Grocery Archaeology

Original Grocery Tenant: ShopRite Address: 1717 River Rd, Fair Lawn, NJ Opened:  1990s Closed:  June 15, 2023 Later Tenants:  TBA Photographed:  June 16, 2023 The new ShopRite of Fair Lawn opened yesterday and on Thursday night, this little ShopRite on River Road closed in preparation for the new store. The 49,000 square foot store was built in the 90s on the site of a former Stop & Shop and was replaced with the new store in a former Pathmark. There was clearly some confusion over this move, given that in the 10 or so minutes I spent photographing the store, at least half a dozen people attempted to shop here, such as the person seen in the blue shirt above. There was some work going on inside, likely to remove any remaining merchandise or fixtures, and the workers occasionally turned people away. We don't get to see too much inside the store, but if you want to see what it looked like when it was in business, check out my previous post here . The carts were ...

Original Tenant: Pathmark Address: 22 Maple Ave, Fair Lawn, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  ShopRite (coming soon) Photographed:  December 2020 Yesterday we saw the ShopRite on River Road here in Fair Lawn, which outlasted this 53,000 square foot store. Closing in A&P's final bankruptcy of 2015-16, the store was later announced to be the future location of the ShopRite of Fair Lawn. As we can see, little progress had been made on the property as of December 2020. Unfortunately, all our pictures are going to have to be from here across the street because the entire property and its sidewalk were fully snow-covered and the property was also completely fenced-off. The signs remain, having been painted over in black... Interestingly, we can just barely make out the outline of the Pathmark stripe and the word "super" under the black paint in this picture, something that was invisible to me in person. Or maybe I just need new glasses. Plenty of label...

Original Tenant:  ACME Address:  24-28 Fair Lawn Ave, Fair Lawn, NJ Opened:  1951 Closed:  1963 Later Tenants:  Foodtown (??-??), The Food Showcase (??- ) Former Acme located all the way to the right of this mall. Based on the timeline here, I'd bet that it originally looked like this location in Fair Haven, which you can view on Acme Style here . In the early 50s, Acme was beginning to phase in strip-mall locations, while maintaining the style of the earlier 1940s street-front locations. As with many 1950s malls, limited parking in the front with a larger lot in back. It was also common to see the angled spaces, which have been kept here. Now for some historic aerials... 2012 Not much has changed since 2012. The Food Showcase, a Kosher supermarket, takes up the right half of the building. 2008 2002 1995 historic aerial is really low-quality, so we're skipping right from 2002 to 1987. Nothing to see in between anyway. 1987...