400 S Main St, Wilkes-Barre, PA

Original Grocery Tenant: ACME Markets

Address: 400 S Main St, Wilkes-Barre, PA

Opened: 1966

Closed: 1995

Later Tenants: Insalaco's (1995-1999) > BiLo (1999-after 2003)
Photographed: December 22, 2018

Happy October! ACME had a presence in Wilkes-Barre going back at least as far as 1937 when they opened a store at 693-695 Hazle Street, now a parking lot for a neighboring funeral home. But in 1966, ACME constructed a 19,000 square foot pitched-roof store as part of a new mall on Main Street, later expanding that store to around 27,000 square feet. It became a Super Saver in the 1970s, then back to ACME, then Insalaco's in 1995 when Penn Traffic acquired ACME's northeastern PA stores, then BiLo in 1999 before closing at some point between 2003 and 2008. Following BiLo's closure, Volunteers of America moved in and turned the space into a thrift store. I visited the store in 2018 when Volunteers of America was still there.

The thrift store closed in May 2020, and has since been replaced by a discount surplus store. More on that later. In the meantime, notice the so-called Magic Carpets that would open and close the automatic doors when stepped on are still intact here!

The thrift store most notably retained most of ACME's decor, just repainted. And that, of course, also means that the decor was likely intact through Insalaco's and BiLo's time here.

The light fixtures below would have been over the dairy and frozen department. I would suggest looking at Acme Style's much more extensive coverage of this location here!

But I'm also glad I got to photograph the store for myself just so I have my own photoset of this location, especially since the thrift store has since closed. The surplus discount store that has since opened here amazingly did not remove the ACME decor or the light fixtures!

ACME's checkerboard arch-era "thank you for shopping" sign remains along the front-end, too, as Acme Style noted! I'm not positive whether that's still there with the new discount tenant.

This might not be a supermarket anymore, but tomorrow we're going to check out a new supermarket just diagonally across the street on The Market Report!