Ah, Gary! What a city it is. Er, was. *sighs*
Delving back into the
original Gary thread where I scrounged up the 1925-60 location information two years ago, there were some interesting themes and trends visible:
Andrew T. wrote: ↑19 Aug 2018 00:05* As with Chicago and Waukeagn, Kroger expanded to Gary through the purchase of the Chicagoland Consumers chain. Confusingly however, there were actually two "Consumers" chains operating in the early 1930s: Consumers Sanitary Coffee & Butter (the one bought by Kroger, and the one listed as "Consumers" in the table), and an unrelated Consumers Packing chain that disappeared almost as soon as it appeared.
* Kroger evidently took its time with naming transitions! The 1935 directory listed concurrent "Consumers" and "Kroger-Consumers" stores, and the 1941 and 1945 directories had listings under both "Kroger-Consumers" and "Kroger."
* Oddly, National stores are completely absent from the 1935 directory even though the chain had a Gary presence in both 1930 and 1941. National lasted a while after that, though the last column may have captured the chain in a state of local implosion (their store count decreased from 5 in 1955 to 1 in 1960).
* The Lake Street addresses in the Miller Beach neighbourhood are the only ones in the entire city with a decent survival and occupation rate today.
Oh, and 71% of the locations had been demolished.
71%! That must be some kind of record, sadly.
I had been curious to learn if Kroger and A&P had withdrawn from the city in advance of their exit from other nearby markets, but it seems as though they stayed around as long as they did in Chicago: Early 1970s for Kroger, early 1980s for A&P. A&P also left behind a couple of still-extant centennial buildings, one at 1401 Massachusetts St (which both David and I have pictures of), and one at 3450 Grant.
Poking around Google Maps, I was intrigued to see that the 1970s Jewel at 6071 Broadway in nearby Merrillville was paired off with a Venture department store...
that still has its original diagonal-striped facade, more than 20 years after the chain went out of business!