klkla wrote: ↑15 Jun 2019 23:05
This was interesting.
1986 Dallas gives about as good a snapshot as you can get into Safeway's operation near the end of their presence there. They announced the decision to close the Dallas Division on April 24th 1987.
This Tom Thumb was particularly interesting. Does anyone know the story of it?
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tom+T ... 96.8049312
The spreadsheet shows Tom Thumb having been in the building that is listed as a Barnes and Nobel on the right.
That looks like a Safeway Marina store to me. Going down at street level it looks like a pretty old structure:
https://www.google.com/maps/@32.8966464 ... 312!8i6656
It also resembles a Penn Fruit or White Front. It would be interesting to know what it was.
Groceteria wrote: ↑17 Jun 2019 10:49
I'm not feeling Safeway on this one. It looks too big and there was also a Safeway across the street at 10740 Preston Road from the late 1960s on. I'm thinking it may have been a discount department store, which would make sense with the Tom Thumb originally being in the smaller adjacent space.
The Tom Thumb at the Northwest corner of Preston and Royal was built as a Tom Thumb and opened December 1, 1958.
It does have a similar appearance to a Marina Safeway. Here's how the planned store was described when it was announced in the March 16, 1958
Dallas Morning News.
"The new store, with 24,000 square feet of area, will be of advanced design with an arched steel Lamella roof. Lamella construction consists of a network of short open web steel joists shaped to the roof contour, which, in this case, will he 25 feet high at the highest point.
This will provide a sales area of 18,000 square feet entirely free of columns."
The article describes it as the largest in the Tom Thumb chain and one of the largest supermarkets in Northeast Texas. It mentions it is one of three new Tom Thumbs on the drawing board for construction that year, which will bring to 19 the number of stores in the Dallas area. It also mentioned that it operated stores in Tyler, Athens, Cleburne and Gainesville.
It mentions that it will have a meat department with 150 linear feet of display refrigerators and that its frozen food displays will extend 145 feet, the largest in Dallas to date.
At the Southeast corner of the Preston/Royal intersection is the previously mentioned Safeway. It opened on November 16, 1965. In 1992, Borders Books and Music opened in the building after an extensive remodeling, which completely covered up the Safeway Marina design details both on the exterior and interior. After Borders went out of business, Central Market took over the building. When Central Market remodeled the building, they uncovered and preserved the Marina roofline, as well as the curved ceiling and wooden beams on the interior.
In October 2019, just a few months after its original mention in this thread, the entire shopping center at that corner of the intersection was heavily damaged by a tornado. The Central Market/former Safeway was repaired and reopened. But what remained of the rest of the shopping center was demolished and rebuilt from scratch.
Here are links where you can download the relevant
Dallas Morning News articles about the Tom Thumb store:
March 16, 1958 article announcing the store.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i-0vbv ... sp=sharing
An October 2, 1958 article about the yet-to-be-opened store:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R4PYAQ ... sp=sharing
A November 13, 1958 Tom Thumb advertisement about the store which includes a photo of its facade under construction:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qq-zSm ... sp=sharing
A December 1, 1958 Tom Thumb advertisement about the store's opening which includes a photo of the completed facade:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jX4cdS ... sp=sharing
"