Where Health Originates
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #274
Take a look at this building in Winchester, Virginia, just outside the old town. We’re looking at the one on the right:
It’s on a corridor with a lot of medical offices:
Now those buildings in the first image don’t exactly look like medical offices, but you never know, and the preponderance of medical offices would make you think this whole strip was built out around the same time with all of these medical practices.
However, we learn that at one time this was a lightly developed commercial strip, with an A&P supermarket sitting where the building in question sits now, a new suburban supermarket with free parking just a stone’s throw from the town center:
Winchester Tales, a Facebook page run by a local historian, even offers this side-by-side image:
Huh.
But this couldn’t actually be the old A&P, could it?
An easy way to identify buildings is to look at the aerial images and look closely at the roofs or any ridges or funny details in the back of the building; a remodel will typically not touch those things, so you can tell it’s the same building.
Here’s the current building on the Google Maps satellite view:
There’s a building there as early as 1963, making this an early suburban A&P, probably a location which began life in the old town. (Groceteria, a supermarket history website, notes a handful of A&Ps in Winchester over the years, both urban and suburban stores.)
Here’s a 2002 aerial image from NETR Historic Aerials; we know this is the A&P structure because of the peaked roof element at the front, although the cupola has been removed (Groceteria’s entry on this location says it was converted to a Superfresh before it closed, probably in the late 1990s or early 2000s.)
And here it is in 2006:
It has the exact same dimensions, an altered roofline element at the front (with a new cupola-like design!), and you can see at the top left there’s some kind of roof element that was flattened out. You would never see those kinds of similarities on buildings that were complete demos/rebuilds.
The other building next to the A&P is also the original Drug Fair! At one time it was a Rite-Aid, and now it appears to be empty although Google notes it as another medical office. It does not appear to have been renovated. But look at this! On the building’s right side is a two-story section of likely offices of some kind:
The building’s dimensions did not change from its time as Drug Fair to now, so this is not an extension; it is probably some kind of remodel, though I can’t find anything about it. I doubt a suburban retail structure would have had this originally.
There is so much to see, if you look.
Related Reading:
“Excuse Me, Where’s the Car Aisle?”
A New Spin on Driving to the Supermarket