Super A Foods Market | Los Angeles Conservancy
Photo by Adrian Scott Fine/L.A. Conservancy

Super A Foods Market

The Super A Foods Market building is a good example of the mid-century grocery market that is becoming an increasingly rare building type. Completed in 1967, the building is significant as a largely intact example of a postwar-era grocery market.

Although the central glazing of the main elevation appears to have been replaced through the years, this has not substantially impacted the building’s overall integrity and ability to convey its significance.

The symmetrically balanced primary elevation faces south onto the front parking lot, with an expansive section of glazing framed on either side by walls clad in brick set in a stacked bond pattern. The roof form is a dominant feature of the market, forming both the angular, canted ceiling of the interior and projecting beyond the glass walls to form the sculptural roofline that functions as an entrance canopy.

When illuminated at night, the central glazing provides unobstructed views to the interior and the grid-like arrangement of the ceiling’s fluorescent lighting. This lighting also extends to the underside of the exterior canopy, blurring the distinction between indoors and outdoors that is a hallmark of modernism.

The Super A Foods Market building was used as a filming location for the 2002 movie Crossroads.

Photo by Tim Street-Porter/Koning Eizenberg Architecture

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Photo by Tom Davies

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