Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant:  A&P Address:  560 Passaic Ave, West Caldwell, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  CVS Photographed:  May 2020 The southeastern corner of Bloomfield and Passaic Avenues in West Caldwell is home to this former centennial style A&P, believe it or not, despite the extensive renovation done around 2010 by CVS. The centennial roof is still intact behind the new CVS facade, though it can't be seen in the angle above. You can check it out in a Google Street View here . Until recently, the storefront retained its distinctive facade . In the street views, you can see the ShopRite just to the right, which we'll be touring tomorrow on The Market Report . See the former ACME across the street here and the Stop & Shop just to the west here .

Original Tenant:  ACME Markets Address:  775 Bloomfield Ave, West Caldwell, NJ Opened:  1950s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  May 2020 The intersection of CR-613 (Passaic Avenue) and CR-506 (Bloomfield Avenue) has four corners, three of which have supermarkets or former supermarkets. The northwestern corner has a Stop & Shop , which we saw yesterday on The Market Report. The northeastern corner has a former 1950s-era ACME, shown here. The approximately 25,000 square foot building has since been subdivided, with a variety of small storefronts in the front and left sides of the strip mall, which extends farther to the right than the ACME would have. The back part of the ACME is now a Harmon Face Values drugstore. It looks to have been subdivided long ago, as there are virtually no remnants of the ACME around (I doubt the clock tower was ACME's tower; the 1950s-era stores were not typically built with towers). ...

Original Tenant:  ShopRite Address:  387 Pompton Ave, Cedar Grove, NJ Opened:  late 1960s Closed:  1968 Later Tenants:  Pathmark > CVS Photographed:  July 2020 An early Supermarkets General ShopRite that became a Pathmark in 1968, this building is now a CVS which previously occupied only a part of the second floor of this two-floor building. The first floor is accessible from the left side, which as you can see in the parking lot slopes down to a lower elevation where the street is. It would be highly unusual to see a Foodtown put a Pathmark out of business, so it's likely that this store closed when A&P still occupied the space that later became Foodtown and then The Fresh Grocer. We've seen many stores along NJ-23 (here Pompton Avenue) from the far northern border of the state but we're almost at the southern end of the highway, so we have one more store on the road before we head out west. Head over to The Market Report tomorro...

Our next group of stores is Essex County (where we have previously seen some stores)! Essex is home to the state's largest city, Newark, at the east end, along with suburbs to the north and west. We're starting at the northeast, with stores through Upper Montclair, Cedar Grove, Verona, and Fairfield, before crossing the county approximately from west to east mostly along county route 506, or Bloomfield Avenue, through West Caldwell, Caldwell, Verona, West Orange, the southern (downtown) part of Montclair, then a detour along route 280 over into downtown Orange and East Orange and straight into Newark and Irvington and finally circling back to Millburn and Livingston in the southwestern part of the county. We're jumping into Upper Montclair tomorrow over on  The Market Report ! And don't forget to take a look at our last few Bergen/Passaic updates today... Green Way Markets in Ridgewood SuperFresh in Glen Rock Food Universe Marketplace in Paterson Food Fair La Gran Ma...

Original Tenant:  Inserra ShopRite Address:  122 8th St, Passaic, NJ Opened:  1994 Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  vacant Photographed:  July 2020 Hard to believe this ShopRite only lasted 21 years. It was built as part of a large strip mall in an isolated industrial section to the southeast of the downtown area of Passaic. The 65,000 square foot store was expected to draw customers from all over but simply... didn't. It was incredibly poorly located in a city that had plenty of other choices, so the Inserras, who owned the store, didn't invest in it because it didn't make sense. The neighborhood is not a pleasant one, dominated by warehouses and factories, some abandoned. This simply doesn't make for a pleasant approach to a supermarket. The store drew from some of the residential areas just to the north, but being hard to get to from everywhere else other than there, the store just didn't make any sense to maintain. Closing in 2015, thi...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 168 Jefferson St, Passaic, NJ Opened: 1948 Closed: 1967 Later Tenants: Olympic Town > Nohble Photographed: July 2020 A former ACME is now a clothing and shoe store (and very nicely renovated on the inside too, I might add). Check out some more info on this store here . The 10,000 square foot store occupied the northeastern corner of Hoover Avenue and Jefferson Street, with a former A&P on the southeastern corner. That'll be tomorrow's store tour, over on The Market Report !