The Sloper Building on Edgewater: Another old Grocery Store Repurposed

On social media earlier this month a post for a new wine bar in Salem showed an interior with old, exposed beams!

via FB

The paper picked up the story and wrote more about the business today, though not about the building.

In today's paper

An older post showed a building name, one that was unfamiliar.

via FB

Ha, turns out it's another old grocery store.

July 16th, 1938 and April 16th, 1944

This one, however, appears to have been a little behind the times. 

You may recall the shift around 1940 with the national chains. Safeway went from a building on the corner of 13th and State in 1936 to a building on 14th and State in 1942, and then to the current site on 12th and Center in 1951. That's a lot of change in 15 years!

This building in 1938 was likely built on the template and expectations of the early and mid-1930s, and was soon out of date.

The Sloper Market was sold in 1944.

Interestingly, the 1938 piece says there were "three modern apartments in the rear," which may correspond to the three storefront bays in front. This was an instance of horizontal mixed use.

Though the concrete over the wine bar's storefront says "Sloper Bldg," it is not the original portion of the Sloper building. The newspaper clip shows three bays on the corner, and the wine bar is in a newer section of three bays, for six bays total.

The wood is old, however, and the addition may have been built shortly after the original portion. There might be more to say on that some time.

As the medical clinics seem to take over the Edgewater district, we can hope that at least some of these older commercial buildings, so very walkable, can be retained and reused.