Introduction of NJCU Website Design. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company is known as the "father of the chain store phenomenon." According to journalist Gordon Bishop, "The A&P was the first nationwide chain, dating back to 1859, 20 years before Frank W. Woolworth founded his variety chain" (177).
Designed by Howard Chapman in 1907 and built by the Turner Construction Company, the former A&P warehouse covers 360,000 square feet of the Jersey City waterfront near the cobblestone historic district with other nineteenth-century industrial plants. The warehouse formed part of a five-unit manufacturing and distribution center that served the local A & P stores in New Jersey, New York and Long Island between 1900 and 1929.
