Henry’s Market

Artwork and Commentary by Brandon Mason

Henry’s Market is North Beverly’s most admired landmark. However, this marketplace was not always a flourishing enterprise. It has undergone many years of immortalization and sequences of intersection.
In the early nineteen-forties the marketplace was officially established as Henry’s Market. At the start of WW II the market was off and running in the grocery business and soon set high standards for fine grocery and meat products in the greater Beverly area. Henry Swanson, United States Navy veteran, was the founder of Henry’s. As a boy, Henry delivered milk from the back of a horse drawn carriage and was soon working for Alexander Galper, purchasing meats and vegetables for Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Swanson worked his way up to being the owner of Henry’s Market, which was turned into a mini strip plaza in the nineteen-fifties. Henry’s brilliance for Catering to a clientele that preferred nothing but the highest quality in products protected his business from the pressure that other markets were experiencing during the growth of "chain stores," which were populating the nation in the nineteen-fifties. Henry’s Market was a private enterprise and was not considered to be a "chain store" since it was one of as kind.

This popular landmark locate din North Beverly was established at the start of World War II, however the store’s immortalization dates back as early as 1880. Before the first station was built, the lot of land that the market now occupies was once known as "Baker’s Corner." Baker’s Tavern, where the first station is now located, was a colonial-era tavern that served the people of Beverly as a stagecoach stop. With the establishment of Horace Foster’s store across the street in about eighteen-eighty and with the tearing down of the tavern in nineteen-o-six, the people of the new twentieth century stopped calling the area "Baker’s Corner" and began calling it "Foster’s Corner." Horace died in the year of nineteen-sixteen. The store at 588 Cabot Street remained vacant until nineteen-twenty two when a variety store was opened. This venture did not last long and was quickly followed by Fisher and Perley’s Grocery in nineteen-twenty six, a first national store opened and things settled down on the corner for the next fifteen years. The building became known as Henry’s Market in the nineteen- forties, and has celebrated over sixty years of success ever since.
Henry’s Market was established in a key time for development of chain stores and supermarkets. Chain stores had increased business risk with the market, but large supermarket corporations did not provide the same quality shipments of groceries as the innovative Henry’s Market. Henry saw the quality and value in the people of Beverly as much as he in the products he sold in his market.