Milford chronicle., 1934-10-05
IA & P rs YEARS
OLD MONDAY
J. T. Patten, Oldest Living Employee
Tells OF Early Food StOree

: The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea
! Company Monday announced plan:
for its 18th Anniversary celebration
This company started in 1859 as q
single store on Vesey Street. New
York. Today its anniversary sale
will be celebrated by 10000 en-
ployees in $4,000 stores serving g.
1000 customers a day.
J. T. Patten, the oldest living
member of the organization gave
reporters an eyewitness account OF
the companys growth.
my first job with A & P was in
May 1875" said Mr.. Patten. THE
company was then sixteen years old
and had only twelve stores, bur a
large mail order business.
81 remember well the first store
/ worked in. We sold only tea and
coffee. Blending was done locally
as a customer found a blend too
weak or too strong. she brought it
back and the blend was changed to
suit her taste.
THAT early store would probably
be considered rather ornate today.
On the walls were great oil paint
ings of Chinese scenes. A gallery
ran around the store halfway be-
tween floor and ceiling. From this
gallery hung multitude of bird
cages with canaries, cockatOOs and
parrots; and to complete the pic
tuTe there was a large fountain in
the center of the store in which
goldfish swan. In the center of
the ceiling hung a giant chandelier
| with many white. gas-illuminated
globes on it. Glass prisms hung
from under each light. These were
always carefully taken off in the
early summer and the whole was
covered with mosquito netting. The
prisms were always washed, pol
ished and replaced in the fall In
the windows there were great
many illuminated gas glibes in
arched rows.
"A year later was moved to
53rd Street on Eighth Avenue. In
1876 this was the farthest north the |
company had reached and just about |
as far north as New York City had |
reached, for north of Fifty-ninth |
Street there were only shanties |
through which ran the Boulevard. |
now renamed Broadway. In this
store we sold tea, coffee and sugar
under the smiling sun of a Chinese
scene painted on the walls over the
tea bins. To this Fifty-third Street
store many farmers used to come
from the country that lay north of
Street to do their order
ing for several weeks"
When asked about the famous /
of IS. Mr.. Patten told how
he walked for miles to open his
store, an hour and a half late. The
sales that day were $2S6. and it
was three nights before he was able |
to go home.
Il have lived in the greatest sew
enty-fve years of the worlds his
tory" continued Mr.. Patten. Never
before in history has there been a
period of such constant and rapid |
change. Light. heat. power. trans
portatiOn. communication. entertain
ment. NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. from the
ward to the undertaker's
parlor has either come into being
Ir been drastically changed during
hose seventy-five years. This is
lOt true of any other IS years in
history. For thousands of years
people lived pretty much as their
athers lived. The American col
'nists used the same crude grease
amps and the same tallow candles
hat the ancient Egyptians used. No
major improvement had been made
n artificial illumination for ten
hOusand years. Then came the de-
elopment of kerosene and gas. then
lectricity. And all this in the last
hree-quarters of century.
These changes. of course, affect
d every phase of life and every ac-
witty in America. | saw them from
grocery counter. and saw their
fleet on food retailing When things
hanged, food stores changed with
hem. | remember the great railroad g
of the seventies and eight 7
saw how more foods become !,
valuable and how our own companv I
rev as result of it | remember
he first automobile | ever saw. and ,
. too. yelled get horse" But
OOn, with automobiles trucking (
oOds to new outlying stores. and $
With customers coming to stores !
rom greater distances. food stores $
rev into complete grocery stores 5
nth wide assOrtments. 1t become
ess and less necessary to deal with .
ustomers by mail. or send our o
'agons out to their houses to So =
cit orders.
customers began to depend on s
le new canned foods. or fresh vege- t
lbles summer and winter, on in =.
ividually packed foods instead of a
ulk. Retailing grew up with Amer
'a-every development in Ameri- IL
an life had its effect on our busi- r
ess.
To-day | marvel when I compare T
lie food business of fifty and sew y
lty-five years ago with modern, eff
,ient. wasteless food distribution
we know it today"
The development of retail food
stribution with the growth of D
merica is portrayed in series of
'sters by Louis Fancher to be dis n
ayed in A & P stores during the a.,
tn Anniversary celebration. Sc