The A&P Moved Up Main in 1959. Its Old Sign Left Friday.

CHATHAM · 631 MAIN STREET

A grocery logo set into a doorway outlived two stores. Here's how it got out ahead of the third.

4 min read · A Celebrate Lower Cape spotlight

For most of a century, the first thing under your feet at one Chatham doorway was a grocery logo. Black letters, A&P, inside a black circle on white tile, set into the ground at the right-hand entrance of 631 Main St.

If you went into the Ben Franklin any time in the last sixty-odd years, you probably walked across it without looking down.

On Friday, Nov. 6, it came out almost whole, after a months-long effort and without any town condition requiring it.

A black A&P in a white circle

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company ran a market in the building from about 1930 to 1959, the Chronicle reported this week. The tile was its welcome mat.

In 1959 the A&P didn't leave Main Street. It moved farther along it, according to a 1965 Chatham Shopper News item the Chronicle cited. The Ben Franklin Five and Ten took over 631 and kept the old tenant's name in the floor.

The Ben Franklin closed a year ago. A Lilly Pulitzer store is scheduled to open there in March.

Approved Dec. 17 without a word about it

The town's Historic Business District Commission unanimously approved Lilly Pulitzer's changes to the building at its Dec. 17 meeting. Nobody at that meeting mentioned the floor.

Tim Wood, the Chronicle's editor, who leads walking tours of Main Street, asked in print why not. On March 23 he wrote to the Zoning Board of Appeals asking that any approval carry one condition: save the mosaic, either worked into the new entry or lifted out whole and donated.

Ellen Briggs, who founded the nonprofit Protect Our Past, wanted it left exactly where it was. Neither board made saving it a requirement.

"As long as" it cost the company nothing

At the zoning hearing, Lilly Pulitzer's attorney, William F. Riley, said the company was willing to donate the mosaic, to the Chatham Historical Society for example, as long as the company didn't have to pay any of the cost of moving it.

That's a generous offer with a hole in the middle. A tile floor doesn't move itself, and the estimate for removal and transport came to about $15,000.

Frank Messina, a longtime member of the town's historical commission, took it on. The building's owners, the Magnusson family, agreed to help. Stephen Daniel and Eric Weinberg, a co-owner of Stage Harbor Marina, helped look for a new home. Lilly Pulitzer, Daniel and Weinberg agreed to contribute toward the cost. The Chronicle didn't say how the bill was split.

"We are deeply appreciative of the partnership and collaboration to preserve the historic A&P tile logo," Lilly Pulitzer senior vice president Debbie Negri told the Chronicle.

A man from Hard Core Drilling

The job went to Dennis Casto of Hard Core Drilling in Orleans. With the construction crew already gutting the building, he ran a large saw around the outline of the mosaic. A small skid-steer loader lifted it out intact, except for a small piece along one edge.

Messina's verdict was three words: "I'm very satisfied."

Daniel said the project showed "the real importance of trying to keep these little nuggets of our history." This nugget needed a loader.

Not Chase Park, for now

Messina had suggested setting the tile in Chase Park. Town officials hesitated over weather exposure and upkeep, Town Manager Jill Goldsmith told the Chronicle.

For now it's in a private storage unit. Weinberg plans to make it part of a larger mosaic about Chatham's history, inside a new building being designed for the marina, where the public can see it. No date has been given.

That leaves Main Street without its floor, and an A&P sign on its way to the harbor. If you remember the store it pointed to, or the one that came after, this is the moment to say so.

So: what did you buy at the Ben Franklin? Reply to any Thursday issue and tell us. The best answers may run in a future one.

Send it to: whoever still calls it the Ben Franklin.