Again, no real guesses, but I'm almosst 100% certain it's an old chain supermarket of some sort.
Great Pumpkin
Again, no real guesses, but I'm almosst 100% certain it's an old chain supermarket of some sort.
Veteran
It's not the "shadow's shadow" - there is an R of a different font at the rightmost edge of the front face, a good foot or two past the shadow of the current R.rich wrote:Kroger or National would be the best guesses. National was fond on buff colored brick and this is similar to another photo you posted that looked very Kroger-ish. It may be shadow from the shadow, but I detect an "R" label scar.
Chris Sampang
Great Pumpkin
I see it too, but I think it's just a compression artifact. Nothig like that shows up in my original full-size photo.TheStranger wrote:It's not the "shadow's shadow" - there is an R of a different font at the rightmost edge of the front face, a good foot or two past the shadow of the current R.
That said, Kroger seemed a strong possibility to me as well.
Great Pumpkin
It's 7300N, so the nearest major street should be Touhy. The problem is I'm not 100% certain of the address, since I didn't write it down. I got it by doing a search on the name of the bike shop. I'm thinking it may have been a little farther south, actually.mikeparkridge wrote:What's the nearest cross street?
EDIT: I just did a Live Local search and that's the correct address.
Contributor
I used to live just down the street from this place for years and never suspected till now that it may have been a grocery store.
I am a new member but longtime visitor of this website and I am always happy to fill in the blanks because I have access to Chicago Tribune archives but I cannot find anything in there that indicates anything grocery related to this site.
What I do know is that down the street on Western and Howard there is an old strip plaza possiblyb from the 60s that had a Jewel up until the 1990s so I don't think this particular building was a Jewel.
I am a new member but longtime visitor of this website and I am always happy to fill in the blanks because I have access to Chicago Tribune archives but I cannot find anything in there that indicates anything grocery related to this site.
What I do know is that down the street on Western and Howard there is an old strip plaza possiblyb from the 60s that had a Jewel up until the 1990s so I don't think this particular building was a Jewel.
Member
This building opened in November 1956 as the main office/flagship store for the Armanetti Liquor Store chain according to an ad from the Chicago Tribune dated November 15, 1956: "Armanetti proudly presents the World's Largest Liquor Supermart." The address listed is different (7324 N. Western) but it's the same building. Armanetti's had 18 other stores at the time this one opened. I used to shop at this location in the late 80s/early 90s. It remained a liquor store until Chicago Cycle moved in although I don't know if Armanetti still owned it. There was a beautiful tall freestanding neon sign at the north end of the parking lot that had stars with trailing bubble tails on it. The sign went when Chicago Cycle moved in.
It would've been a good location for a big liquor store as Evanston, Illinois is only a few blocks to the north and Evanston, a fairly large town (population in 1940 - 65,389) was "dry" until 1972. Armanetti is still around with 13 Chicago area stores.
It would've been a good location for a big liquor store as Evanston, Illinois is only a few blocks to the north and Evanston, a fairly large town (population in 1940 - 65,389) was "dry" until 1972. Armanetti is still around with 13 Chicago area stores.