Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant:  Food Fair Address: 680 Memorial Pkwy, Phillipsburg, NJ Opened:  1950s Closed:  1979 Later Tenants:  Food Lane (1979-2001) > Ahart's Market (2001-2017) Photographed:  January 2022 Returning to the Ahart's in Phillipsburg almost five years after its closure to see what was going on with the property. To my surprise, the building remains and is still abandoned. For some background, we begin with my own pictures of the store in business in 2016, then the news of the closure , then the news of the intended replacement . The site is no longer advertised as available, but there's also no evidence of any progress going on at all. Ahart's had locations in Phillipsburg, Bethlehem, Allentown , Bath, and Blakeslee. Phillipsburg closed in 2017, Bethlehem closed in early 2021 with renovations to convert the store to a new Ideal Food Basket well underway, and Allentown closed in November 2021 with plans to replace it with a Grocery Outlet. Bath and Blake...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 25 S Union St, Lambertville, NJ Opened:  1951 Closed:  1997 Later Tenants:  Raspino's Supermarket (1998-99) > Lambertville Municipal Courthouse & ACME Screening Room (2001- ) Photographed:  January 2021 Welcome to Lambertville! This is a favorite tourist stop along the Delaware River that separates New Jersey from Pennsylvania, and the small town is home to 3900 residents and a beautiful downtown along Bridge Street which, you guessed it, brings you to the bridge between NJ and PA . It's directly across from New Hope, PA, and while Lambertville was once home to two supermarkets -- this ACME and an A&P -- today it has none and the nearest is across into New Hope, where we'll be making a stop on our travels through Pennsylvania! Acme Style has extensive history on this store, along with photos of the store in business, at their post here . Sadly, the building was not open at the time of my visit so I had to settle f...

Original Tenant: A&P Address:  49 Old Route 22, Clinton, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  demolished Photographed:  June 2020 The 1970s saw a lot of new construction for A&P, especially in the northwestern NJ area. Just in the past few weeks, we've seen Califon , Belvidere , Andover , the original Vernon store, Budd Lake ... you get the picture. Here in Clinton, the earlier 1950s store next door was replaced by this store around the middle of the decade, it seems. The roughly 30,000 square foot store lasted with its original signage right until the end in 2015 when this store closed without a buyer. In mid-2021, the store was finally demolished for a new redevelopment that includes smaller-scale retail and affordable housing, but I was lucky enough to get the store before it was touched! There's a lot of great coverage of this store out there already, but I needed my own collection of pictures. For the highlights, check out Acme Style's...

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 37 Old Route 22, Clinton, NJ Opened:  1950s Closed:  1970s Later Tenants:  Eckerd > Rite Aid > Walgreens Photographed:  June 2020 The original A&P in Clinton, NJ was here at 37 Old Route 22, in a 17,000 square foot store with a barrel roof. I don't have a whole lot of information about this store other than the fact that it closed in the 1970s when a replacement store was built next door . It then became an Eckerd, then a Rite Aid, and most recently a Walgreens, and that information comes to us courtesy of JoshAustin610, who also has a photo of the store as a Rite Aid . I assume the current facade was installed either at the end of Eckerd's life or at the beginning of Rite Aid's time here, but it most certainly does not date back to the A&P era. I'm unclear what this store would've looked like as an A&P; most importantly, was it ever retrofitted with a Centennial-style facade, which wouldn't look all that dif...

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 459 NJ-31, Hampton, NJ Opened:  Late 1990s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  vacant Photographed:  March 2020 There are so many former A&Ps out west here in northwestern NJ that have remained completely empty since the chain went under in 2015-16. We saw Hackettstown and Belvidere recently, and we'll see one more in the Hunterdon/Warren area. This area is so sparsely populated that these stores were not appealing to potential buyers and there's so little retail in this area that non-grocery tenants weren't jumping on them either. This moderately large (45,000 square foot) store is made to feel enormous from the high facade, the gigantic parking lot, and the fact that nearly the entire strip mall is empty, as we'll see. A&P didn't have a store here before the 90s, but this store opened around the same time that the ACME closed. A&P fought to prevent the ancient Village ShopRite just west of town from moving to route 31 , ...