Journey to the Land of the Coat Factory
Happy Easter, everybody! This post and the next are from a quick trip we made to Burlington NJ, home and namesake of Burlington Coat Factory. Strangely, Burlington doesn't have any stores in town. They do however have quite a bit of other interesting stuff, which you'll be seeing shortly.
(Sorry in advance Jersians, being from PA I'm sort of required to talk trash on NJ)
This motel first opened in the 60's. It now caters to truckers mostly. What's strange about this is that the largest part of the building, which I'm assuming was the original gatehouse, is now operating as a mosque.
This operated as a Buick dealership up until around 2014. Since then, it's operated as a few independent used car lots.
This location opened in the 80's, and hasn't seen much change since then. It's an unusual location, and shares a parking lot with a (now closed) Hubbell lighting factory.
This probably closed as an Amoco well before the BP merger. It's been operating as a service station since then, who hasn't been taking terribly good care of the building.
I believe this opened in the 50's as an Arco (many stations used a similar design so I tend to get these porcelain-front stations mixed up). That being said, it still has an intact porcelain façade, which is hard to find on an operating station. It more recently operated as a Lukoil, and rebranded to Valero in 2014. If I understand correctly, Valero doesn't exist as an entity anymore so these stations will begin disappearing over the coming years.
This definitely wasn't built as a DG. Judging by the layout of the property the store sits on, I think it may have actually been a car dealership originally. It's a pretty unique location now.
This location's Aplus was still a service center up until they remodeled in 2012. In that renovation, they also stoccoed over all the brick, Normally I would be against that, but it looks better here than it would in its old material.
This location opened in the mid-80's. The interior was fixed up in the 2000's, but the outside was left as it was. As of late 2018, it has yet to be remodeled.
Pizza Hut opened here in the mid-80's, and closed in 2018. It was renovated and turned into a bank shortly afterward, which although they did conceal the roof is still an interesting conversion.
Payless closed this location in their first bankruptcy. I think it was also the first round of closings too. It didn't sit vacant for long, and was turned into a Sprint store.
This was built in 1992 as a Caldor, which closed with the chain in 1999. Afterwards, it became a short-lived Ames, which closed with that chain in 2002. Walmart moved in shortly afterward. It still had the old logo and the original décor up until its late 2016 remodel. Ironically, this closed less than a year afterwards. It shut down in mid-2017 in favor of a Supercenter up in Levittown.
SuperFresh opened here in the mid-80's, and closed down in 2008. Ollie's moved into most of it a few years later, but thankfully didn't touch the Futurestore exterior. A small part of it is still vacant off to the side, but when I went to photograph it one night I found a homeless guy sleeping outside. Bristol might not be the nicest town, but that was unexpected. Maybe later I'll get some photos of that, and see if it still looks anything like a SuperFresh.
After dropping the Lukoil affiliation, this station operated independently as Gasway for a while before becoming a BP in 2014. This is one of the only BP's I know of that opened after the Amoco merger.
This station is almost comically small, with an attendant's stand the size of a car being the only enclosed space on site. I'm guessing it gets real cozy in there on days they have multiple attendants working the pumps. I'm still a little iffy on how NJ's (moronic) required full-service gas law works, but I think with 8 different pumps there are probably at least a couple guys working.
I really want to say this was an old ACME, but there was another former one elsewhere in town. I feel like it was definitely some kind of chain supermarket originally, but I'm not sure what else to guess. Maybe one of the rare flat-roof Penn Fruit's? A&P and Food Fair, the other major supermarkets in the area a the time also had stores in other parts of town.
Another store I feel had to have been something cool originally. It was a Family Dollar from 2009 up until around 2016. Now the left side sits vacant. The right side became a Fastenal store.
A third 50's mystery building in a row. Burlington's full of them. I have absolutely no clue what this could have been, but I'm gonna sit back and enjoy the architecture regardless. I highly doubt it was built as a laundromat.
So maybe BP and Gasway traded places? That seems really unusual but it's the only explanation I have for this being down the road from the Gasway-turned-BP a few pictures back.
I was under the impression Stewart's root beer was sold nationally (in addition to restaurants, most area supermarkets carry it), but now I'm starting to doubt that after looking into the company a little more. Apparently they only have about 30 restaurants (with more on the way) scattered throughout the northeast, and a very basic-looking website with a 2015 copyright date. This location appears to be one of their older ones; most newer ones are in mall food courts.
One of the more positive things New Jersey is famous for is diners. They have more than any other state. I'm sure I can think of a joking reason why but it's almost midnight as I'm writing this and I'm too tired to. A lot of newer diners try to match the style of the old ones, but come out looking like a hot tacky mess (as pictured).
Going by Streetview, this place has been closed since at least 2007. For over a decade of vacancy, it seems to have held up pretty well. I'm not waiting for something to happen. I get the impression places in this area sit around a while.
This building has been repainted dark blue since I got this picture, which is the only reason I'm assuming it isn't vacant. Google isn't providing me with the name of whatever's in here, and I don't see any signs, so now all we can do is guess what's in that strange cupola-thing up top.
Like so many other things in this post, I have no clue what this was originally. Just going by the building's shape and the site layout, I feel like it had to have been some sort of department store originally, maybe with a smaller grocery store on the side. Ames or Bradlee's maybe?
This building almost looks like an old fast food restaurant, but again Burlington seems to be the land of mystery when it comes to places like this. I could also see this as a former car dealership or something, that glass part would make a neat showroom.
And since we're in Jersey, how about a little bit of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons?
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