Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 2328 Plainfield Ave, South Plainfield, NJ Opened:  early 1960s Closed:  mid 1990s Later Tenants:  CVS (1995-present) Photographed:  July 2020 Quite the find here tucked away on a small street in South Plainfield's residential district! This store -- of just 16,000 square feet -- was built in the early- to mid-60s as a Centennial A&P, and remarkably not just made it to the mid-90s as an A&P, but was actually extensively upgraded. The bulky facade we see here is a scaled-down, if unsuccessfully so, version of the facade we can also find in Peekskill and LaGrangeville , among others. But Peekskill was double this store's size, at 32,000 square feet, and LaGrangeville was just under that at about 31,00 square feet. Highly unusual to see such a major upgrade on such a small store. I believe, though I'm not entirely sure, that this facade was coupled with the Sav-A-Center branding and decor package, and that that store model was...

Original Tenant:  A&P Address:  25 S Broad St, Downtown, Elizabeth, NJ Opened:  ca. 1970 Closed:  1996 Later Tenants:  Supremo Foodmarket Photographed:  1994, June 2020 Today's snapshot is a 1994 image of (sign of) the A&P Sav-A-Center in downtown Elizabeth! The 33,000 square foot store was built around 1970, probably as a replacement for multiple smaller locations in downtown Elizabeth. Two years after this picture, following the A&P's closure, it was subdivided into a 22,000 square foot Supremo Food Market and an 11,000 square foot Rite Aid (now a Walgreens). We've previously toured the Supremo here . Unfortunately, the above photo is the only one I have -- in my defense, the Supremo predates me. And the photo was more intended to show the St. Elizabeth's hospital before it was demolished, given that most of my father's side of the family was born here. Today it is Trinitas Medical Center and looks rather different . Similarly...