393 Chandler St, Worcester, MA

Original Grocery Tenant: Whitman's Super Market
Address: 393 Chandler St, Tatnuck, Worcester, MA

Opened: bet. 1957 and 1962

Closed: bet. 1985 and 1991

Later Tenants: Brooks Pharmacy > Rite Aid > Rocky's Ace Hardware

Photographed: April 14, 2019 and November 18, 2020

Just east of Billings Square between Main Middle and Tatnuck is this 15,000 square foot store, constructed around 1960 as Whitman's Supermarket. Worcester city directories list Whitman's up until the mid-1980s, when it becomes Whitman's Big D (I'm not totally sure how to interpret that; whether that means certain Big D locations were franchised or possibly the Big D chain took over Whitman's but kept the name). By the early 1990s, the store closed.

It subsequently became a Brooks Pharmacy, then a Rite Aid in 2007 or 2008. Rite Aid closed in 2018, and Rocky's Ace Hardware (a local chain) moved from a smaller spot in Tatnuck into this space. (Next door, 411 Chandler, was home to an Iandoli for at least a decade or so in the 1950s and 60s.)

Speaking of, that smaller space in Tatnuck was part of a supermarket, too! That'll be our post for tomorrow.