Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 755 W Lancaster Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA Opened:  1950s Closed:  1970s Later Tenants:  Staples (1990s- ) Photographed:  December 2021 Our first of two stops in Bryn Mawr, PA (right between Haverford College to the southeast and Villanova University to the northwest) is this 1950s-era A&P. It's a fascinating store, not least because it's been only minimally modified in the last 50 years. It was built in the 50s as a flat-front , streetfront store of roughly 12,000 square feet -- not to mention hiding a very slight arched roof back there. In the late 50s or early 60s, it was retrofitted into an approximation of the centennial store model, which we just saw yesterday at Gladwyne -- albeit extensively remodeled. As we notice, the centennial front is very clearly just a facade here, and consequently it is abnormally thin. It's also overly simple, compared to the ornate full-fledged centennial . And finally, we know it's an earlier store bec

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 1025 Youngs Ford Rd, Gladwyne, PA Opened:  1960s Closed:  1983 Later Tenants:  SuperFresh (1983-2015) > ACME Markets (2015-2019) Photographed:  December 2021 Gladwyne, PA is currently without a supermarket, since its ACME Markets location closed in February of 2019. Although the community lost its roughly 25,000 square foot ACME, its tiny but remarkable 1400 square foot Gladwyne Market House is still going strong just across the street. But wait, let's back up and review the history of this location. From the history I can piece together, this store opened in the 1960s as an A&P Centennial store at roughly 15,000 square feet. At some point thereafter, probably in the 1970s, it was expanded again by around 6,000 square feet. It looks like at the same time, an additional 2,000 square foot storefront (presumably a bank) was constructed out of the expansion, but was not part of the supermarket. I assume the store received the standard 1970s

It's time to enter Pennsylvania! If you got a little bored with my coverage of the mid-Atlantic region (and, I'll admit, there were a fair number of pretty boring stores and bad drive-by pictures, especially in Norfolk), now is the time to tune back in. We are back, just west of New Jersey, in the Philadelphia area! We're going to begin our coverage in the eastern part of the Main Line, a stretch of Philadelphia suburbs along US-30, which is the Lincoln Highway. In that area, we'll make stops in Gladwyne, Bryn Mawr, Wynnewood, and Narberth before entering the Philadelphia city limits for a look at stores around Carroll Park, Cathedral Park, and University City. My coverage of Philadelphia is not quite as dense as northern New Jersey nor northeastern Pennsylvania, but it's pretty solid, and we certainly have quite a few interesting stops as we move through the area from south to north, roughly. We begin with a look at a very small independent grocer in Gladwyne over

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 14478 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Woodbridge, VA Opened:  1960s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Carquest Photographed:  December 2021 Keeping with our patriotic theme for the 4th of July, we are seeing the Americana Grocery at the north end of this strip mall and the former Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company location at the southern end! This centennial A&P is roughly 19,000 square feet and is almost a perfect square, which is not the model I'm more familiar with (many of the centennials in the northern NJ area are long and thin, though that's frequently because they were retrofitted into existing stores or other buildings). Tomorrow, we move about another mile north to our next Latin supermarket over on The Independent Edition !

    There's no good reason to put Woodbridge and Fredericksburg together in a grouping of supermarkets, beyond the fact that they're the two places in northeastern Virginia that I've actually photographed. So that's a good enough reason for me! We'll be checking out a store in Fredericksburg and seven about 30 miles to the north in Woodbridge, over the next week or so, and I have some pretty interesting stuff around here. This is a quick collection of stores, captured on my travels to and from Charleston, so a lot of the posts will be pretty short. That doesn't mean there isn't a lot to see, though! After this, we'll spend a little bit of time in the DC and Baltimore suburbs before jumping into Pennsylvania, beginning in the Philadelphia area. Lots of fun stuff coming up in the next few... days? Weeks? Months? All of the above, so head over to  The Market Report  tomorrow to check out our Fredericksburg store! In the meantime, check out today's updat

Original Tenant: unknown Address: 269 Coming St, Downtown, Charleston, SC Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Coming Market (closed ca. 2019) Photographed:  January 2022 We arrive in downtown Charleston, at the north end of the city, for a small corner grocery store at Coming and Line Streets. Downtown Charleston has relatively few grocery stores, with a Food Lion to the north, a Harris Teeter to the east, and a Publix to the west. While I don't know for sure, this store has probably been a grocery store for many decades, and is exactly the type of corner grocer that I've been obsessed with researching lately. While this corner grocer is closed, there's another one that's still open just to the south on Coming Street which we'll be taking a quick look at tomorrow on The Independent Edition !

Original Tenant: Bi-Lo Address: 1450 Boone Hill Rd, Summerville, SC Opened:  1978 Closed:  2018 Later Tenants:  vacant Photographed:  January 2022 Here's a look at a nicely-preserved closed Bi-Lo, which closed back in 2018, just outside of Summerville. The 47,000 square foot store has been vacant since it closed, and is available for lease . There's no supermarkets immediately around here, but there is a Harris Teeter and two Food Lions between here and downtown Summerville, plus a Publix and a Walmart Neighborhood Market to the north. To the south, there's also another Publix and another Walmart Neighborhood Market, which will be our next stops. Check them out on The Market Report !

Original Tenant: unknown Address: 208 N Main St, Summerville, SC Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  January 2022 Our second stop in downtown Summerville is just south of yesterday's Piggly Wiggly . This roughly 14,000 square foot building was almost definitely previously a grocery store, although I'm not sure what. The antique store that takes up the left half of this building has most of their sales floor actually in what I assume was the grocery store's backroom, although I couldn't get a good picture really showing it. But there's pretty clear separate rooms, such as what might be breakrooms, and even what appears to be a walk-in cooler that's been repurposed for antiques. A thought: since yesterday's Piggly Wiggly was so much like a Food Lion, was that built as a Food Lion while the Piggly Wiggly was originally here? This building looks a fair amount like a supermarket of the age Mr. K's Piggly Wiggly would&

    Up next -- we head to Charleston! And a few other towns around it in South Carolina. We begin to the northwest of the city in Summerville, then we wander through West Ashley and other northern parts of Charleston (note: not North Charleston, a separate city), before heading straight into downtown. We'll make one stop east of Charleston in Mount Pleasant, then travel out to Folly Beach on the coast outside of Charleston. Folly Beach is on Folly Island, one of the many islands off the coast of South Carolina, and we'll be exploring several of them. After Folly Island, we'll stop by Johns Island, Kiawah Island, and finally Wadmalaw Island. That's going to take us about a month, so sit back and enjoy! This is an interesting area, and it's also one I visited recently (January 2022, as a matter of fact) so it's pretty fresh in my memory. Hopefully, that makes for more exciting blog posts. As always, thanks for reading and following me all around the area and I'