The Great Bull Market on Smith Avenue at Grand Street in Kingston, NY, was an all-in-one shopping experience, one of the area’s first true “supermarkets.”
At 22,000 square feet, it was the largest retail market in the Hudson Valley between New York City and Albany when the first location opened in 1933.
Raymond E. Craft (1897-1977) opened The Great Bull Market in the former Shapiro & Rubin clothing factory on April 20, 1933. His father, Eugene S. Craft (1867-1943), was also in the grocery business, operating a store at 330 Wall Street in the early 1920s and helping open Craft Super Market on O’Neil Street in 1937.
The Smith Avenue store also included other Craft family enterprises, including a wholesale drug business and the Craft Paint Company, which offered Lowe Brothers Paints and Niagara Wall Paper.
Other departments were secondary locations for local businesses, per a 1933 Daily Freeman article: Van’s Cut Rate Patent Medicine and Cosmetic Shop, Howard Popcorn and Peanut Store, Ambrose Brothers Luncheonette and Soda Fountain, Ketterer’s Bakery, Arthur Brown Tire and Auto, William P. Lehr Fruits and Vegetables, Harry Short Pet and Flower Shop, Pennington & Johnston Antiques, and Mark Pennington Costume Jewelry.
The elder Mr. Craft noted these partner businesses “saw the need and possibilities for a market of this kind in Kingston and appreciated the opportunity to help turn this idle factory building into a hive of industry.”
The Great Bull Market advertisements promised to save the family budget “from 10 percent to 50 percent” and “to buy everything possible locally,” including equipment and stock. Other perks included free public parking and a self-service grocery department.
This well-remembered local business is represented in Friends of Historic Kingston Archive’s Modjeska Signs Collection and in the current Friends of Historic Kingston Gallery exhibit, Edward Budney: Photographer on view May-October 2026.
A version of this essay by Jamie Klein was first published in the Friends of Historic Kingston newsletter. Friends of Historic Kingston was organized in 1965 to support landmarks and local history within the city of Kingston, New York.
Visit their website for more information, and to join their mailing list.
Illustrations, from above: The Great Bull Market, Smith Avenue at Grand Street, Kingston ca. 1933 (Modjeska Signs Collection, Friends of Historic Kingston Archives); Cashiers at The Great Bull Market, Smith Avenue, Kingston, May 1951 (Edward Budney photo, Friends of Historic Kingston Archives); and the interior of The Great Bull Market, Smith Avenue, Kingston, Kingston, April 1947 (Edward Budney).
Source link
