Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 25 W Main St, Rockaway, NJ Opened:  1955 Closed:  1980 Later Tenants:  Quick Chek/subdivided Photographed:  May 2019 We are here in downtown Rockaway for this extremely small 14,000 square foot ACME. It was built in 1955 and appears to have the metal tower sign built directly into the roof of the building, which was a variation sometimes seen. It was likely chopped off a bit and covered over with sheetrock (and then had a hole cut in the center...?) when the facade was renovated at some point. In 1980, this store was combined with another small location in Dover for a large, new store (since closed) in the Rockaway Townsquare mall. We'll actually be seeing both of those stores in the next week, but up first we have to head back down to 46 for an independent store in Rockaway on The Independent Edition !

We are wrapping up Morris County with our final group representing Greater Dover and Western Morris County! Now, we left off in Denville, and we're actually going to pick up in Denville again tomorrow but with a store way outside of town. There are more or less three highways running east-west through this part of the county: New Jersey state route 10 at the south, US-46 in the middle, and interstate 80 at the north. We're going to start by seeing a store on route 10 at the southeastern corner of the group, then heading north to Rockaway on 46 and west into downtown Dover just off of 46. From there, we're heading north again to the route 80 area for a few more Rockaway stores (Rockaway is weirdly shaped since there's a borough and a township, and the borough is the small central one and the township surrounds it) before moving on to Wharton, where 80 intersects north-south artery NJ-15 at which point we'll detour north to Jefferson and Oak Ridge. From there, we'...

Original Tenant: ShopRite Address: 242 Lincoln Blvd, Middlesex, NJ Opened:  1968 Closed:  1984 Later Tenants:  Pathmark (1984-2015) > Price Saver Fresh Marketplace (April 2019-September 2019) > SuperFresh (coming soon) Photographed:  December 2021 We return to 242 Lincoln Blvd for a whole lot more pictures. This is a long post, and if you're not interested in wandering around this entire property feel free to just read the introduction and move on. The real news here is that all indications point to this property being successfully sold to SuperFresh. The property, which has been vacant since September 2019, was the subject of one of my visits back in July 2020 . In the last year and a half, nothing has really changed. However, this Tweet appears to confirm what I heard from an inside source several months ago. My source told me that Howard Lee, who owns several SuperFresh stores in the area along with Food World in NY, had entered negotiations to purchase t...

Original Tenant:  Grand Union Address: 22 W Main St, Denville, NJ Opened:  ca. 1960 Closed:  2001 Later Tenants:  Key Food Marketplace (2001-ca. 2005) > demolished > Walgreens Photographed:  July 2020 You win some, you lose some. This is an example of the latter. Grand Union built a roughly 20,000 square foot store here at 22 W Main St between 1957 and 1963 which lasted all the way to the end of the chain's life in 2001, then becoming very briefly a Key Food Marketplace for a few years. I assumed that Walgreens then took the spot of Key Food, opening sometime around 2008. Well that last part is true, but it turns out the Grand Union/Key Food building was actually demolished and replaced with a building roughly 5,000 square feet smaller (notice the walkway to the right of the Walgreens building; the Grand Union building immediately bordered the next row of storefronts). We can see that the diagonal parking rows here remain from Grand Union, but unfortunate...

Original Tenant: Boonton IGA (?) Address: 600 Myrtle Ave, Boonton, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Jack's IGA > Drug Fair > Walgreens Photographed:  July 2021 Today we have three stores in Boonton which we'll be passing through from east to west! Our first is this 13,000 square foot store which JoshAustin610 posits may have been a 1960s-era ShopRite. Later, it became the Boonton IGA which seems to later have transitioned into Jack's Super IGA no later than 1991. By the middle of that decade, Jack's Super IGA also opened the Kenvil IGA in Kenvil and Boonton closed at the time of the opening of the A&P next door (which would've been around 1997). Caldwell opened around 96, North Arlington around 98, and Kenvil closed around 2000. About that same time, shortly after Kenvil closed, Jack Shakoor switched over to Foodtown. Here's what this store would've looked like almost 10 years ago (looked better, in my opinion). Anyway, I me...

Original Tenant:  A&P Address:  1483 NJ-23, Meadtown, Kinnelon, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  July 2020 Our second store here in Butler is a 60s-era Centennial that's been extensively renovated and subdivided. The A&P building, which appears to have been expanded, is actually a barrel-roof structure. And today, we're also visiting a small store in downtown Butler as well as a Stop & Shop right over into Kinnelon. Now by the way, I am aware that these are not in the immediate Parsippany and Great Piece Meadows area as I promised at the top of the post, but we are just doing one brief detour day today before heading down into Boonton tomorrow for two stores on  The Market Report  and one on  Grocery Archaeology !

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 261 Comly Rd, Lincoln Park, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  1990s Later Tenants:  Cost Cutters/Drug Fair combination > Walgreens > ACE Hardware Photographed:  June 2021 Our second stop in Lincoln Park is this 29,000 square foot former A&P which closed by the 90s after the current Lincoln Park ShopRite opened in 1987 and then became a Cost Cutters-Drug Fair combination store. It became a Walgreens briefly before Walgreens moved to a former Rite Aid property around the corner at 153 Main St, demolishing the Rite Aid (which itself was a former ShopRite). This then became Costello's ACE Hardware. Our other stops for the day are the current ShopRite in town and Wolfson's Market just outside of town, and tomorrow, we are heading north (admittedly outside of the Parsippany/Great Piece Meadows area just for the day) for three posts in Butler and Kinnelon -- check out one here on The Market Report, one on  The Independent Editi...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 3035 US-46, Parsippany, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  1991-92 Later Tenants:  Michaels > subdivided Photographed:  June 2020 Today's second store, which is just to the north of our first stop at Subzi Mandi , was also one of the very early stores that Acme Style covered back in 2009 . Since then, the 21,000 square foot building went from a Michaels arts and crafts store to a Blink Fitness and a few smaller tenants as Michaels moved up the highway into a former A&P . The exterior, as we see, was also given a light refresh with a new coat of paint at the same time. This window, done to match the store's interior , would have displayed the sale circulars for the week to customers before they entered. Here's a look across the front of the store, which looks to have been altered since the ACME days (those windows look larger than ACME's would have been, and we can see the differences in brick). As Acme Style points out, the ent...

Original Tenant: Food Fair Address: 1157 US-46, Parsippany, NJ Opened: likely 1960s Closed: 1970s Later Tenants: Pantry Pride (1970s) > Pathmark (likely 70s-2015) > Target (2018-present) Photographed: January 2020 Our third store of the day is a very interesting one! It looks like this store was built as a Food Fair in the 1960s with the mall, which also had an A&P at the other end. It later became a Pantry Pride when Food Fair converted most of their stores to that banner, later selling to Pathmark probably around the 80s. The Food Fair also probably was paired with a JM Fields department store. It's hard to tell exactly where the supermarket originally ended, but the space currently occupied by Target is roughly 75,000 square feet and the Pathmark space was probably around that size or slightly smaller. Lots more information and a great picture of Pathmark in business here . Don't forget to check out today's final post at the Patel Brothers across the str...