The Letters in the Iron

c. 1925 · 54 South Main Street

Waypoint B · On the way · Old Town Hall Museum 2 min · Map · About 1 min read

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Stop at 54 South Main Street and look down. The iron grates under the shop windows spell out four letters: ASCO.

Three staff in white aprons and a woman in a dark coat stand at the store window, tall stacks of canned goods behind the glass and American Stores Co. lettered above. — The American Stores Co. storefront in December 1926: fresh meats lettered on the glass, ASCO stacks filling the window, and the staff out front.

They stand for the American Stores Company, a Philadelphia grocery chain formed in April 1917 from the merger of five competing store networks, including the Acme Tea Company. Around 1925 the chain ran a store in this building, and next to the country stores that still ruled Mullica Hill and its neighboring villages, the chain store read as startlingly modern. Its advertisements filled the county weekly in exactly those years, promising shoppers "The Most of the Best for the Least" from shelves of ASCO coffee, Louella butter, and Victor bread.

The chain kept growing long after it left this building. In 1937 its new, larger supermarkets took the name of the old Acme Tea stores, and in 1962 the company formally became Acme Markets. A century after the store opened here, the chain's initials remain cast in iron on the street where the country stores once ruled.