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Unity-Frankford Grocers

There was a time when you could not walk down the street in almost any neighborhood in Philadelphia without seeing a Unity-Frankford Grocery store sign.  Before the mega food store chains, mom and pop ruled the grocery business.  The Unity-Frankford Grocers was an association of these stores.  They benefited from group buying and established the Unity brand as unique to those little businesses.

Their warehouse, where several of my ancestors worked, was down on Griscom Street at Unity Street.  You can still see the Frankford Grocery sign up at the top of the building.  It later moved down to Erie Avenue.

Those Unity-Frankford signs have become collectors items over the years and people are looking to catalog where they can still be seen.

We checked, there are no signs at:

  • Mascher and Spencer
  • Torresdale and Magee, there could be one under the Grocery Queen awning, but we didn’t get too close to tell
  • Olney and Mascher or 2nd

Here are the ones that we’ve found


222 Hartel Ave:

Unity-Frankford Sign closeup 222 Hartel Ave

8344 Torresdale Ave:

29th and Jefferson:

photo credit: Chris_In_Philly_’08
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New bookstore in Frankford

I was in Borders up in langhorne Saturday night shopping for books.  The number of bookstores in our area are few.  I was browing the local history section as I always do and came to the Arcadia edition on Frankford by the Historical Society of Frankford.  I already own that book but then it occurred to me that it makes sense to make it available to our readers.

So when I got home I went to Amazon.com and in a few minutes set up the associate account that let’s us offer books for sale by amazon.com though the Frankford Gazette.  We have a few of our favorite titles linked on the book store page under Quick Links on the top left side of the page.

So if you find anything you like order it through our links and we make a commision.  It will go toward our domain name and hosting charges.  Keep your business in the neighborhood.

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Al Angelo

From the Inquirer:

The game was an afterthought.

Most in attendance came to pay tribute to the late Al Angelo.

Former Frankford football players, coaches and fans from various generations came to Frankford Memorial Stadium yesterday for a memorial service to honor the Pioneers’ winningest coach.

And this season’s team perhaps paid Angelo the biggest homage, beating Lincoln, 33-0, in the home opener.

Read the entire store here.

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Crime map update

I began tracking sexual assaults about 6 weeks ago when the serial rapist was crawling around the neighborhood.  There have been incidents since he was arrested.  In September, so far, there was a rape and and attempted rape.  I am including the entire 15th district because I never hear much about these crimes in the media.

On 9/11 in the 1600 block of Bridge Street and on 9/6 in the 4700 block of Edgemont Street (Bridesburg).  This is the second incident in Bridesburg this year.  We have posted a link on the crime map page.