Old School Grocery Store, operated out of a lady's house

[TheFugitive]

I came across a picture of a grocery store that used to exist in the neighborhood
where I grew up in Pittsburgh.



As you can see it is a private home, the first floor of which had been converted into
a small store.  I would guess this photo is from the 1950's (looks older but there is a TV antenna on the roof). The store was still open and operating when I was a kid in the 1970's.  I think these things tended to hang-on longer in Pittsburgh than in a lot of other cities.

My friends and I would go there mainly to buy penny candy or pop.  But the lady who owned it did run a full-service grocery store, with an assortment of canned goods, staples, lunch meats, etc.   Such stores were very common at one time, in the days before the automobile was ubiquitous.  A homemaker who was making dinner and lacked an ingredient or two would seek out a neighborhood grocer within a couple blocks walking distance.

I remember the owner used to run a tab for her regular customers, also a common practice back in the day.   The house still stands but the store closed sometime in the early 80's.  It looks like the area that used to house the store has been reclaimed for living space.

I can recall several of these within a couple of miles of my house that were still up and operating in the mid-70's.

[shore72]

In the rural area where I live these were once the norm; many survived into the 90's but it's hard to find one now. My wife tells of walking to the one in the little village she grew up in, "Miss Marian's Store". It sat vacant for a couple decades before finally being razed 10 years ago. Her father once ran one as well. It had been a store/post office for about a hundred years: one large room off the corner of the house. After the long-time owner's retired he rented just the store portion. It had been closed for about 10-15 years when we attended an estate auction for the last survivor. There were a treasure trove of mementos tucked away. In some box lots I purchased I found store ledgers from the 50's and postal ledgers that I believe are from the 30's.

There was a little country store that my Dad used to take me to all the time when I was a kid. If you walked in and didn't see anybody you could walk to the back of the store and call into their living room (the door was usually open) and either "Ma" or "Pa" would come in. It was the stereotypical little place with creaky wooden floors, a block of cheese under glass, Nehi in the cooler, and a small assortment of groceries on the shelves behind the counter. They had a gas pump out front & were the last place around to sell leaded gas. They also sold kerosene, using a hand pump from an underground tank. The store was still running until the early 2000's when the biggest challenge, the widowed owner told me one day, was finding someone willing to sell her bread and milk. When she died the kids tore the place down & it's like it never existed.

[TheFugitive]

Here is the house as it appears today.