Vintage grocery items of all sorts line the full shelves of this early to mid 1930s grocery store. Two young men wearing ties and aprons stand next to an older boy behind the counter. A high resolution scan of this already amazingly clear photograph provides a cornucopia of old-timey advertising and product packaging to research.
Click here to download high resolution scan! It is a much larger file and I didn’t want it clogging up bandwidth on this post. It may take a while to load.
Sherlock Cohn: The Photo Genealogist took a glance and suggested following:
“Off hand given the prices I'd guess this was earlier in the Depression rather than later, though again, only research can tell us that. … I suspect that this could have been one of the 16,000 A&P grocery stores that existed all over the country in 1930. I'm judging that from the A&P crackers on the bread table. I guess the question would be did A&P sell their products only in their stores or did they sell in non-affiliated stores as well?”
You can see the A&P crackers that she references on the left side of the bread table below.
A & P Crackers on bread table
As I studied this photograph I saw so many neat old-timey grocery items that I wanted to research and explore. I started cropping some high resolution closeups. For reference I will start in the upper left corner and work clockwise around the photograph.
Some items in the above photo: Stove Polish, Argo Corn Starch, Linit (bath soap), and Pacific (though I am not sure what that is).
And here is a cabinet labelled “Butter” for 41¢.
Along the top shelf in the center is an array or flours including: Swans Down Cake Flour (31¢), Pillsbury Cake Flour (35¢), Virginia Sweet Pancake Flour (11¢), Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour (2 for 25¢), Aunt Jemima Buckwheat Corn and Wheat Flour (15¢) - possibly though it is hard to tell, Pillsbury Pancake Flour (15¢), Purina Whole Wheat Flour (33¢), an unknown (possibly) flour product with a bear on the box (19¢). Here are just some closeups with a reference photos from my research.
Swans Down Cake Flour
Pillsbury Cake Flour
Virginia Sweet Pancake Flour
It is a little hard to see because of the light fixture, but here are two types of Aunt Jemima flours.
Aunt Jemima Flours
These aren’t exact matches, but they are pretty close.
[Note: Please visit the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia for important information on the historical use of racist imagery in advertising.]
Here are some other flours on the top shelf. Can anyone tell what the canister with the bear on it is?
Going down this rabbit hole of vintage 1930s grocery item research soon left me feeling overwhelmed! Rather than research each item I will leave you with some of the highlights. Feel free to let me know what other items you see or recognize.
Behind the gentleman on the left are a few different types of pasta, including Muellers and Encore Macaroni. Behind his colleague is a group of various cereals including: Quaker Oatmeal, Cream of Wheat and Kellogg’s Rice Krispies.
There is also an assortment of teas, coffees, canned goods, and condiments. I see these brands: Bokar, Maxwell House, Eight O’Clock, Salada, Nectar, and a few others. Also, I am just now noticing the “W.E. Miller - Manager” sign in the middle of that shelf.
Back to the left side of the photo we see an array of salt, rice, Brillo Pads, Oakrite Cleaner, Borax, and Crisco. What else do you see?
And one of the neatest discoveries was a display of “Chick Chick Easter Egg Dye”, in front of a display of Kraft Cheese. These help us narrow down the photo to Easter and springtime.
All the evidence I see supports Sherlock Cohn: The Photo Genealogist’s hypothesis that this was in fact an A&P grocery store. I did a 1930s newspaper archive search for A&P’s motto “Where Economy Rules” and found hundreds of advertisements just like this one from 1931 in New York. The prices are similar to the ones in the photo (note especially the coffees).
CHECK OUT THE GROWING GALLERY OF OLD-TIMEY STORES!
A mystery photo identified (perhaps incorrectly) as Isaac Benson Chapman (1888-1952) of Columbus, Ohio some time in the very early 1900s.