January Jubilee Sale at a Mohican Market, ca. 1950s

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of stores (interiors or exteriors).

In this snapshot taken in the interior of a grocery store, a man is holding a pack of Old Gold cigarettes in one hand and a whole box of the cigarette packs in his other hand. Perhaps he's posing as if he's going to refill the cigarette racks that are positioned above each of the six cash registers that are visible in the photo.

Hanging from the ceiling above the man are fifteen "January Jubilee Sale" signs. After enlarging the photo and spending some time studying the signs, I was finally able to determine that the logo on them says, "Mohican Markets," which identifies the store as one of the more than 50 groceries established by Mohican Stores, Inc., in the first half of the twentieth century.

The January 18, 1952, issue of the Troy Record (Troy, New York), p. 23, featured an advertisement for a "Mohican Jubilee Sale," which included "Home Style Layer Cakes. . . . Specially presented for our January Jubilee Sale!" A year later, the same paper ran a second Mohican "January Jubilee" ad (January 6, 1953, p. 10). Two years after that, the Bridgeport Telegram (Bridgeport, Connecticut), January 7, 1955, p. 11, ran an ad for a "January Jubilee" sale at a different Mohican Market.

Although I couldn't determine the location of the Mohican Market in this picture, it seems likely that it was taken sometime in the 1950s, when the same sales event was taking place at other stores.

See also Stores in Vintage Photos and Postcards.