Scaling Up Retail on Smithville Road: Growing the Grocery

The Smithville Road post leads to this typological comparison, showing how the grocery store type scaled up during the course of the 20th century

First, the four surviving structures in the study area known to be grocery stores and their aerial photographs


..converting the aerials to black plans, to better abstract the square footage



Finally a size comparison. If the square footage would be known we could say one 1970s Kroger = X pre-1930 corner stores, or Y 1949s supermarkets equals one Kroger.


Looking at it this way one can see how modern retail simply doesn't fit very well into an older urban fabric. And we are not looking at the parking and loading dock pavement footprint, either.