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Greenfield’s Grocery Building Pt. 1

September 24th, 2008 @ 12:52 am by Cliffe | Sorted Historic Buildingsborder
I had a chance recently to tour the Central District’s Greenfield’s Grocery Building with developer Ron Rubin of Central Space. The 1929 brick building (recently home to Dilletante Chocolate), located at 23rd and E Cherry, is undergoing a restoration in order to be used as a neighborhood coffee shop and other yet undetermined uses that will encourage pedestrianism and sidwalk oriented micro buisness. Contact Ron if you are interested in the building. Today we’ll look at the exterior of the building and I’ve also posted Part 2 with a peak inside. As you can see from the vintage photos below, the building once housed Greenfield’s Grocery and Barnes Fuel Company. The Barnes office concrete foundation and a pile of coal still linger today just around the back of the building. The exterior of the building remains in excellent shape. Click on the thumbnails for larger photos. Big thanks to Vintage Seattle reader Ron Rubin for the tour. Don’t forget to check out Part 2 of this feature where we venture inside.
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1930’s tax photo. June 1944 photo of the building.
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Modern day view of the building. Alternate angle.
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Southeastern corner. Close up of brick and hand decorated tile.
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Along E Cherry. Along 23rd.
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Back of the building. Vintage photograph showing fuel company office.
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This concrete slab remains from the fuel company office. There is also an old pile of coal remaining.

4 Responses:

  1. joshuadf wrote:

    Beautiful! Reminds me of the Third Place Ravenna building, which I believe also used to be a grocery store.

  2. didi wrote:

    Can’t wait to see the inside.

  3. Ben Lukoff wrote:

    It was a PCC.

    I can’t believe that coal is still lying around!!

  4. Kim wrote:

    I went to Garfield in the 80s, and remember well the building’s Dilettante incarnation–it was their test kitchen, so they sold their usual chocolates plus anything that broke coming out of the mold, etc. Huge slabs of mangled Santa Clauses, say, for cheap. Plus, during the lunch hour, pizza!

    A coffee shop in that area would do tremendous business…though I’m wondering where the Dilettante has gone?

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