[Andrew T.]

This former supermarket captured my attention when I first saw it. It's certainly one of the sleekest buildings of its sort I've seen:



I'm not 100% sure what the building's original occupant was; though I'm leaning heavily towards A&P. Though it's not a centennial store, the round A&P logo would look perfect in the massive tower for the sign; and it's similar in motif to some other stores from circa 1960 on the site. Any other ideas?

[rich]

the stores you linked to were in Southern california and used designs that i've never seen in A&Ps in the East. Virtually anything that was built or remodeled from 1959 onward was a centential, up until the early 60s. A&P otherwise favored a design with "wings" extending from the the A&P circle in the middle. This was typical of stores from the late 40s onward. The storefront does seem to have high enough "name plate" for this. For some reason, A&P often broke up the wings during the 1960s with "Food Store" (each word on a different side of the circle), which made for an ugly store front. Only rarely did 1950s A&Ps have a pylon and the one's I've seen were simply the circle logo on a stick, located in the parking lot.

A more likely candidate would be National Tea, which often put their then diamond logo on a rectangular background. They favored brick pylons, but sometimes used metal ones. They favored buff colored brick, but perhaps the developer sold them on the faux field stone, which was very popular in the late 50s. Another possibility would be Kroger, which also sometimes used a raised metal pylon and often used the faux field stone, although more as an accent.

[Groceteria]

Piggly Wiggly is coming to mind for me, or perhaps even Red Owl.

[Andrew T.]

After a bit of digging, I found that this store was neither an A&P, nor a National Tea, nor a Krambo/Kroger, nor any of the usual upper midwest suspects (Red Owl, Piggly Wiggly, &c). It was a local store called J. Bensman Foods, and opened by 1958.

Still looks cool, though...