90 Washington St, Dorchester, MA

Original Grocery Tenant: Stop & Shop

Address: 90 Washington St, Dorchester, MA

Opened: late 1950s

Closed: by 1987

Later Tenants: BD's Discounts

Photographed: June 2, 2019 and November 13, 2021

In my native land of New Jersey, see an arched-roof store with a glass front wall and it's probably a former Penn Fruit or marina-style Safeway. But Massachusetts had similar stores too -- constructed in only a handful of locations in the 1950s by Stop & Shop. One is still functioning as a supermarket, at Webster Square in Worcester which you can tour here. But here at Grove Hall in Dorchester, this roughly 13,000 square foot arched-roof store is now a discount store called BD's Discounts.

The building opened as a Stop & Shop in the late 1950s (between 1955 and 1960). The area you can see to the right looks like it could've been an expansion, but it actually seems like that was part of the store's original footprint -- possibly smaller stores next to the supermarket. The entire building is around 25,000 square feet.

This store has a fascinating history. For years, I assumed this store closed in 2001 when the new Stop & Shop opened at the Grove Hall Mecca around the corner. That's today's other store visit. While writing this post, I learned that wasn't true -- in fact, the Stop & Shop closed between 1983 and 1987, per Newspapers.com. In 1987, the building reopened as a welfare office, according to an article in the Boston Globe. The welfare office appears to have later moved to a location in Roxbury -- I'm not sure when -- and in the late 90s, the right side of the building was rebuilt to the current setup which appears to have two floors.

The old Stop & Shop storefront isn't looking particularly great these days -- the old entrance and exit doors are boarded up, one of the glass panels is missing and also boarded -- and it looks like the welfare office was the one who stuccoed over the bottom half of the front wall, which would've originally all been windows. BD's moved the entrance and exit to the right side of the store in the newer expansion. Inside, the arched roof is actually still exposed in part of the store!

I don't have any idea if there are any remnants from this store's days as a supermarket, but I doubt it because converting the space from a supermarket to an office building must've wiped out most of the remnants. I assume, too, that the second-floor offices we see here are also leftovers of the welfare office and not the supermarket.

I returned to the store in 2021 and its condition had not improved. In fact, it doesn't even look open from this front wall, which BD's is now treating as the side wall. Inside, BD's is a discount department store, with furniture, home goods, health and beauty items, hardware, kitchenwares, and fabrics. The fabric department is in the exposed arch-roof section, which you can see in the interior pictures. I don't remember seeing clothes -- I would say this is closer to a dollar store with added furniture and fabric departments, than it is to say a Walmart or Target.

BD's does appear to have at least painted some of the boarded-up areas (though not all, as you can see above) between 2019 and 2021, but the store is still a bit dilapidated. The inside doesn't look particularly rundown, but the outside is in rough shape.

Here's another (wide-angle) view of the arched roof section.

And a look at the side of the store, where BD's has built a new entrance and exit area. Since this is now the main (and only) entrance, it's clear BD's keeps this side up better than the original Stop & Shop storefront.

Make sure you check out the current Stop & Shop at Grove Hall, and tomorrow is our day to visit all the small independent grocers of Dorchester!