Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: ShopRite Address: 164 Speedwell Ave, Morristown, NJ Opened: 1959 Closed: 1983 Later Tenants: subdivided Photographed: June 2020 Our second post of the day is this former ShopRite at Speedwell and Sussex Avenues in Morristown. JoshAustin610 lists the ShopRite as 164 Speedwell, and the convenience/dollar store seen at the point of the triangle lists its own address as 158 Speedwell. My assumption, though, is that the ShopRite probably took most of the first floor of this roughly triangular building -- because even if it took every single square inch of the building's first floor, it would be just barely over 10,000 square feet. Especially for a ShopRite that lasted until 1983, anything much smaller than that would be awfully small. I assume this store was a Village Super Market-owned location, since its replacement in 1983 was Village-owned. This corner entrance looks to me like a supermarket entrance, though the space currently has several tenants. The tiny L

The Great Swamp area is done and we're moving north! Our next group of stores is going to be in the greater Morristown area. We're going to start in Morristown to check out four stores before heading northeast for a few stops in Morris Plains, a few stores in Hanover Township (which encompasses Cedar Knolls and Whippany), and finally back to the southeast to finish up in Florham Park. This is a pretty short group -- it's going to take us only a little over a week, although quite a few of those days will be doubled or tripled up for multiple stores at once. And we have a nice variety, with posts here, on  The Market Report , and on  The Independent Edition . Tomorrow, we're going to see our first Morristown store on The Market Report, so stay tuned!

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 471 Main St, Chatham, NJ Opened:  1966 Closed:  ca. 1989 Later Tenants:  CVS Photographed:  November 2020 Very quick look today at this former ACME, mostly because Acme Style already has extensive coverage of the location  (including a great historical photo) and nothing much has changed in the nearly 10 years since they were here. The 17,000 square foot space was filled by CVS at some point, though I'm not sure whether it went directly from ACME to CVS. Foodtown took quite a few closed ACMEs in northern New Jersey, so it may have briefly been a Foodtown, or possibly CVS opened right after ACME closed. Chatham also has a Kings just about 800 feet away, so be sure to tour that store here . Tomorrow, we're heading into Morristown to start our next group, so stay tuned!

Original Tenant:  A&P Address:  107 Morristown Rd, Bernardsville, NJ Opened:  1959 Closed:  1978 Later Tenants:  Jaeger Lumber > Village ShopRite extension Photographed:  June 2020 Today's store is one of three Bernardsville stops. It was built in 1959 as a fairly standard A&P centennial model, but closed in 1978 -- probably from the competition from ShopRite next door and ACME (later Kings ) across the street, and the fact that there was no ability to expand on this property. Occupied by an outpost of local company Jaeger Lumber from 1982 to 1991, it was then taken over by Village Super Market, the owner of the ShopRite, as an extension of the 42,000 square foot grocery store. This store sold nonfood products that didn't fit in the rather small ShopRite, including gardening products and hardware. Check it out before its CVS conversion here . Make sure to tour both those stores above, and tomorrow we're heading out west to Mendham over on The Ma

Original Tenant: Mayfair Foodtown (?) Address: 430 Springfield Ave, Berkeley Heights, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  1990s Later Tenants:  Kings Food Markets (1990s-2013) > New York Marts (planned, never opened) Photographed:  November 2020 Tucked away behind the Stop & Shop and former A&P in Berkeley Heights is a second strip mall, once home to a Mayfair Foodtown and later Kings Food Market at the far back. I don't know much history here, but Kings closed up shop in 2013, moving down the street about two and a half miles to a former Pathmark in Gillette . As far as the origins of the building, I know nothing beyond looking at Historic Aerials to find that the building was constructed between 1963 and 1970, then expanded at least once. The main thing that intrigues me is the building's large size -- at 39,000 square feet, it would be easily one of the largest Kings stores out there and much larger than what most supermarkets were building in the 1960s. It's als

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 410 Springfield Ave, Berkeley Heights, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  ca. 1970s Later Tenants:  Drug Fair (closed 2009) > subdivided Photographed:  June 2021 It might have a lot of modifications done, but you can recognize that A&P centennial facade from a mile away! This 16,000 square foot store was built as the anchor of this small strip mall in what might be considered to be the center of Berkeley Heights in the 1960s. A commenter on Flickr writes that A&P built in the 1970s the 36,000 square foot replacement store for this location at the other end of the strip mall, which later became Grand Union and then Stop & Shop, but JoshAustin610 says that the space was instead a Mayfair Foodtown before Grand Union. (To me, the store has neither the hallmarks of a 1970s A&P nor a 1970s Mayfair Foodtown, but that more likely means that Grand Union did extensive renovations after moving in. You can tour the store here , our other post for the

It's the Great Swamp, Charlie Brown! Tucked in between three highways (as so many things in New Jersey are) -- NJ-24 to the east, INT-287 to the west, and INT-78/US-22 to the south, the  Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge  is 7800 acres of protected land near the border of Morris, Union, and Somerset counties. And instead of grouping our next stores around a city, we're going to group them around the Great Swamp, which is just beautiful for hiking, by the way, along with the neighboring Lord Stirling Park in Basking Ridge and nearby Loantaka Brook Reservation in Morris Township. And if it feels like things have changed, they have -- we are out of the eastern part of the state, the congested Union, Essex, and Bergen/Passaic counties. We do have a tiny bit of Union left (New Providence and Berkeley Heights), but these are much more suburban towns bordering expansive green space. So for our next group, we're definitely in the suburbs, and as we continue north through the mid

Original Tenant: ShopRite Address: 1220 South Ave, Plainfield, NJ Opened:  1961 Closed:  1968 Later Tenants:  Pathmark (1968-1980s) > Walgreens (1986-2001) > Times Farmers Market (??-ca. 2014) > Green Farmers Market (ca. 2014-2016) > Key Food Supermarkets (2016) > Fig Tree Market (2017-2019) Photographed:  July 2020 We're returning to 1220 South Ave here at the northern end of Plainfield, outside of downtown. The 16,000 square foot space has hosted no fewer than six different grocery stores during its 60 year life, and possibly more since I'm not sure what, if anything, was in here between Walgreens and Times Farm. I'm not sure whether it was related to Times Farm in Union . It seems that Fig Tree lasted a little less than two years, making it the second-shortest-lived store on this property behind Key Food . The entire property is slated for redevelopment now. It's always very sad to see the "now open" signage still up after the store closes f