After more than 40 years in Garfield Park, the locally owned Safeway grocery store recently announced it would close.
That got us thinking: how did Safeway get here, and what stores that were once Indianapolis mainstays have we forgotten over the years?
We thought of a few, from Indianapolis’ first department store to a bakery chain that called it quits because of health violations.
Safeway the Hoosier way
The city’s Safeway grocery stores — not to be confused with the west coast Safeway grocery chain — opened in Indianapolis during World War II.
The chain was opened by Italian immigrant Michael DeFabis.
According to his 1977 obituary, DeFabis emigrated to the U.S. from Amaseno, Italy in 1907 but returned to serve in the Italian army during World War I.
After the war, he came back to the U.S. and moved to Indianapolis in 1925. He worked at the Prest-O-Lite headlight manufacturing plant in Speedway before opening his own hardware store at 1040 E. Washington St.
DeFabis would get into the grocery business in the 1930s by selling fruits and vegetables downtown across from the City Market.
He opened the first Safe-way Quality Foods in 1942 at 2806 Southeastern Ave. In 1947, when his four sons were old enough to help run the business, he opened a second store on the westside, at 2705 N. Tibbs Ave.
When DeFabis retired in 1959, his sons took over the business and added more stores throughout the city.
In 1963, the California-based Safeway sued the Indianapolis Safeway over the use of the name. A federal judge ruled that the DeFabis family could use the name as long as it stayed within the Indianapolis metropolitan area. In 1970, an appeals court removed that limitation.
The Indianapolis Safeway merged with another Indianapolis grocery chain called Preston Supermarkets in 1975. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1989, but recovered after closing nine stores. Only four stores remained open.
Michael DeFabis died in 1977. His son, Michael DeFabis, Jr., served as Indianapolis deputy mayor during the administration of Mayor Richard Lugar and oversaw the construction of Market Square Arena and the redevelopment of the City Market in the 1970s.
Indy’s first department store and its less expensive offshoot
The L.S. Ayres and Co. department store was the first modern department store in Indianapolis. It was known for innovations, like the use of gas and incandescent lighting inside its stores, and its early adoption of the telephone to communicate with customers.
But another of its innovations, the Ayr-Way discount stores, helped inspire the way major chains, like Target and K-Mart, would run their own stores.
The first L.S. Ayres department store was set up downtown in 1874 at 33 W. Washington St. It later moved to the southwest corner of Meridian Street and West Washington St.
It was known as an upscale department store that sold luxury goods, so not everyone could afford to shop there.
In 1961, L.S. Ayres set up a subsidiary corporation called Ayr-Way Stores, Inc. that would set up self-service department stores that sell things like clothing, accessories and home furnishings at affordable prices.
The first Ayr-Way store was built on the northwest corner of East 38th Street and Shadeland Avenue. A second store was built on the west side at 2331 Lafayette Road.
At their peak, there were 19 Ayr-Way stores in Indiana, including 11 in Indianapolis.
In 1972, L.S. Ayres and Ayr-Way were acquired by the New York-based Associated Dry Goods Corp., which owned a chain of regional department stores.
In 1980, Ayr-Way stores were sold to the Dayton Hudson Corp., the parent company of Target stores. Many of the stores were converted to Targets.
In 1992, L.S. Ayres’ flagship store downtown closed, but some remnants still exist.
Its Tea Room, a luxurious place for people to eat for 85 years, was replicated at the Indiana State Museum and can be rented for special events. The store’s original 8-foot-tall, 10,000-pound clock can still be seen downtown.
A supermarket on Indy’s ‘Porky Lane’
Meisberger’s Markets were a family-owned chain that served Indianapolis for about 80 years before going out of business.
The chain’s first store was opened by namesake John J. Meisberger in the Old Southside neighborhood at 1146 S. West St.
A second store was opened in 1927 at 449 West St., near the Diamond Chain and Manufacturing Company downtown.
Meisberger died that year, and his son Leonard took over operations and expanded the chain, even during the worst years of the Great Depression. By 1938, there were 10 Meisberger’s Markets throughout the city.
But that didn’t last long. The outbreak of World War II and food rationing reduced the chain to two stores, its flagship southside store and one at 1229 Kentucky Ave., at the far east side of West Indianapolis.
After the war, Meisberger’s original store closed.
To draw more customers to its remaining location, the store began advertising itself as being near the “porky path” to the Indianapolis Stockyards, where cattle and pigs would come into the city. That meant the store would have the freshest meat available.
Later that year, the “porky path” was changed to “Porky Lane.” It’s unclear why the change was made, but it caught on. The store’s name was changed to “Meisberger’s Porky Lane.”
In the 1960s, the Meisbergers also set up the Lil Butch Supermarkets on the east side.
In 1984, Lil Butch Supermarkets were sold to J. Dalton Supermarket chain. Meisberger’s Porky Lane went out of business in 1985. The store and all of its contents were auctioned off, and later it became a tire salvage yard.
The property where the last Porky Lane store stood is now part of the Eli Lilly and Co. Lilly Technology Center at 1555 S. Harding St.
Decades of yum end in yuck
Roselyn Bakeries were an Indianapolis mainstay for more than 50 years until cutting corners caught up to its owners.
The bakery was known for treats such as its Sweetheart Coffee Cake, Zebra Square Brownies and Blackout Cake.
The first Roselyn Bakery was opened in 1943 at 2205 N. Meridian St. in the near north side by John S. Clark Jr., his wife Mildred and baker Harry Klein.
The country had been fighting World War II since Dec. 8, 1941, and Clark was drafted to serve in the Army. While Clark was away, Mildred ran the store. In a few years, they would have three locations throughout the city.
Roselyn Bakery also began selling their products in local grocery stores. To keep up with demand, they set up a central baking facility at 2425 E. 30th St. By 1959, Roselyn Bakery had expanded to 33 stores.
The Clarks retired in 1976 and handed over the business to their son, John R. Clark, who added seven more stores to the chain.
The prosperity would not last, though, as the younger Clark was murdered in his home in 1989. He died of gunshot wounds to the chest, but no suspects were ever identified. Family and friends put up a $50,000 reward to find the killer, but the case remains unsolved.
His 22-year-old son Jeff Clark was left in charge of the business, which was about to face its hardest decade ever.
In 1999, the chain’s 40 stores were forced to close temporarily when state health inspectors found extremely unsanitary conditions at its central baking facility, including hundreds of dead insects on equipment, rodent excrement where sugar was dusted on baked goods and bird feathers on ceiling exhausts.
After the closure, Indianapolis Star reporters found that health violations at the facility dated back more than a decade. There were bug infestations, nails and other metal found in baked products and more instances of rodent droppings throughout the facility.
The company took out ads in the newspaper to apologize to customers and even offered a half dozen free cookies. But the bakery’s reputation took a fatal hit, and the stores closed by August.
Roselyn’s Bakery products found new life the following year, as it hired a Chicago company to sell their baked goods in grocery stores under the Roselyn Recipes name.
Although they’re all closed, you can still see evidence of the former Roselyn Bakery sites. Many of the businesses that have set up in their old locations have repurposed their iconic v-shaped signs, including the Five Guys burger restaurant at 48 E. Washington St.
Remember any other classic stores?
Are there any other places on the west side you’d like to know more about?
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Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on Bluesky at @enriquesaenz.bsky.social.
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