The Market Report

Original Tenant: Food Fair Address: 120 Bassett Hwy, Dover, NJ Opened:  ca. 1955 Closed:  1970s Later Tenants:  NJ Department of Labor Photographed:  July 2020 How about that for one gorgeous example of a midcentury modern supermarket? Shoppers at the Dover Shopping Center would've had their choice of two different supermarkets, one at each end of the mall -- this Food Fair, which opened at the beginning of the shopping center's construction, and the ACME , which moved from across the street. At roughly 18,000 square feet, the Food Fair was slightly larger than the ACME, but ACME outlasted the Food Fair by a few years. Much like the ACME, this store's front-end probably ran along the side wall visible above to accommodate for shoppers parking in the rear of the store. I now regret not going behind the store, but it was also a very hot day and I didn't want to seem all that suspicious, but we can see the back from a Google Maps street view . We have two posts again ...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 25 W Main St, Rockaway, NJ Opened:  probably between 1957 and 1960 Closed:  1980 Later Tenants:  Salvation Army Photographed:  July 2020 The Dover Shopping Center was a unique combination of strip mall and downtown shopping district constructed in the late 1950s with department stores, a skating rink, and two supermarkets -- a Food Fair at the western end and an ACME at the eastern end. The newly constructed mall, complete with a now-demolished parking garage behind it, put many of the stores on Blackwell Street out of business, and when the Rockaway Townsquare mall opened in 1980, it put the Dover Shopping Center all but out of business. The 15,000 square foot store actually moved from an older location directly across the street, at 11 N Warren St , in the late 1950s. Acme Style has a post on this store from back in 2011 jam-packed with great pictures from this facility, and notice that the exterior has been painted since ...

Back in June, we saw a tour of the Food Depot supermarket in Newark. The store operates with a sister store in Kearny. Unfortunately, the success of Food Depot doesn't seem to have made it out of the Newark/Kearny area. Dover previously had two Bravo Supermarkets, one here and one at 36-42 W Blackwell St . The West Blackwell location remains in operation, but this one at 120 E Blackwell St didn't make it. Up until somewhere around 2010, this store was operating as a store called Pre-Unic Supermarket (I have no idea what that name means). A 2013 Google Maps street view shows us Pre-Unic, closed up. (It's in business in the 2007 view, but there's a big VMS in front of the store, obscuring the view.) By 2016, the store was fitted with a new Fresh Meats & Produce Supermarket sign, along with Food Depot signs for parking on the right side of the building. My 2017 visit shows that the building has remained vacant but has been painted. I wonder if another tenan...

We're heading out to Dover, NJ, in Morris County. The area becomes more and more rural as you head west, but Dover is a fairly large town or small city. It's also a straight shot from NYC on Route 80 about an hour. In downtown Dover is this building, home to a Bravo Supermarket on the first floor. (Bravo is part of White Plains, NY-based Krasdale Foods, which also runs C-Town Supermarkets.) Dover is also home to a former Acme and a former Food Fair in the same strip. Check out Acme Style's coverage here . It would not surprise me if this were a former department store. It has that look. Dover's downtown struggled when shopping centers opened in nearby Rockaway, causing many of the chain stores to leave. It has recently been revitalized as a center for the Hispanic population of Morris County, explaining the presence of Bravo. This store has parking in the rear, and entrances/exits on both sides. There are registers in the front and the back. Entering ...