The Market Report

Probably the two most common reuses for 1950s supermarkets are dollar stores and pharmacies. We saw an example of the former yesterday, and we'll see another example today. ACME tower sign still intact, with a clear and readable Dollar General sign. Acme Style has an excellent and in-depth post on this store, which you can read here . (I'm very excited that I only overlap with Acme Style on two posts of the five this week!) My photos are from December 2017. Not hard to picture this as a supermarket, as Acme Style points out. The location is at 2010 John F. Kennedy Blvd, Union City, just about six blocks north of the North Bergen Food Bazaar . In our Hudson County group , our southernmost point was about fifteen blocks north of this store.

Heading back up to Troy, PA for today's Snapshot. We previously took a quick look at the Tops Friendly Markets in Troy earlier this month. Now we're going to see a store that is currently a Dollar Tree, but was previously a Dollar General and presumably a Bi-Lo and before that, an Insalaco's. Before that it was definitely an ACME! This beautifully preserved pitched-roof store, when it was a Dollar General, was actually in much worse condition. Dollar Tree fixed it up pretty nicely. We can see clearer in the Google street view that it's an early model pitched-roof store... ...since it has the beams coming out at an angle on the side walls. For a complete tour of a supermarket of the same model, check out the Confluence Foodmart in Confluence, PA. This former ACME is located at 38 Elmira St, Troy, PA.

Get ready, supermarket enthusiasts. Hold onto your hats and buckle up. We're going up to the city of Canandaigua, NY, which is at the northern tip of Canandaigua Lake. ( Bath is maybe half an hour south of the southern tip.) Are you ready? Put your safety goggles on and... ...enjoy. Yes, that is a fully-restored 1940s ACME. It's not Photoshopped. It's not your imagination. There's a story behind this. The building certainly hasn't looked like this since the 1940s. It had received a facade update at some point, for some later tenant. In the process of renovation in 2016, property owner Andrew Guffey uncovered the original facade, which was porcelain. Interestingly, the Acme Markets sign was not painted on, but porcelain as well. After a brief conflict with the Canandaigua City Planning Commission, they agreed to let Guffey keep and restore the original facade. (The sign with the year and address was added at that time, and is a new replica of...

Acme Style has covered this location (actually just shy of a year ago), but now it's my turn. I happened to stumble across this store while on vacation in the area and had no idea that I was in ACME country. Starting off with a look at the former pitched-roof store just next to the newer location. The new facade disguises the roof, but you can see it's still there in Acme Style's post. Also, let's take a second to appreciate that this mall is home to both a Dollar Tree and  a Family Dollar. The pitched-roof store likely opened in the mid- to late-1960s, with the replacement store opening around the late 1970s. Here we can see the new store beginning in front, with the older store visible to the left. We can also see a hint of an angled roof behind the Dollar Tree facade. The replacement ACME probably, as Acme Style points out, closed in 1994 before a sale to Penn Traffic. (In 1979, it had been switched to the Pennsylvania division, not as strange a choice...

Next week is... Continuing our theme from this week's Former A&P Week, we're going to be taking a look at five former ACMEs next week! We're actually going to see stores in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, so we're getting around this week. Unfortunately we won't be having any tours, but we do get to see two extensive Look Inside posts. Come back on Monday to head up to the Finger Lakes of New York!

Wrapping up our Former A&P Week with a quick look at a former supermarket in Oakland, where we recently saw the ShopRite. The former supermarket has been divided into three smaller businesses, and although the facade has been redone, it's still instantly recognizable as a former A&P. The building immediately backs up to what was previously a Grand Union in a much larger facility. It's located at 340 Ramapo Valley Rd, Oakland, NJ.

The second store tour for this week is slightly farther removed from its A&P roots than the first . This A&P was a 1950s-era store (although I don't believe it was a Centennial). A&P closed in the 1990s according to Styertowne over on Flickr, and Seabra opened soon thereafter following renovations to the interior and the exterior. I visited the store in July 2016. Since then, the property has been redone with a new parking lot and landscaping. You can see that in the street view below. However, this store has not received updated Seabra Foods branding, even as of summer 2018, when the street view was taken. Inside, the store doesn't have much decor really at all. You enter into this alcove next to the produce department. Produce then continues along the first aisle. Here we will see the single piece of decor in the entire store, a sign that says "Produce." There are really no traces of A&P decor left inside, either, although I d...