As much as I love Marina Safeways, this store is the real star of this mid-century modernism post! This store has a long history and a surprising amount written about it -- see here and here -- and you should really read those posts since I'm going to refer back to them a lot throughout this set. The short version is that this store was built in 1957 by an obscure local grocery chain called Tradewell, was apparently the only grocery store ever to win an American Institute of Architects award, was intended to be the prototype for a large number of similar stores which didn't end up coming to fruition, and was supposedly an inspiration for the slightly-later Safeway Marina stores (which I'll also be comparing this store to extensively as we move forward).
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