Detail from 1948 panorama of Main Street Newhall (Spruce Street).

Mike and Neal's M&N Market, a grocery-dry goods store, moved into this location at (what is now) 24328 Main Street sometime after Safeway moved down the street. In fact, county assessor records give a construction date of 1948, so the 2,000-square-foot building might have been extensively remodeled just in time for this photograph. We'll have to get back to you on Mike and Neal's last name(s), but we can tell you that Newhallian Bill Rice remembers the owners "used to give bubble gum for every 'A' you got on your school report card" (see Rice [2000]). Bill was there in 1954 when the film crew used interiors (and exteriors) of the M&N Market in "Suddenly" starring Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden.

As for Safeway, we're not sure when it arrived in Newhall at this M&N Market location. It was sometime after 1914 when Spruce Street replaced Railroad Avenue as Newhall's main street. Safeway was there before the road was widened in 1935. Apparently in 1941 — at least that's what assessor records show — Safeway decided it needed to double in size to 4,000 square feet, so it built a new building at (what is now) 24316 Main Street, where it's seen in this photograph.

The space in between the two stores was vacant — William Mayhue's house stood there until the 1935 widening when he moved it to Chestnut Street — until 1947 when Don Guglielmino built Newhall Hardware. So it's new here, too.

In 1965, Safeway moved away to the brand-new Old Orchard Shopping Center in Valencia and Dillenbeck Market took over the space. It was Dillenbeck's second store, the first having opened in Canyon Country a few years earlier. In 1981, the Tresierras Supermarket chain moved in and stayed for more than three decades. It closed Jan. 27, 2014, and for the first time in its history, except for temporary transitions between owners, downtown Newhall had no grocery or dry goods store. Most of the time since 1878 when Newhall established itself here, it had more than one.

Down the street we see Bud Heselius' barber shop, with signs on it advertising auto painting and Coca-Cola, and then the pole sign for the Signal gas station at the northeast corner of Spruce and Market streets (the gas station is obscured by the barber shop.) Across Market Street is the Newhall 5-10-25 Cent Store; its original address was 644 Spruce Street. As of 2014 it's El Trocadero Mexican Restaurant.

If you download the monster version of this photograph, you can see quite a bit of detail.