History
In 1891, Irish immigrants Samuel Robinson and Robert Crawford began what is now Acme in South Philadelphia. (Some sources trace Acme's beginnings to be 1887 or 1872.) In 1917, Robinson and Crawford merged Acme Markets with four other Philadelphia-area grocery stores; and the new company was named American Stores. Ten years later, smaller rival Penn Fruit began in Philadelphia's Center City, which in the 1950s would compete with Acme in urban shopping centers. In the 1920s, supermarkets under the American Stores banner rapidly sprouted throughout the Philadelphia region, rivaling New Jersey-based A&P, which then featured downtown stores up and down the East Coast, and to New Orleans. American Stores' first round of introducing self-service stores in shopping centers was in the early 1950s.
Read more about this topic: Acme Markets
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)