Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: Safeway Address: 20769 Dupont Blvd, Georgetown, DE Opened:  unknown Closed:  1987 Later Tenants:  unknown Photographed:  January 2020 This is a very interesting building here in Georgetown. It's about 20,000 square feet, built around an 11,000 square foot Marina Safeway. Gotta love that arched roof! So this was built by Safeway but closed in 1987 after a dispute with the union. Safeway wanted to cut benefits and a few other things for their union employees, which the workers voted to reject; at which point Safeway decided to close six stores that would become unprofitable. This was one of the six. Shortly after that announcement was made in early 1987, Safeway walked back the decision, announcing that three of the six were not to close (and Georgetown was decided to stay open). After some further negotiations between Safeway, the union, and various local governments and organizations, Safeway agreed to not close any but to sell them all. Some went ...

Original Tenant: unknown (possibly Grand Union) Address: 360 Chestnut St, Union, NJ Opened:  by the 1960s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  January 2021 Shoutout to the Union Township Historical Society 's website for helping me with this one! I'd felt like this was a supermarket for many years, having grown up blocks away from this store, but I didn't actually have confirmation. In fact, I think someone told me this was a bowling alley. Not sure if that was ever true or not, but it certainly was a supermarket. The 12,000 square foot building anchors a strip mall that also contains Times Farm , a small produce market I am very familiar with. Now let's get into the history of this store. Historic Aerials shows that the building was originally a freestanding structure built some time in the 50s, and the front wall faced Five Points, the intersection just at the end of this strip mall. The strip mall was built the following decade, extending ou...

Original Tenant: Safeway Address: 595 Chestnut St, Union, NJ Opened:  by 1953 Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  various non-grocery tenants Photographed:  June 2021 One of three posts today! This small 3700 square foot store was probably built in the 1930s or 40s as a Safeway, and still has the distinctive brick facade today. It's been a car dealer or some car-related business as long as I've known it, and I grew up just a few blocks behind this store (I went to Washington Elementary right nearby for kindergarten and first grade before moving, by the way). I believe that the store later moved down to Five Points , and that location was later sold to Grand Union. That strip mall today also has a small greengrocer shop called Times Farm . Tomorrow we're going to see another former supermarket in the same area, right here on Grocery Archaeology!

Original Tenant: Safeway Address: 811 Clinton St, Hoboken, NJ Opened:  1950s Closed:  1960s Later Tenants:  Finast > Vitale Foodtown > CVS Photographed:  December 2020 It's no secret that CVS has taken over a lot of former supermarkets. But this is actually the second Safeway-turned-Finast that CVS moved into that we've seen, the other being about ten miles southwest on Staten Island . This store is also 14,000 square feet, and although this is not of the Marina prototype, it is a barrel roof and it has a tower -- both of which are fully intact today! We can see the tiniest bit of the barrel roof peeking out on the left. Vitale Foodtown took the space upon Finast's closing, then moved up to 614 Clinton to the space that's now ACME . Our final Hoboken stop is going to be about half a mile to the northeast tomorrow, so head over to The Market Report to check it out!

Original Tenant: Safeway Address: 516 Millburn Ave, Millburn, NJ Opened:  1940s Closed:  by 1962 Later Tenants:  Kings Food Markets (1967-1980) Photographed:  December 2020 Today's store is a very small 3100 square foot store that started as an early Safeway and later became an outpost of local chain Kings Food Markets, whose first store opened in 1936 just under two miles west in Summit. Unlike most Safeways in New Jersey, this one did not become a Finast, I'd assume because of its small size, and it may have closed before the rest of the stores were sold to Finast. The ShopRite in Springfield half a mile west of this store was a later Safeway that became a Finast and then a ShopRite. In 1980, when this store closed, it moved three-quarters of a mile northwest into a former Stop & Shop. Check out that tour here . Up next we have a quick update to another supermarket in town over on The Market Report !

Original Tenant:  Safeway Address:  1933 Victory Blvd, Castleton Corners, Staten Island, NY Opened:  1950s Closed:  early 1960s Later Tenants:  Finast > Super X > Revco > CVS Photographed:  March 2020 This building was built as a Safeway and later sold to Finast. JoshAustin610 has more details on the drugstore history of the building here . It's an early prototype of the Marina style , and a similar variation we can see in Atlantic Highlands, NJ . Today, the front wall, which would've been entirely glass, has been bricked over. Inside, the A-frame roof remains exposed, although there are is a drop ceiling at the angle. The approximately 14,000 square foot building makes for a very large CVS. We can see some of the windows still exposed on the front wall.