Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: Food Fair Address: 120 Bassett Hwy, Dover, NJ Opened:  ca. 1955 Closed:  1970s Later Tenants:  NJ Department of Labor Photographed:  July 2020 How about that for one gorgeous example of a midcentury modern supermarket? Shoppers at the Dover Shopping Center would've had their choice of two different supermarkets, one at each end of the mall -- this Food Fair, which opened at the beginning of the shopping center's construction, and the ACME , which moved from across the street. At roughly 18,000 square feet, the Food Fair was slightly larger than the ACME, but ACME outlasted the Food Fair by a few years. Much like the ACME, this store's front-end probably ran along the side wall visible above to accommodate for shoppers parking in the rear of the store. I now regret not going behind the store, but it was also a very hot day and I didn't want to seem all that suspicious, but we can see the back from a Google Maps street view . We have two posts again ...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 25 W Main St, Rockaway, NJ Opened:  probably between 1957 and 1960 Closed:  1980 Later Tenants:  Salvation Army Photographed:  July 2020 The Dover Shopping Center was a unique combination of strip mall and downtown shopping district constructed in the late 1950s with department stores, a skating rink, and two supermarkets -- a Food Fair at the western end and an ACME at the eastern end. The newly constructed mall, complete with a now-demolished parking garage behind it, put many of the stores on Blackwell Street out of business, and when the Rockaway Townsquare mall opened in 1980, it put the Dover Shopping Center all but out of business. The 15,000 square foot store actually moved from an older location directly across the street, at 11 N Warren St , in the late 1950s. Acme Style has a post on this store from back in 2011 jam-packed with great pictures from this facility, and notice that the exterior has been painted since ...