The Subtleties of Signage

I don’t know about you, but I find the gaudy retail signs of recent years to be a real turn-off. Today's four-foot tall wooden eyesores or stacked-stone monstrosities always leave me longing for a simpler time - when understatement was the word of the day.

Take the sign shown above, for example. Notice how the gentle earth tones, orange and green, blend seamlessly into the surrounding landscape. You can almost hear the conversations that must have taken place…”You know, I’ve been gazing at that hillside for the last ten minutes or so…did you realize there was a Sears there?”

The main function of a sign is to inform, and this one does that beautifully. Its message is simple: “Everyone needs food, and most of us need something from the pharmacy now and then. Go no further. You can find these necessities right here.”

The best signs are like négligées… you barely know they’re there…

This well-known shopping center’s sign extends a warm invitation: “Welcome to Gulfgate. I’m safe - be at ease. Shop as long as you’d like - go home when you please.”

Now, a little background information on the photos, in the event you're curious: (1) Searstown Shopping Center, Winchester Road, Cumberland/La Vale, Maryland. Opened May 1, 1963. Height, 80 feet tall. From an advertisement for DuPont’s Lucite plastics. (2) Shoppers Square Shopping Center, South Virginia and East Plumb Lane, Reno, Nevada, opened November 5, 1964. The “Skaggs” portion of the sign featured blue lettering on a white background, the “Mayfair” portion, white on red. Height, 72 feet tall. From a 1965 Signs of the Times feature article. (3) Safeway, somewhere in Utah, mid-1960’s. Height, really really tall. From an ad for Dynapac rotating motors. (4) Gulfgate Shopping City, intersection of Interstates 45 (the "Gulf Freeway”) and 610 (“The Loop”), Houston, Texas. The shopping center was opened on September 20, 1956, but the earliest aerial photos I’ve seen do not show this sign. Later known as Gulfgate Mall, it was enclosed in 1967, then torn down and completely redeveloped starting in 2001. The sign still exists in modified form. Height, super mega tall. From an ad for another rotating motor firm, Specialty Engineering and Manufacturing Company.

Safeway's Super S Story

In the early 1960’s, several leading supermarket chains began a concerted effort to augment their traditionally razor-thin grocery margins by greatly increasing their offering of non-food items. Typically, this category included outdoor accessories, sporting goods, cameras, small appliances, basic clothing and a host of other items, which were usually marked-up at more than twice the rate of food products.

This trend was accelerated with the introduction of the “food/drug combination store” – essentially two adjoining stores - by such chains as Albertsons of Boise, Idaho and Jewel Food Stores of Chicago in the opening years of the decade. Safeway, far larger than either of these two companies, jumped into the fray in October 1962 with the establishment of their “Super S” division. The Super S stores would be newly constructed units, built in conjunction with an adjoining new Safeway. The two stores would share an entrance portal between them, but would be operated as separate businesses with their own checkstands. Super S would sell the products mentioned above, in addition to health and beauty products, and each unit would feature a full-service pharmacy. The stated goal was to have the first combination Safeway/Super S store open during the following March in Anchorage, Alaska (hey, why not?) with a total of five stores to be opened in 1963. Six stores were actually opened that year, with 22 more following in 1964.

Surprisingly, especially given Safeway’s outstanding overall performance throughout the period, the Super S stores were not a successful venture. In 1965, twenty-three new Safeway/Super S stores were opened. That same year, however, 22 of the existing (and still very new) Super S units were sold off to Salt Lake City-based Skaggs Drug Centers, Inc., in a transaction that included all Super S’s east of the state of California except for two Washington, D.C. stores. The adjoining Safeways continued to operate. By 1969, the Super S store count was stagnant at 30 stores, and in 1971 the balance of the Super S stores were disposed of.

I surmise that one factor involved in the failure of the Super S concept was the fact that they were separated by a full-length wall from the Safeway, save for the relatively small entrance portal between them. To me, this arrangement could only serve to discourage customers from wandering the second store after they had completed their purchases from the first. In Chicago, for example, the Jewel/Osco combination stores (which have been successful for 45 years now) had no such wall (*see comments), and any item from either store can be purchased at the Osco counter or any of the Jewel checkstands. Most Jewel/Osco stores opened in recent decades in fact share checkstands.

Sadly, the ultimate advantage to this divided arrangement, then, was to facilitate the conversion of the Super S operations to a Skaggs or other successor brand.

As the years have rolled on, of course, Safeway’s store footprints and product offerings have grown tremendously, and undoubtedly most products once sold at the Super S stores can today be found under the roof of a regular Safeway. All’s well that ends well.

The top photo, from 1964, features a Safeway/Super S from San Jose. The other three photos are Super S interiors from a slightly older store in Carmichael, California.

Their Own Private Idaho

Long before Albertsons became a national name in grocery retailing, it was a powerhouse in the Pacific Northwest. The history of Albertsons started in Boise, Idaho in 1939 when former Safeway manager Joe Albertson formed a partnership with L.S. Skaggs (of Safeway founding family fame) and accountant Tom Cuthbert. Though the partnership would not last long, Albertson would build his company at a rapid clip in the coming decades, racking up a store count of nearly 100 units by the time the store pictured above was opened in 1961.

Probably the most common design associated with early 60's Albertsons stores is the arched-roof "marina" style of architecture with the "Albertsons" name rendered in old west-style lettering against individual white rectangular backgrounds across the expansive glass facade of the store. The fact is that the company used quite a number of prototype designs during this period, including this beauty, which was located in the Franklin Shopping Center in Boise. It's a nice pre-opening shot -note the glass manufacturer's stickers still attached to each pane!

(Note: A reader has kindly updated us on the current status -the Franklin Shopping Center, at the NW corner of Orchard and Franklin Streets, has been demolished and a swank Fred Meyer occupies the site today.)