Grocery Archaeology

  We are getting closer and closer to Worcester! This time we're to the southwest of the city, in the southwestern part of Worcester County. We're starting in Sturbridge, about 18 miles southwest of the city, then continuing east into Southbridge with a brief detour to the north for Charlton, then back south for Dudley and Webster. Then we'll circle north towards Worcester for Oxford and Auburn! We've got quite a few former supermarkets around these areas, some chains, and some independents. We have about three weeks' worth of stores, so we'll be spending about the rest of the month in this area before we move on. Our first post is over on  The Independent Edition  tomorrow!

    Worcester, here we come! Or very soon, at least. For right now we're approaching Worcester, the second-largest city in New England, from the west. We're going to start in Palmer, about 30 miles west of Worcester on the Mass Pike, then head north to follow route 9 east through Ware, North Brookfield, Spencer, and Leicester. There's not a lot in this part of the state, so we'll take a quick look at a few places in the small towns along this corridor. We're starting in Palmer tomorrow with a post each here on Grocery Archaeology and on  The Market Report !

  Welcome to Massachusetts! I hope you had a great spring break, and check out the  Spring Memorabilia Extravaganza  if you haven't yet! It's time to get serious about New England, and that means starting Massachusetts. Given that I lived here for five years (most of that time in Worcester, but some time in Boston), my coverage is pretty extensive in and around those cities -- but limited in some areas, like here in western Massachusetts, because I didn't have a car and my trusty bike would only get me so far. For the next two weeks or so, we'll be in western Mass a little and then around Springfield for a longer time. We're going to make stops in Lee, which is in the Berkshires, and then near Springfield in South Hadley, Holyoke, Chicopee, and then into Springfield itself, with one final stop in Ludlow just east of the city for good measure. This is Big Y country, with the regional chain's headquarters in Springfield, but there are also other chains out here an...

  The smallest state in the union has only 105 supermarkets (for reference, that's less than half of the number of supermarkets in Manhattan alone). But we're going to be taking a look at a few of them, even though my coverage isn't too extensive. There's still a lot of fun things to see here! We'll be spending about two weeks in the Bay State, moving from north to south through Burrillville, North Smithfield, Smithfield, North Scituate, then a few stops in Providence (but of course nowhere near a full tour of all the stores in Providence), with two final stops in the Newport area in Portsmouth and Tiverton. Like Connecticut, Rhode Island has quite a few independent stores that are really fun to visit. In fact, we won't be seeing any big-chain supermarkets here in Rhode Island (but rest assured, there are plenty of Stop & Shops and Shaw's). We're starting with our first store tomorrow on  The Independent Edition  in Burrillville!

Original Grocery Tenant: Red & White Food Stores Address: 46 Tolland Green, Tolland, CT Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Tolland Red & White Gift Shop Photographed:  November 27, 2022 The small town of Tolland, CT -- 18 miles northeast of Hartford and 12 miles south of Massachusetts -- today has a very attractive-looking Big Y , but once was served by the Tolland Red & White. Red & White , for those who are not familiar, is a very loose group of small independent grocers, once a larger cooperative with locations across the US and Canada but now really just a brand distributed by The Federated Group from the Chicago area. It's not uncommon to see small convenience stores, bodegas, and greengrocers in the New York City area selling Red & White products, but those come from Federated via the Jetro wholesaler in New York, through their FoodBase program . On the town green in Tolland, a roughly 1000 square foot store retains the name...

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 701 Main St, East Hartford, CT Opened:  between 1950 and 1955 Closed:  between 1964 and 1977 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  March 4, 2022 It's not all that exciting, but today's store is a former A&P, now subdivided, just east of downtown Hartford in, well, East Hartford. Thanks to Groceteria , we know that the 24,000 square foot space was constructed as an A&P between 1950 and 1955 -- placing it just before the Centennial range -- and it closed at some point between 1964 and 1977. East Hartford has a ShopRite in a former Shaw's in a former A&P, but from the 90s or early 2000s, so I'm not sure if there was another A&P in town between this store's closing and that store's opening. There's no longer a supermarket here, but there is a CTown just under a mile south and a new Key Food opened recently around a third of a mile north. We'll be touring that store tomorrow, over on The Market...

Original Grocery Tenant:  Stop & Shop Address:  1200 Park St, Frog Hollow, Hartford, CT Opened:  1968 Closed:  after 1985 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  July 9, 2023 What's today the IKASA Furniture & Mattress store and a neighboring Dollar Tree was previously a Home Mart (...where you are the star!) but originally, back in 1968, opened as a 25,000 square foot Stop & Shop with a Bradlees next door. After Stop & Shop closed -- at some point after 1985 -- Save-A-Lot opened up in the space to the right of the former supermarket, taking up around 15,000 square feet. But by 2011, the Save-A-Lot moved a few doors over and 10,000 square feet up in size, then closing in 2020. That space is now a Key Food . Tomorrow we're off to East Hartford to check out another former supermarket right here on Grocery Archaeology!

Moving right along to our next stops along the southern part of New England! My density is not wonderful in this region, since it's kind of too far for me to get to from my home in New Jersey and it's kind of too far for me when I lived in central Massachusetts, too. But nevertheless, we have around two weeks' worth of stuff to see from Hartford and some northern and eastern suburbs, then a look at the quaint town of Putnam in the northeastern corner of Connecticut. When we're finished with this, it'll be on to Rhode Island. Let's start in Hartford with a store tour right on  The Market Report  on Monday!

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Super Foodmart Address: 235 Queen St, Southington, CT Opened:  ca. 1980 Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  October 7, 2023 This facade is pretty easily recognizable to me, even though I don't think there are any supermarkets left with it. It dates back to the 1990s or so, when this A&P would've been renovated and expanded into an A&P Super Foodmart. At the time of its closing, the store totaled 43,000 square feet. (The store may also have been a Waldbaum's at the time it opened.) For comparison, here's a look at this facade on the Newington location , which later became a Best Market and then Local Market. The distinctive angled edges and circle accents over the columns are easy to spot, although of course this one has been painted. A&P closed most of its central CT locations by about 2005, although some remained later . Quite a few of the southwestern CT locations lasted until the 2015 bankruptcy...

    Up next we're headed into Connecticut! This is the beginning of my fairly extensive New England coverage, but my coverage here in Connecticut is a little limited. So we're going to see basically the whole state to the west of Hartford, where I have 22 stores which will take us about a month to see. You can get an idea of our stops from the (fairly crude, I know) map I made for this section. The counties are marked in the light blue, the larger cities in dark blue, and other places we're stopping in white. We'll start in Greenwich, then jump over to Bridgeport before turning north for stops in Newtown (roughly 2/3 of the way between Bridgeport and New Fairfield), New Fairfield, and Sherman, then east to Northville, Washington, Bethlehem, Watertown, and Waterbury. Then, in the greater Hartford area, we'll see Southington, Plainville, New Britain, Newington, and West Hartford, and then New Hartford to the north. There's some really interesting stores here -- so...

Original Grocery Tenant: Gristedes Address: 325 NY-100, Somers, NY Opened:  1974 Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  CVS Photographed:  July 9, 2021 Sometimes my gut feeling leads me astray in deciding what used to be a supermarket, but this 15,000 square foot CVS just felt like a former supermarket to me. A little research shows I was right: the space was built with the rest of the strip mall in 1974 as a Gristedes. The infamously expensive New York City chain has branched out from the city on a few occasions, with their largest expansion being up to Westchester County. We've seen their former stores in Pelham and Scarsdale , too. I don't know when Gristedes closed, but it was well before the 2019 opening of a new upscale supermarket just across the street. Check it out here !

  It's time for our last county in New York before we move into New England, starting with Connecticut! We've spent a fair amount of time in Westchester County already, so this is a relatively quick group of stores. Starting tomorrow, we're going to spend just around a week taking a trip through Westchester County from the south, near where it borders the Bronx in Yonkers, up through Mamaroneck, Armonk, Katonah, Goldens Bridge, and ending in Somers. But also we have a brief interruption for a very special Leap Day feature on February 29th! And some maneuvering to accommodate a late addition with some more stores in Mount Vernon, so expect a weekend post or two. We're going to begin with a snapshot on  The Market Report  tomorrow!

Original Grocery Tenant:  Grand Union Address: 1581 US-202, Pomona, NY Opened:  late 1970s Closed:  2001 Later Tenants:  Stop & Shop (2001-2020) > Evergreen Uptown (2022- ) Photographed:  June 2, 2021 Welcome back to the former Stop & Shop of Pomona, NY! The 51,000 square foot store was built around 1978 as a Grand Union as a much smaller building, then renovated and expanded by Grand Union in the late 1990s. Stop & Shop acquired the location in 2001 at the time of Grand Union's bankruptcy, then closed in August 2020. We saw the store still open in 2020, too. I revisited over the summer of 2021 after the Stop & Shop had closed and the new tenant, Evergreen, a kosher supermarket, was preparing to move in. As I've said, there is a large (and growing) Orthodox Jewish population in Rockland County and much of this part of the state, making it harder and harder for traditional supermarkets like this Stop & Shop to survive. There's a ShopRite ...

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 41 NY-59, Nyack, NY Opened:  between 1953 and 1964 Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  March 8, 2023 From the parking lot of the Old World Food Market across the street, we can get a look at the former 9,000 square foot A&P of Nyack! This store was built between 1953 and 1964, and my initial assumption was that at some later point, A&P moved across the street into what's now Old World, but actually the two stores were built around the same time which makes me think Old World was a competitor, like possibly Safeway or a Foodtown or something like that. But I'm not really sure. Up next, we're headed into downtown Nyack on The Independent Edition tomorrow for a small store in town!

Original Grocery Tenant: Grand Union Address: 32 S Middletown Rd, Nanuet, NY Opened:  1990s Closed:  2001 Later Tenants:  Stop & Shop (2001-2022) > Floor & Decor Photographed:  August 12, 2022 This store doesn't look much like a Grand Union, and that's thanks to an extensive exterior renovation by Stop & Shop, but it was constructed as one in the 1990s replacing an older store across the street. The 58,000 square foot store was sold to Stop & Shop in Grand Union's bankruptcy in 2001, then moved across the street into a former Fairway Market at the Shops at Nanuet in 2020. If we look carefully and use our imagination a little bit, we can tell this building has Grand Union-style bones. The middle segment is clearly new, but built around a distinctive Grand Union awning. There wasn't that much time between Stop & Shop's closure and the repurposing of the location as a Floor & Decor -- only about two years -- but I managed to get there and ...

Original Grocery Tenant: Grand Union Address: 420 Market St, Nanuet, NY Opened:  ca. 1970s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  August 12, 2022 Another Grocery Archaeology post, another Grand Union . This one was around 30,000 square feet and constructed in the 1970s just south of what's now the Shops at Nanuet which was formerly the Nanuet Mall. At some point, around the early 1990s, Grand Union moved roughly across the street to a new-build, 58,000 square foot store. We have two posts today, and our other stop is in the same strip mall as this store -- with a fair bit of Grand Union history itself. Check it out here . Tomorrow, we're seeing the newer Grand Union on  Grocery Archaeology  as well as the Stop & Shop across the street on  The Market Report !