Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 250 E Lancaster Ave, Wynnewood, PA Opened:  1960s Closed:  1983 Later Tenants:  SuperFresh (1983-2015) > ACME Markets (2015-2020) > Target (2021- ) Photographed:  December 2021 We seem to be seeing a lot of A&Ps and ACMEs here on the Main Line! Gladwyne had an A&P-turned-ACME , and Bryn Mawr had both an A&P and an ACME . Well, Wynnewood -- about two miles east of Bryn Mawr -- had another A&P-turned-ACME, which of course was also a SuperFresh from 1983 to 2015. ACME closed this store in the summer of 2020 , following but unrelated to a series of failed health inspections in late 2019. In 2021, Target took the roughly 23,000 square foot space for one of their smaller-format stores, though it looks like they may have expanded it slightly to just over 30,000 square feet. Notice the centennial facade peeking out from behind the Target facade! Here's a look at the ACME when it was still in business. Today, Wynnew...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...