The Market Report

Fitzgerald's General Store Opened: 1984 under current ownership; ca. 1850s previously; renamed 2024 Owner:  Roman Potty Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  110 Southville Rd, Southborough, MA Photographed: March 18, 2022 Fitzgerald's is quite the store! It's a general store dating back to around the 1850s , still going strong as a convenience store today. Fortunately and unfortunately, the roughly 3,000 square foot store has been recently renovated and is today Cordaville's Market . It's situated at the Southborough train station on the Framingham-Worcester line, which dates back to the 1830s, so it's likely this location was chosen even over 150 years ago because of its proximity to the train station. (In case you couldn't tell, I took the above picture from a train window.) That's a fun way to end our look at the route 9 area (although, of course, we're about a mile and a half south of route 9 itself here), and tomorrow we'...

Happy Monday! Let's check out the small independent grocers across the neighborhoods we've been visiting. A note on historical sources:  To get "past stores" in each location, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1910s. Here in the city, I'm drawing from  1916, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1937, 1943, 1959, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1985, 1991, 2000, 2009, and 2017.  Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph. Reading the captions:  A caption such as the following...          |  John Smith (1926-1937) > Joe Jones (1955-1982) ...means that John Smith appears in the directories in 1926 and 1937, and Joe Jones appears in all directories I consulted between 1955 and 1982. That doesn't mean that John Smith opened up shop in 1926 and closed in 1937, he might ...

Ed Hyder's Mediterranean Marketplace Opened:  ca. 2000 Owner:  Ed Hyder Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  408 Pleasant St, Main Middle, Worcester, MA Photographed:  November 18, 2018 and September 3, 2021 Ed Hyder's is a must-visit if Mediterranean food gets you excited. To be clear, we're more on the Greece than Spain side of the Mediterranean here, but there's a little bit to choose from representing all the parts. And the store is in a really beautiful brick building. To my surprise, it doesn't look like this is a longtime grocery store; I don't have any grocers listed for this address before Ed Hyder's opening around 2000. (409 Pleasant, long since demolished, was a John T. Connor & Company location and then a Finast.) The 3500 square foot store consists primarily of a deli/butcher along the right side of the store, a wine shop on the left side, and a few aisles of grocery in the middle. It's definitely not a supermarket, a...

Woodland Superette Opened: ca. 1960 Owner:  Phillip Alexiadas Previous Tenants:  RD Creamer & Son > Community Stores > The Corner Store > Woodland Street Market Cooperative:  none Location:  30 Woodland St, Main Middle, Worcester, MA Photographed:  February 10, 2019; November 8, 2020; November 16, 2020; and February 1, 2022 The Woodland Superette is a stunningly well-preserved example of an early 20th century grocery store. The space dates back to 1880, when this brick apartment building was constructed. I don't know about all the way back then, but by 1916, R. D. Creamer & Son had a small grocery store in the corner of the building. By 1922, that had become a Community Stores, and by 1943, The Corner Store. By 1949, the store had become the Woodland Street Market, a name it would retain until about 1960 when it became the Woodland Superette. Here's a look at the back of the building... By my estimate, the store is around 1,000 square feet, but...

We're going to take a look at some (almost all) of the independent grocers in the southeastern part of Worcester -- we'll be starting in the Green Island/Canal District area, then Union Hill, Franklin Plantation, Vernon Hill, and finally way out to Grafton Hill. There's a lot of little grocery stores here, ranging from ethnic markets to convenience stores to produce markets, so let's check them out! A note on historical sources:  To get "past stores" in each location, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1910s. Here in the city, I'm drawing from  1916, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1937, 1943, 1959, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1985, 1991, 2000, 2009, and 2017.  Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph. Reading the captions:  A caption such as the following...     ...

Now it's time to check out the independent stores in downtown Worcester! (Admittedly, several of the first stores here might be more accurately classified as northern Main South, but in my completely unscientific division of the city, Main South ends at May Street and anything on Main north of May is downtown.) A note on historical sources:  To get "past stores" in each location, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1910s. Here in the city, I'm drawing from  1916, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1937, 1943, 1959, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1985, 1991, 2000, 2009, and 2017.  Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph. Reading the captions:  A caption such as the following...          |  John Smith (1926-1937) > Joe Jones (1955-1982) ...means that John Smith ...

Now it's time to see some of the smaller grocers in the Webster Square and Main South area. A note on historical sources:  To get "past stores" in each location, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1910s. Here in the city, I'm drawing from  1916, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1937, 1943, 1959, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1985, 1991, 2000, 2009, and 2017.  Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph. Reading the captions:  A caption such as the following...          |  John Smith (1926-1937) > Joe Jones (1955-1982) ...means that John Smith appears in the directories in 1926 and 1937, and Joe Jones appears in all directories I consulted between 1955 and 1982. That doesn't mean that John Smith opened up shop in 1926 and closed in 1937, he might have started i...

Like we've been seeing with former grocers , Worcester has a lot of small independent grocers and corner stores and the like. We're going to take a look at a few of them in the southern part of the city, in the neighborhoods we've seen for the past few days! And because (especially in cities) I have a lot of these small stores that would be really quick posts, from now on I'm going to condense some of them into posts like this. A note on historical sources:  To get "past stores" in each location, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1910s. Here in the city, I'm drawing from  1916, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1937, 1943, 1959, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1985, 1991, 2000, 2009, and 2017.  Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph. Reading the captions:  A caption ...

Park 'n Shop Owner: Kevin Meehan Opened:  1982 Cooperative:  none Location:  711 Southbridge St, Auburn, MA Photographed:  November 9, 2018; September 10, 2021; October 5, 2022; and February 1, 2023 It's time for another Park 'n Shop! We saw the Dudley location a while back, and now it's time to tour the Auburn location -- the one I've been much more familiar with, so buckle up, this is gonna be a long post. The store opened in 1982, and from the early 1960s through the late 70s, the space was a Finast. The 25,000 square foot store has some similarities to Dudley, but we'll see that a relatively recent renovation has changed it significantly. More on that to come. While I've been to this store many times, and enjoyed shopping here over the course of the five years I lived in Worcester, I've only photographed it four times. Let's go through each visit! 1. 2018 Tour We enter on the left side of the store to the grand aisle with produce on the left si...