Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

Uh...California.

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Jason B.
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Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

Post by Jason B. »

Safeway, Inc. had its headquarters for many years in Oakland, Calif. An Oakland Tribune advertisement for Safeway in January 1963 included a list of Oakland store locations. There apparently were 25 Safeway stores in Oakland in early 1963; the list follows. How many of these store buildings still stand today? How many of these sites still have active Safeway stores?

SAFEWAY STORE LOCATIONS IN OAKLAND, CALIF. IN JANUARY 1963:

1. Golf Links Dr. at Grass Valley Rd.
2. Foothill & Vicksburg
3. San Pablo Ave. & 59th St.
4. 12th & Jackson Sts.
5. E. 14th & High Sts.
6. Fruitvale & Coloma
7. 23rd Ave. & 16th St.
8. 40th St. Telegraph Ave.
9. MacArthur & 88th Ave.
10. High St. & MacArthur
11. Grand Ave. & Sunnyslope
12. E. 14th St. & 95th Ave.
13. Lakeshore & Mandana
14. San Pablo Ave. & 23rd St.
15. Fruitvale & Lynde
16. Mountain Blvd. & Merced
17. College & Claremont Aves. (still exists in 2012, to be replaced soon with a new building)
18. E. 18th St. & 14th Ave.
19. E. 14th St. & 73rd Ave.
20. College & Kales
21. Fruitvale & Foothill
22. E. 14th St. & 102nd Ave.
23. E. 18th St. & 4th Ave.
24. Camden & Seminary
25. Claremont Ave. at Clifton
jdra
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

Post by jdra »

I know Grand Ave. & Sunnyslope and Mountain Blvd. & Merced are still Safeway. Claremont Ave. at Clifton is still standing and looks like a Safeway although it has held many tenants over the years.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

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Interesting. Safeway only has 5 locations in Oakland now. They don't list College and Claremont as Oakland. I think the Berkeley/Oakland border runs through the store.
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Alloy
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

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The former Safeway at 40th and Telegraph has been mentioned on here before; it houses an imported car parts store behind the two-story Mercedes-Benz dealership on the corner. The newer building is built on the old parking lot.

The building at College and Kales has a rug store now. I would never have placed it as a Safeway. The style of the building is a much older design.

The store location at Lakeshore and Mandana puzzles me. That's only about seven blocks from the still-operating store at Grand and Sunnyslope; it's literally just over the hill. Would two franchises have been that close together? On street view, it looks like the building labeled "East Bay Computer Center" sits on the site of where the store would have been. The current building does not look like a remodeled grocery store.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

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The rug store at College and Kales is a very standard Safeway design from the 1940s; there were hundreds of these and there may be more of these still standing and relatively unaltered than any of Safeway's past designs.

As for Lakeshore and Mandana, there were probably still several stores left over from the 1930s and 1940s in Oakland in 1963 (as there were in SF) so it's not really that unlikely that two stores would have been so close; that one might have been torn down since then or it might have been in one of the buildings across the street, many of which look like they might have held 1930s-era Safeway stores. Sometimes these directories list an intersection reference even though the store was not necessarily right on the corner. If I had to take a guess, I'd vote for the spot across the street that on Google Street View is currently a dry cleaner and a nail salon. But that's just speculation; I was never able to do a full address list on Oakland because city directories from the 1940s through 1960s were not available and the telephone directories from the period do not list individual store locations for some chains (including Safeway).
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Alloy
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

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The rug store at College and Kales is a very standard Safeway design from the 1940s; there were hundreds of these and there may be more of these still standing and relatively unaltered than any of Safeway's past designs.
The only reason I knew about that location was because my vocal coach had her studio right across the street, in the Masonic building. She had an arrangement with the rug dealer for parking in their lot, and she told us that the store had previously been a Safeway. Once again, this location was very close to the current College and Claremont store, and also close to the Claremont/Clifton store location. It's hard to believe that the franchises could saturate an area like that, and all do good business.

I came to the area in 1972. I remember the Clifton location being open, but the Kales store might have been gone by that time.
Sometimes these directories list an intersection reference even though the store was not necessarily right on the corner.
That's a point I hadn't considered. The building on the corner that is next to the dry cleaner--nail salon building is an older building, but its corner design and two-story construction do not suggest that it would have been a grocery store.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

Post by Groceteria »

Alloy wrote:Once again, this location was very close to the current College and Claremont store, and also close to the Claremont/Clifton store location. It's hard to believe that the franchises could saturate an area like that, and all do good business.


As I said, locations left over from the 1930s often could be found within just a few blocks of each other in urban areas. Chances are the Lakshore location was an older location, probably nearing its final years. There were lots of these older stores in the Bay Area, dating from more pedestrian- and transit-oriented era, particularly in urban areas of SF and Oakland, in the early 1960s, with many of them operating VERY close to a new supermarket-type location. Six or seven blocks would not have been all that unusual during this transitional period. Twenty years earlier, you might even have found two branches of the same chain within three or four blocks of each other; these stores were not really anything like what we think of today as supermarkets. They were small and as often as not they didn't have parking lots.
Alloy wrote:The building on the corner that is next to the dry cleaner--nail salon building is an older building, but its corner design and two-story construction do not suggest that it would have been a grocery store.
Actually i wouldn't be at all surprised if that corner building had been a chain grocer in the 1920s or 1930s; the size is about right and two-story buildings with store downstairs and an apartment or two upstairs were common, even among chains, in places like Oakland and SF. But most of the big chains probably would have moved out of a store this size by 1963. The nail salon/dry cleaner building, though, looks like one of Safeway's old prototype buildings, and I think there was at least one store very similar to this operating in SF through at least the late 1950s, so it still gets my vote.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

Post by jdra »

I believe it was the corner store and not the nail salon/dry cleaner. About 6 months ago, I saw an old ad with the locations listed by address. Also the one on Grand and Sunnyslope was new in the 60s. The original store on Grand was across the street in the brick facade building that now contains 3906 Grand plus other addresses.
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8186688 ... u8JCKg!2e0
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

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Link at bottom of this page to 1941 Polk Directory listing Safeway stores.

https://oaklandwiki.org/Piggly_Wiggly_Stores
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

Post by bigbubby »

Cross-referencing the Polk directory with Google Maps, unless the addresses changed, it's neither- it's the Starbucks/Noah's Bagels building, which screams 1930s Safeway.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

Post by Jason B. »

The former Marina-style Safeway at Fruitvale & Foothill Blvd. in Oakland still stands in November 2015. It is now a Walgreens drug store.

See photo at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/50610655@N02/22601587973/

This Marina-style store has a very nice curve to its roof.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

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Safeway store location list for Oakland, Calif. and vicinity in 1968

From “Oakland Tribune” of Wed., Oct. 16, 1968
“YOU’LL FIND A COMPLETE LIQUOR DEPT. AT THESE SAFEWAY STORES”
Oakland:
5354 Claremont Ave.
5130 Broadway
2900 Broadway
6310 College Ave.
3550 Fruitvale Ave.
3747 Grand Ave.
3434 High St.
11144 Golf Links Rd.
2096 Mountain Blvd.
301 E. 18th St.
7000 Bancroft
3232 Foothill Blvd.

Alameda:
2130 South Shore Center
730 Buena Vista

Albany:
1500 Solano
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Andrew T.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

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Jason B. wrote: 09 Feb 2019 04:49 Safeway store location list for Oakland, Calif. and vicinity in 1968
Wow, another location list...with precise addresses, too! I think of the Bay Area as a mecca of vintage groceriana, and this does not disappoint:

* Three intact marina stores (2900 Broadway, 730 Buena Vista, 1500 Solano).
* Two intact gable stores (5354 Claremont Ave, 11144 Golf Links Rd).
* At least three recognizable 1950s barrel-roof stores (3550 Fruitvale Ave, 3434 High St, 2130 South Shore Center), with High St still having a recognizable Safeway roadway sign.
* Five sites that are still home to Safeway stores more than 50 years later (6310 College Ave, 3550 Fruitvale Ave, 3747 Grand Ave, 2096 Mountain Blvd, 1500 Solano).

It's a shame that the 1963 list further upthread didn't also contain precise addresses. Unfortunately, listing stores by street corners alone was normal in newspaper ads of that era.
"The pale pastels which have been featured in most food stores during the past 20 years are no longer in tune with the mood of the 1970s."
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Jason B.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

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Oakland Public Library has digitized a 1952 photograph of the Safeway store in Oakland, Calif. at Fruitvale Avenue & Lynde Street. See:

https://oakland.access.preservica.com/f ... 794bbc2a2/

What is this architectural style? It has a cupola with a weather vane on the roof. Could this store building have been constructed for Safeway, perhaps in the 1920s or '30s?

As of 2021, Supermercado Mi Tierra occupies the building, so it still is a grocery store. See:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Super ... 22.2195598

One wonders if any of the interior Safeway-era features are still intact.
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Re: Safeway locations-Oakland, Calif.-1963

Post by Andrew T. »

Jason B. wrote: 24 Sep 2021 04:17 What is this architectural style? It has a cupola with a weather vane on the roof. Could this store building have been constructed for Safeway, perhaps in the 1920s or '30s?
This looks to be a variation of the typical design that Safeway built through most of its trade area in the late '30s and '40s, with striated towers flanking the facade. The store is in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, and I'm guessing the pitched roof and cupola were a one-off motif added to overcome community opposition and make the store blend in better with its surroundings. It's also strikingly similar to a centennial A&P.
"The pale pastels which have been featured in most food stores during the past 20 years are no longer in tune with the mood of the 1970s."
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