Groceteria.com

The National pylon store in Ypsilanti upthread once had a twin: 3590 Washtenaw Ave, seen here in 1976 when Frank's Nursery reoccupied the building. Another interesting picture from the AADL's excellent archive is this aerial photo from 1957, when the National store was quite literally the only retail island in a sea of empty fields! Washtenaw Avenue is wall-to-wall retail now, and has been since the 1960s.

This store still stands, although it's been refronted and subsumed into a shopping centre and looks nothing like it did sixty years ago. I kick myself for not taking a picture of it ten years ago, when the building was still in somewhat recognizable (albeit depylonated) condition.

I was in Ann Arbor yesterday, so I made a quick stop at their library to fill in any minor gaps in my research. The "missing" 1965 column has been duly added to the Ann Arbor table, and the 2013 column has been adjusted to 2015.

I discovered that A&P's Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti stores closed in January 1982, and they closed under the excuse that they were "unprofitable."

I also visited the Bentley Historical Library. More on that later...