineal parent of the General Nutrition Corporation (or GNC), the Pittsburgh-based retail giant that made a fortune over the last half century urging America to “Live Well” vis-a-vis shopping and popping (malls and pills, respectively).
It’s no surprise that I’m not the only one to ever spot this curious storefront, but there’s remarkably little information out there on it. The definitive piece seems to be a short Western Pennsylvania History Magazine article written in 2003 by Chris Potter.
Potter’s story details David Shakarian, founder of GNC, whose:
… Armenian parents ran a business called “Lackzoom” which sold yogurt, buttermilk, and Bulgarian acidophilus–milk fortified with the bacteria lactobacillus acidophilus to intestinal bacteria that make digesting milk difficult for some.
Apparently the original Lackzoom never survived The Great Depression, but Shakarian would go on to found his own health food store, and eventually the GNC chain. In 1983, the year before his death, Shakarian was named by Forbes magazine as the wealthiest Pittsburgher on their annual list. Live well, indeed.
Ghost sign, obscured by flora: “Lackzoom and Acidophilus”
Pittsburgh Orbit 
Really nice article, Thanks
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My dad worked in this building when I was a child. He made Lackzoom then yogurt here. He would make it, then deliver it to the stores. I played inside many times. My father, Robert PEARRELL, was one of the brothers early hires after WW II.
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so, this is John Pearrell again. My dad Robert was still making and delivering Lackzoom in 1950’s-so the product did survive the Great Depression. Beginning I. The late 50’s early 1960’s they transitioned to making Yogurt. I helped many times. The back, older part of the building contained the machines where lackzoom bottles were sterilized and then refilled. The front was modernized for the yogurt production. The upstairs was empty and mostly used for storage.
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I just saw it today, immediately had to google it, because what?! Thanks for the information! Much appreciated.
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We do what we can!
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my dad worked in that building—I remember it well! 1950’s to perhaps mid 1960’s.
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just moved to Bloomfield and noticed this building today, I had to Google it. Thanks for the info!
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Lackzoom was a product developed by David Shakarian’s father, Hagop David Shakarian, who immigrated to Pittsburgh around 1890. He listed his occupation at that time as electrician. By the mid-1910s he had developed his Lackzoom product and was selling it as a delivered product and not (yet) from a storefront.
According to Pittsburgh newspapers, the Lackzoom laboratory’s address in 1930 was 5432 Penn Avenue and not 5438. The property at 5432 Penn Ave was a tire store as of 1919 but by 1927, Hagop Shakarian was running his “buttermilk store” from this address, per help wanted ads in the newspapers. In 1930 he started placing graphics-based ads in Pittsburgh newspapers for Lackzoom and listed 5432 as the address for Lackzoom’s “laboratories” while Lackzoom was “served at” 625 Smithfield Street, telephone MOntrose 3761. He still did door-to-door deliveries.
In 1930, the Pittsburgh Press ran a feature story on Mr. Shakarian (no photos, alas) and gave his biographical details: “H.D. Shakarian, now nearly 70, but resembling a man of 40, has spent the last 38 years breeding these friendly bacilli as a natural means to destroy the disease causing germs. In his laboratory he has isolated the organisms that promote health from those that destroy health, and in his tiny incubators he breeds the friendly bacteria and with them prepares health-giving foods. Born in an Armenian city, Shakarian was educated there. In his early youth he was an instructor in mathematics in Constantinople. Forty years ago he came to America and studying under private tutors developed his first interest in the science of bacteriology.”
Note that David Shakarian wasn’t born until 1914. So his father’s research into and development of the Lackzoom product dated to years when David would have been far too young to participate in any of these efforts. David also had a younger brother, Bart (1920-1996), whose obituary lists him as a co-founder of GNC and says the first Lackzoom store was on Wood Street. I think this means 625 Smithfield was some other type of storefront and that Mr. Shakarian had a business arrangement with the proprietory there to sell Lackzoom from that address. And the scores of ads that he ran in Pittsburgh newspapers in 1930-1932 indicate that his product was successful enough to be able to afford those ads. “Lackzoom” does not appear in Pittsburgh newspapers between 1933-1935. I don’t know if this is an indication of ailing business fortunes or not. In Sept 1936, ads begin reappearing in Pgh newspapers listing Lackzoom as having multiple stores around Pittsburgh. And the Sun-Telegraph of 26 July 1936 says “a storeroom at 136-138 Sixth Street” was leased to “Lackzoom Health Laboratories for a dairy store.”
Hagop Shakarian died on 26 July 1936. His wife passed away a few days later. His four children (two sons, three daughters) inherited their parents’ estate. Which included the family-owned home at 5536 Margaretta Street in Pittsburgh, built new in 1921 and listed at $20,000 value in the 1930 Census. (Median value of an owner-occupied non-farm SFR in the US in 1930 was $4,778. So a $20,000 home in 1930 = a very wealthy family.) His obituary in the Sun-Telegraph states that Lackzoom Laboratories had a chain of dairy stores, with three in Pittsburgh and two in Cleveland.
You tend to get virtually none of this background about the father in later write-ups about David and Bart Shakarian. In 1981, the Cleveland Plain Dealer interviewed David Shakarian, who related the following history: “Shakarian, then in his early 20s, started his cultured milk enterprise in 1935 with a vision, and little else, but it outlasted the waning days of the Depression and the disbelievers. ‘There was very little to do then, actually,’ he said. ‘So on a cold winter night I heard about a health lecture. I went and they talked about the things we talk about today … no refined sugar, avoiding processed foods. In those days itw as a quacky idea and it impressed me. I just figured that someday the world wold come to this.’ A bank burdened with a lot of empty stores agreed to lease him space, in return for payment later. He named the store Lackzoom after his father’s brand of yogurt. A year later he opened his second store, and by the time World War II started, there were six Lackzoom stores in Pittsburgh.”
That “father’s brand of yogurt” is not a footnote. It was a product that his father developed and sold and made a successful business from, before David ever attended that lecture. Per the 1930 feature on Lackzoom, it was specifically made and sold as a health food. So David saying he got the whole idea for health food from a lecture he attended because there wasn’t much else to do, is not correct. Saying that he launched a business with “a vision and little else” is not correct. The father’s obituary lists a chain of five dairy stores, all of which were named after and selling the product that he invented. So there’s quite a bit of self-promotion at work here by David. Very salesman personality, lol. He and his brother def. get credit for making the big leap into rebranding and national expansion as GNC. But the origin story does not start with David. It starts with his father.
With regard to the 2 different addresses: 5432 Penn Ave appears in help-wanted ads in Pgh newspapers up throgh Feb. 1952. In April 1952, Lackzoom help wanted ads begin using the address of 5438 Penn Ave. Previous to April 1954, 5438 Penn Ave was listed in help wanted ads as a business selling used ambulances and hearses. From 1943 through the late 1940s it appears to have been an actual funeral car business, advertisting for drivers. From 1930 through 1942 the address does not appear in the papers at all. In the 1920s it appears twice as the address of a car sales business. I have no idea why the Lackzoom address changed in early 1952. All I can say is that the architecture of this building suggests it pre-dates the Fifties by several decades, and an instription at the top of the building suggests that was its original designation. These clues would suggest that the building was indeed the Lackzoom labs which got mentioned in the papers in 1927, but that the address at that time was 5432 Penn Ave. For Hagop Shakarian to have had the $ to build his own lab building in the late 1920s and own a $20k house by 1930 points to a highly successful businessman.
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