Grocery Archaeology

Our next group of neighborhoods is just to the west of what we saw in southern Jamaica. We're heading into what might be considered central Ozone Park, then into Howard Beach, a relatively isolated mostly residential neighborhood of southwestern Queens, and finally right over the border into Brooklyn for East New York!

Original Tenant: Pathmark
Address: 1764 Grand Ave, Baldwin, NY Opened: unknown Closed: 2016 Later Tenants: Key Food Supermarkets (planned, never opened) Photographed: December 2018 Just down the street from Fruit Tree Farm is this former Pathmark. Though the store was purchased by Key Food operator Pick Quick Foods, and renovations did occur, the interior was never completed and the plans were abandoned. While Pathmark occupied the entire 50,000 square foot location, including a 14,000 square foot expansion, Key Food was planned to take just about 36,000 square feet (the original size of the Pathmark). The remaining 14,000 square foot Pathmark expansion has been taken by a beauty supply store.

Happy March! We moved through North Hempstead pretty quickly, now it's time to head south to the Town of Hempstead. We're hitting the key villages and hamlets: Garden City, downtown Hempstead, Baldwin, Valley Stream, and a few other locations here and there. As we'll see, there's a lot of variation here, in store size and style, income level of the communities, brands, and more. This group will feature stores on The Market Report, The Independent Edition, and for the first time in a while, Grocery Archaeology! We're going to jump right into Garden City tomorrow!

Except not really, as the 50-store chain has gone out of business. Our contributor Atlas K. has offered photos of his apron from when he was an employee of the chain.
That's all the memorabilia we have for today, but I promise Grocery Archaeology is coming back soon with coverage of store locations!

We don't have to go too far back in our collective memories to get to White Rose, a wholesaler out of Carteret, NJ that went bankrupt in 2014. Its retail stores, under the DiGiorgio group, included Met and Pioneer supermarkets, which were consolidated with the Associated and Compare brands to form the Associated Supermarket Group. White Rose products were continued to be produced by C&S Wholesale Grocers of Keene, NH, which acquired the wholesale arm of White Rose, until about two years later. (While Met and Pioneer sold White Rose, Associated and Compare sold Super A. Today, all four brands use the Avenue A private label.) The above products were spotted at a convenience store in Newtown, CT.
And when my Goodwill had a box of matches (albeit a very damaged one) for $1.99 - and it was even half price day! - I had to buy it. So here's an absurdly large number of pictures of every angle of this box that you've probably never cared about seeing.
The copyright date on the…

Well now, it's been a while since we've heard from Grocery Archaeology, hasn't it? And we're back with some more Pathmark items. Because, why not?
There's really no story to the cotton balls package, but this bandage sat in my grandmother's closet in the original box, I'm sure, for a long time, but by the time I got to it, it was simply in an unlabeled plastic bag with other random loose bandages. I took it and put it in my wallet actually for several years before realizing in the event of an injury it would be completely useless. I believe it's safely away in the archives by now, and while I do keep a bandage in my wallet, I am a proud TopCare user.