JANESVILLE
The nearly century-old Woodman’s Food Market sign recently discovered during removal of a façade on a Milton Avenue storefront has disappeared from sight. Again.
The Woodman's Food Market sign on the front of the company's first store on Milton Avenue in Janesville is ready for removal Tuesday.
A section of an old Woodman's Food Market sign is lowered from its position on the company's first grocery store in Janesville on Tuesday.
The first Woodman's store is stripped of a classic sign that was recently uncovered as new owners began renovation work on the building.
Plywood was placed over where a classic Woodman's Food Market sign was found recently on the company's first grocery store on Milton Avenue in Janesville.
But this time, that’s temporary. The circa-1930s sign has been removed from the building at 922 Milton Ave. where it was attached a lifetime ago, and its removal is top of mind for Woodman’s Food Market.
The sign likely never again will get lost to time, nor will it ever be covered for decades under an aftermarket awning as it had been.
Matt Heitmann, a co-owner of Rock Realty, a local firm that bought the former building and is now renovating it as office suites and a local realty branch, said Woodman’s has claimed the sign.
On Tuesday, a crew that included a Woodman’s facilities director handled removal of the antique sign in segments. Workers packed it up in protective crates and wheeled it away from its ancestral home.
It was the second sign Woodman’s put on its original building, its first-ever permanent location in Janesville. The lot the storefront sits on was first a Woodman’s food stand put in place in 1919, and it later became the home of what by the 1950s was a 7,000-square-foot grocery market—a large store for the time.
Contractors working on the sign last week initially guessed the ivory white sign with green, etched-in lettering was carved of some kind of thin, semi-soft stone. But on Tuesday, Heitmann said Woodman’s officials think the sign, thin and set in the wall in four panels, might be made of some kind of glass.
The 69ÂÜÀò was unable to connect with Woodman’s officials Tuesday, but Heitmann said he understands that Woodman’s plans to install the old sign in one of its local buildings off Lexington Drive, where the chain runs its Janesville supermarket and its corporate headquarters.
The Woodman’s market in Janesville—which is more than 15 times the size of its first store—for years has had a wall at the front checkout emblazoned with historical photos chronicling the Woodman family’s long ownership of the grocery chain.
Woodman’s built and opened another location farther north on Milton Avenue in 1956. Local history buffs in Facebook chats since the discovery have said the original store remained open for another 15 years and at some point the building had renovations and a decorative awning built over the sign.
It has been covered since at least 1970, local residents say. The sign lit up area Facebook history pages for days after contractors peeled back the building’s façade. The building’s last occupant, Castaways, had moved out of the building during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave in 2020.
Heitmann said he and his partners gave Woodman’s the sign free of charge.
“We decided the right thing would be to offer it and not ask any money for it,†Heitmann said.