Grocery Archaeology

    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...