Second Finger Lakes former supermarket for today's post. Corning, NY is a pleasant small city most famous for its glass factories and accompanying
glass museum. You're probably thinking that a
glass museum is boring as anything, but you'd be wrong. The Corning Museum of Glass is absolutely worth a visit if you're in the area. However, we're interested today in a building just shy of a mile west of the museum.
I'm pretty sure that this building -- which also is used in my graphic for the week, accompanied by an Adobe Stock image of a sign (I wish this building actually had a sign like that) -- was a supermarket. Most recently, it was a Salvation Army Thrift Store. If I had to guess, I'd say it was previously a Tops, which now has a large and fairly modern store roughly half a mile west in Riverside. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Byrne Dairy, a convenience store, now takes up a small part of the building to the far right, with the rest vacant.
It sure has that supermarket look about the building, doesn't it? We're looking at 207 W Pulteney St, Corning, NY.
Photographed August 2018
This was originally built as a Loblaws, and was later a Great American Food Store until about the 1980s. Tops didn't really build stores with these generic trapezoidal facades, rather theirs were boxier like those in Gates and Auburn. Not to mention Great American had many stores in smaller towns and rural areas of upstate NY, most of which closed in the 1980s and 1990s. Only 3 still operate, all of which are independently owned and operated.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the history insight here! I forget that Loblaws had stores in the US, and I see the differences between this store's facade and the Tops stores. Funny that you're commenting on this now and you mention Auburn, as I am currently in the Finger Lakes and was in Auburn yesterday! (I didn't go to the Tops though, I only went over to Maxwell's. I have been to a few of the area Tops but mostly stores in former P&Cs.) I don't know if you've heard of Maxwell's, but here's some pictures... https://auburnpub.com/news/local/gallery-maxwells-food-store-is-an-old-friend-you-can-count-on-during-the-coronavirus/collection_02a8546f-5977-5bfd-91e9-f225fcc036fa.html
DeleteAlthough this store was not a Tops Markets in the past, Tops did use a similar trapezoidal design with some of their stores in the Buffalo area which have since been replaced. Stores that were built with a trapezoidal design include former stores in East Aurora, North Tonawanda (1385 Nash Rd), Cheektowaga (French/Borden), Lancaster (Transit/Rehm), Alden, Amherst (Maple/North Forest), Cheektowaga (3401 Genesee St), Tonawanda (Delaware Ave), and Niagara Falls (Niagara Falls Blvd at Military Rd).
ReplyDeleteThe only former Tops stores that still have that type of exterior fully intact are the former stores on Nash Rd and Genesee St. The Genesee St store closed in 1990, while the Nash Rd store closed in 2004.
Thanks for the history on Tops and its facades!
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