Friday, March 27, 2015

Former Acme – Baltimore, Maryland


Photos courtesy of Will aka glamorous indierockandroll on flickr

Location: 2905 Hamilton Ave, Baltimore, MD


We're swinging by Harvest Fare's other location which is located in Baltimore City and strangely enough has the Safeway decor as well. AND... was also a former Acme! It's true. Acme opened here July 14, 1954 and closed in 1981. 






Now we see some signage from SuperValu!


Air vents running along the top of the far wall commonly seen in 50's Acmes. Surprising to see 7 registers for such a small store.


Check this out... Acme's clock lives on all these years later! It is identical to one seen in the abandoned Woodstown store...



AERIAL VIEWS


Harvest Fare is right in the middle of the picture. Quite a densely populated area. A real Safeway store is about a mile down the road.


Judging from the parking lot, Harvest Fare does pretty well.




Acme put on a small addition to the far side of the store. The white section along the back is the addition which may have been there as of 1964. It's a little hard to tell in the historic images.



HISTORIC IMAGES


2006


2002


1971
Acme still operating here in 1971.


1964
I took a closer look at this historic view over on historicaerial.com and the addition was indeed complete by 1964.


1957
Check out the shadow from the tower!

6 comments:

  1. Those funky checkout lights definitely came out of an older (probably < mid 90's) Genuardi's store.

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  2. I agree with Matt, the checkout lights and aisle markers are identical to those in the now-closed Kimberton and Lionville Genuardi's stores, respectively. I can verify that neither of those stores had been touched by Safeway. I would say that this store was able to buy some décor off of Safeway when Genuardi's went under. The wall décor if I remember correctly matches that of the remaining Audubon G's. That has the same décor it opened with if I remember rightly (1992). Maybe the décor in Audubon was switched out by Safeway without a repaint...
    Fascinating any way you look at it!

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  3. The Safeway/Genuardi's interior details look really nice in this store. I have not been in a store this busy in a long time. There was some older brick flooring up by the registers. Would this have been an Acme remnant?

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  4. The isle markers ,checkout lights and most of the decor package were definitely from Genuardi's. I worked for Genuardi's for many years and that was the décor package the Genuardi family was using in the new stores and remodels in the mid 90's till they sold to Safeway in 2001.
    When Safeway started closing stores in 2009-2011 they were having auctions after the stores closed and that stuff sold for pennies on the dollar.

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  5. The aisle markers are from Safeway, or at least they were used by Safeway. Someone I know calls it the "We Don't Care Anymore" décor package. See this photo for an example:
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhale/15219802168/
    Safeway apparently used this décor package in stores it needed to refresh but didn't have long term plans for. Everything else got the Lifestyle format. Safeway stores without the Lifestyle format at this point I believe are ripe for closure or replacement.
    Harvest Fare did a nice job on this store and the one in the previous blog post. Great to have a standard grocer in these neighborhoods. I'd love to go to a grocery auction and get some décor pieces....

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  6. We had the same aisle markers at the Cherry Hill Genuardi's. Also the department fresh signs. The Marlton store had those same checkout lights.

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