Great 1984 commercial for Safeway Super Stores found on YouTube.
The redesign and re-platforming of Groceteria.com continues, and I actually see it being compete within a few weeks, and definitely in time for the site’s ten-year anniversary in July.
Tag: Safeway
A great photo of a 1960s Safeway in Blackfen, in southeast London, sent to me by Nic Ayling. It’s rare to find photos of UK Safeway stores from this era. He also included some interiors (of a different store, I believe) that demonstrate how Safeway was using more or less the same designs on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Just returned from my holiday road trip to Charleston WV, Pittsburgh, and Richmond, and I have photos to share. Info on any of the questionable or unidentiied stores is very much solicited.
From Heather David at SV Modern comes this sketch by architect John Bolles for a proposed Safeway at the Cupertino Crossroads Shopping Center northwest of San Jose. The store was mentioned in the June 1960 issue of Chain Store Age. The photo below is of the store as built, from a shopping center guide published by the San Jose Mercury News. I’d love to have seen this one.
228 East Seventh Street SE, Washington DC (1987, Washington Post).
Opened in 1940, this Safeway store at 228 Seventh Street SE in Washington DC managed to hang on until 1986. It was still profitable until the end; the need for expensive renovations was cited as the reason for its closing. The surrounding neighborhood was not happy about the closing and the city council tried unsuccessfully to delay it through legislation.
It’s a classic 1940s store, modernized probably in the mid 1960s. The Noe Valley store in San Francisco, closed in the mid 1970s and pictured below, was probably a fairly similar renovation. I’d love to have seen the interiors of these stores. It’s amazing they lasted as long as they did.
The SF location, by the way, managed to hang on for another fifteen years as a Bell Market after Safeway moved out. It’s now an unrecognizable Walgreens. I don’t know the fate of the DC store.
1333 Castro Street, San Francisco (1973, The Streets of San Francisco).