Grocery Archaeology

Original Grocery Tenant: Dushore Market Address: 220 Water St, Dushore, PA Opened:  unknown Closed:  2021 Later Tenants:  vacant Photographed:  August 17, 2022 The small town of Dushore, PA has a Hurley's IGA today, but not that long ago had a second store in town. The Dushore Market was here until 2021, changing ownership in 2019 and I'm not sure how long it was in business before that. A commenter on Flickr notes that the store was originally a furniture store. A sign celebrating Dushore's 150th anniversary in 2009 remains on the side of the building, a nice piece of town memorabilia. Inside, the store hasn't changed much since it was in business... We can get a really good look into the supermarket from the big windows in the front. Produce and maybe dairy was in the first aisle, meat and deli on the back wall, and frozen on the left side of the store. At around 5300 square feet, this store is about 3000 square feet smaller than Hurley's. We can see the insi...

Original Grocery Tenant: Forksville General Store Address: 22 Bridge St, Forksville, PA Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Big Mike's Steaks & Hoagies Photographed:  August 18, 2022 Today's post is not a very long or detailed one, but what's now Big Mike's Steaks & Hoagies was previously the Forksville General Store, and Big Mike's bought the place around 2005. Over time, it appears to have been slowly transitioning from general store to restaurant. The steaks in question, by the way, are cheese steaks. This is one of the only businesses in Forksville, a borough of just 110. It does have a post office , though. There are some historical relics left over from the general store, such as these door handles for Sunbeam Bread. Big Mike's is known for great and big subs (or hoagies, as I should call them). I had a hoagie at Big Mike's and it was fine, but not special. It sure was huge though. The general store, located just next to the Fo...

Original Grocery Tenant: Orlie's Market & Deli Address: 4 S Main St, Muncy, PA Opened:  1962 Closed:  ca. 2014 Later Tenants:  vacant Photographed:  August 19, 2022 Orlie's Market & Deli in Muncy was a corner grocer in business going all the way back to 1962, but finally closed around 2014. Unfortunately, it looks like the 3500 square foot space has been vacant since then. It also looks like Orlie's was owned by the same folks as Orlando's, the Italian restaurant next door on South Main. Muncy doesn't have a grocery store downtown anymore, but there is a Weis about a mile and a half outside of town. There's also an independent supermarket about four miles northeast in the next town, where we're headed on Monday on The Independent Edition !

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 435 River Ave, Loyalsock, PA Opened:  1960s Closed:  early 1980s Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  August 18, 2022 It's had some modifications, but the bones of this 13,000 square foot A&P Centennial are clearly visible enough, even at dusk. Nowadays it's home to The Eye Center, but from the 1960s through at least 1982 A&P sold groceries here. By the late 80s, the property was home to a car dealer and as of 2010, The Eye Center moved in. Note that this is referred to as Faxon, Williamsport, and Loyalsock, but we're technically in Loyalsock Township. Many if not most of the A&P stores in this part of Pennsylvania were closed or sold in 1975 (see Hepburn Street ) but this one lasted longer, with almost no expansion or renovation. It even competed with local favorite Weis just a block south. But that Weis was built before this store and is still going strong these days. Just to the east about a mile we hav...

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 431 Hepburn St, Williamsport, PA Opened:  1950s Closed:  1975 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  August 17, 2022 The southern end of this strip mall on the northern side of downtown Williamsport originally housed an A&P, having been built in the 1950s and, it seems, never being converted to a centennial-style store. The A&P then closed in 1975 and was put up for sale, although I'm not sure whether another grocery operator purchased it. It was later subdivided into two spaces, the larger of which was an A&A Auto Parts store and now Billtown Binz, a discount/surplus type general merchandise store. The full space is around 23,000 square feet. Tomorrow we're headed about a mile and a half east of town to tour a chain supermarket in the Faxon section of Williamsport on The Market Report !

Original Grocery Tenant:  ACME Markets Address: 7495 Westbranch Hwy, Lewisburg, PA Opened:  late 1970s Closed:  1995 Later Tenants:  Bi-Lo (1995-1998) > Save-A-Lot (1998-ca. 2014) Photographed:  August 19, 2022 Today's snapshot is a quick look at a former ACME, later Bi-Lo and then a Save-A-Lot owned by Weis, which has a store just south of here. Eventually Weis sold the store back to Save-A-Lot, and then it closed around 2014. Although the building was extensively renovated, the original structure is still standing. There's another new grocery store just north of here, which we'll be taking a look at tomorrow on The Market Report !

    Moving right along! We are following the Susquehanna River from south to north and then west along the West Branch, stopping in at Sunbury, Northumberland, Lewisburg, Watsontown, Montgomery, Williamsport, Faxon, and Montoursville, then north and northeast to Hughesville, Forksville, Dushore, Canton and Towanda. Sunbury, where we begin, is 24 miles north of  Millersburg , and Towanda is 15 miles south of the New York state border. There's a lot of small towns in this area, many of which have only one or two grocery stores. After this group, we're headed to the west for a few stores in the western half of Pennsylvania before finishing up the Wyoming Valley and the Poconos in northeastern Pennsylvania. North Central PA will take us around a month, so let's get started! Tomorrow we begin with our first stop over on  The Market Report  in Sunbury!

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 1000 Market St, Bloomsburg, PA Opened:  1960s Closed:  late 1970s Later Tenants:  Dollar General Photographed:  August 9, 2022 A very quick look today (bonus snapshot!) at the former A&P of Bloomsburg, which I know is a terrible picture. JoshAustin610 has a better picture and a little more history, although I'm not sure I agree with his assessment of the barrel roofs. I think it's more likely it was a pre-1960s A&P of about 8500 square feet, built with a barrel roof, and later expanded with a second barrel roof next to it. The space was ultimately expanded to around 18,000 square feet. Don't forget to check out today's tour also, at the Boyer's in Berwick !

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 429 N Enola Rd, Enola, PA Opened:  1960s Closed:  1983 Later Tenants:  SuperFresh (1983-2002) > ShurFine (2002-2017) Photographed:  August 15, 2022 Quick look today at a former supermarket in Enola, PA, built actually as a Centennial A&P and later converted to SuperFresh in 1983 before closing in 2002. A ShurFine operator opened later the same year and closed in 2017, the same year the new Weis opened about two and a half miles west. The 30,000 square foot store has been split between a Family Dollar and a PennDOT facility. That's all for Enola, and our final store in this area is about 16 miles north along the Susquehanna River, tomorrow on The Independent Edition !

Original Grocery Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 250 Reily St, Harrisburg, PA Opened:  1940 Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  assorted non-grocery tenants Photographed:  August 14, 2022 Midtown Harrisburg is home to this 10,000 square foot building today housing the Midtown Cinema, but originally a 1940-built ACME. The building's facade was recently renovated, and here's a look at what it used to look like. The building is long and thin in the style of ACMEs of that era. I don't have a closing date for this store, and I also don't know if it relocated somewhere nearby or just closed. There's a grocery store just a few blocks away from this building still in operation today, and we'll be checking it out on Monday on The Independent Edition !

Original Grocery Tenant: Weis Markets Address: 2304 N 3rd St, Harrisburg, PA Opened:  1960 Closed:  1999 Later Tenants:  Emerald Food Market > Eagle Supermarket > Uptown Food Market Photographed:  August 14, 2022 A quick look at what used to be Uptown Harrisburg's largest supermarket, a 16,000 square foot former Weis that later became a series of independent grocery stores, Emerald Food Market, Eagle Supermarket , and Uptown Food Market . Today, it's split between a Family Dollar and a laundromat, but the distinctive tower is still there. Next door, we have a building I suspect is also a former grocery store, but a much earlier one than this. Come back tomorrow to check it out!

Original Grocery Tenant: Miles D. Fry Address: 3200 N 2nd St, Harrisburg, PA Opened:  by 1921 Closed:  by 1925 Later Tenants:  assorted independent grocers Photographed:  August 14, 2022 While walking around uptown Harrisburg, I spotted this house with the telltale box built out of the side of it. This is a classic design for old grocery stores, primarily built from around 1900-1930, as the owner of the grocery store would also own (and live in) the attached house, or sometimes house with apartments rented out. While this was not a grocery store in any recent history, it was in fact a grocery store in the 1920s. Between 1921 (the earliest record I can find online of this address) and 1925, it was owned by Miles D. Fry, then R.E. Hoverter in 1925. By 1930, the space had been taken over by Harry Loper, who ran a pharmacy at the corner store. (In 1932, the attached house advertised an apartment for rent.) And as recently as 2014 , the remnants of a Family Pharmacy sig...

Buckle up, we're headed to the state capital! Harrisburg and its surroundings are our next location to stop by, or about 35 miles west of Pine Grove where we saw the  BG's  and  Berger's . It's not a particularly exhaustive look at the grocers in and around Harrisburg, but we will be seeing some very new and very old stores in the area. We're going to start by moving through the city north to south, then crossing the Susquehanna to the west to Camp Hill, Mechanicsburg, and Enola, then one final stop about 16 miles north in Millersburg. (It doesn't make a lot of sense to group it with Harrisburg, but there's nowhere else I could really put it.) Once we're done here, we're back to the Coal Region, but there's a lot of fun stuff to see in this part of the state. Get ready and check out our first store on Monday here on Grocery Archaeology!