978 Boylston St, Newton, MA

Original Grocery Tenant: Elm Farm Food Stores

Address: 978 Boylston St, Newton, MA

Opened: between 1957 and 1963

Closed: by 1968

Later Tenants: Purity Supreme (open by 1968, closed 1997)

Photographed: December 17, 2022

A glance at this 18,000 square foot building pretty quickly tells me that CVS didn't build it. At least, I'm not aware of too many other new-build CVS stores with a curved, concave facade like this one has. Here's a look at the building in daylight. In fact, this store was constructed between 1957 and 1963 as an Elm Farm Food Store, a chain I most recently discussed at the Mission Hill Stop & Shop. By 1968, though, it had become a Purity Supreme, which remained in business until 1997. Stop & Shop had acquired Purity Supreme in 1995 but continued to use the name until they converted all but three of the remaining Purity Supreme stores to Stop & Shop in 1997. This wasn't one of those three stores, but I can't tell for sure whether Stop & Shop ever operated here. They did attempt to build a new store around 1997 on Needham Street in Newton, which was rejected by the town's planning board, but they later built a small-format store in the same area. Tomorrow, we'll round the week out with a look at the supermarket near Newton Centre a mile north!