A New Star in Town

Supermarkets existed well before the 1950s — the first Piggly Wiggly opened in Tennessee way back in 1918  — but for most of the country, the modern grocery store didn’t really arrive until after World War II. With capital scarce during the Great Depression and everything on hold for the war, it wasn’t until the boys came home that economic expansion led to a supermarket frenzy. With growing families buying suburban homes and putting an automobile in every garage, limitless parking and “self-serve” shopping made the supermarket a great fit for the 50’s housewife. In the Greater Boston area, Star Market was still a fledgling franchise, but as it opened its third store in the Chestnut Hill Shopping Center in October 1950, what many would come to know as “Stahh Mahhket” was on its way to being almost as New England as the Red Sox or Boston baked beans.

The concept of “self-service” shopping was still relatively new at the mid-century mark. Most shoppers were more familiar with the corner grocer, where a clerk stood behind a counter ready to grab produce off a high shelf and a butcher chopped up meats as housewives took a number. The supermarket was something different entirely. Ground beef and pork in neat, pre-priced packages were laid out in refrigerated displays. Huge selections of produce — at least for the standards of the time — filled aisle upon aisle, and frozen foods, including popular new TV dinners, stood in tall temperature-controlled freezers.  Shoppers were also impressed with the new mechanic conveyor belts which “cut precious moments from checking time,” as the Brookline Citizen wrote in a 1950 article about the new Star.

As the Chestnut Hill Star Market prepared for its grand opening, Brookliners were certainly enthusiastic to enter shopping modernity. The local Brookline Chronicle was apparently over the moon. In an article that sounded more like a bad love letter than good newspaper copy, the Chronicle wrote, “The founders of the Chestnut Hill Shopping Center specifically chose the Star Market, knowing it would reflect the tone and quality-mindedness typical of their business concerns. This latest star in that glorious galaxy of renowned retail stores has transformed a bleak landscape into a beautiful and architecturally inspired neighborhood."

Whether or not the new store was “architecturally inspired” may depend on your taste in mid-century design but the new Star could certainly boast of a 1950s aesthetic. It featured a long, low exterior with horizontal windows and an interior that included plenty of fluorescent lighting and a color scheme that was said by the Brookline Citizen to induce "calm leisurely shopping." Truth be told, its combination of "daffodil yellows, valley greens, and warm beiges" sounds more shrill than soothing, but tastes in interior design were definitely less muted in the 1950s.

The new Star featured other modern marvels besides just frozen foods and conveyor check-outs. Shoppers were fascinated, for instance, by the notion that doors no longer needed to be held open. The Chronicle commented, “Every woman will agree that the magic-carpet exit door is a boon. Simply stepping on the carpet opens the door wide allowing her two hands for holding bundles. As her young son slipping through the door would say, ‘Look ma, no hands.’”

Parking was also a key selling point for supermarkets opening in the burgeoning car culture of the 1950s. Today, folks might fight for a space as they maneuver around the Star lot in Chestnut Hill, but in 1950 there were both fewer stores and fewer cars and what seemed like acres of blacktop. For the housewife who could recall the pre-war struggle to carry brown paper bags home on the bus, pushing a shopping cart through automatic doors to a station wagon parked in the lot must have indeed felt like a trip to the future.

In the 21st century, supermarkets have evolved yet again. The grocery stores of the 1950s seem downright tiny these days and many such structures are now occupied by pharmacies. By 2000, the Chestnut Hill Star that once seemed “spacious and airy,” now seemed a bit small and dingy. When the company knocked down the old building and built a brand-new, two-story market in 2009, it featured self-scanners, the requisite Starbucks, and a bevy of take-home options — from a chicken wing bar to an in-market sushi chef. As retail supermarkets continue to grow and change, and the popularity of home delivery increases, one can only imagine what the Star Market of 2100 will look like  — or if brick & mortar grocery stores will exist at all.