Following up on the previous post on the history of the Pennington Quality Market, we have posted over 180 images illustrating the history and development of the PQM from 1930 to 2026.
These cover the beginnings as the Weart’s Store on North Main Street in 1930, the transition to the McVeigh brothers in 1934 with the Pennington Market Name, their move to the Route 31 location in 1960, the transition to the Rothwell family in 1981, and then through the transition to McCaffery’s Food Markets in 2026.
See sample thumbnails of some of the images below. Click the Pennington Market Photo Album link to view and explore all the images up to full size.
- View the PQM images in the Pennington Market Photo Album in the History Project Image Gallery
Image Names
The Pennington Quality Market images are dated, tagged, and described in the file names to facilitate sorting and searching:
- The file names start with the date of the photo, so they are listed in chronological order. If the date is approximate, it is indicated as circa a specific year (“1996c”) or approximately in a decade (“1990s”).
- The general file name format has tags separated by dashes. The file names contain “PGM” as the second tag field, so they can be found with a general search of the entire Image Gallery.
Groups
The images also are organized by a group name (the third field in the file name), which clusters them by owner (Wearts, McVeigh), or in additional categories for the Rothwell post-1981 period (i.e., search for “PQM-Bldg”):
- PQM-Wearts – The earlier Weart’s store – 1930-59 – Storefront and interiors on North Main
- PQM-McVeigh – The McVeigh store – 1934-80 – Renamed as the first Pennington Quality Market and later moved to Route 31
- PQM-Bldg – Building exteriors on Route 31 since 1981. Many 2026
- PQM-Store – Store interiors since 1981. Most from 2026 – Departments around periphery and each aisle, organized by aisle number. (Note some interiors are edited to remove people – tagged “Edit”)
- PQM-Sign – Signage (posters) since 1981- In-store and from social media
- PQM-Anniv – Anniversary celebrations since 1981 (often with cakes, e.g., 58th)
- PQM-Mem – Mementoes, artifacts, objects since 1981 (e.g., shopping bags).
Sources
Thanks especially to Mike Rothwell and the staff at the Pennington Quality Market for sharing a trove of images and information, from historical photographs to posters to newspaper clippings. And to Colleen Prendergast of MediaMinds for sharing the PQM graphics design archive, especially the final set of historical memories posters displayed around the store.
Also thanks to the Hopewell Valley Historical Society for sharing images from the McConnell Photo Collection. Some of these also were published in Pennington Profile.
And thanks to other contributors including Charlie Hunt and Mike Thomsen, who had already kindly shared historical images of the area – including the PQM – as part of their documentation of other time periods.
The final tag at the end of the file name identifies the source for each image, including:
- [PQM] – Pennington Quality Market: Mike Rothwell and staff, posters, social media, etc.
- [PQM CP] – Colleen Prendergast, MediaMinds: PQM graphical designs
- [HVHS McC] – Hopewell Valley Historical Society, McConnell Photo Collection
- [Penn. Profile] – Pennington Profile, A Capsule of State and Nation, Margaret J. O’Connell, Digital Edition, with photos, History Project
- [CWH] – Hopewell Valley 2016 / 1966, Charles Hunt photos, History Project
- [MPT] – Memories of Pennington N.J. at Mid-Twentieth Century, Michael Thomsen photos, History Project
- [HVCHS] – This is Hopewell Valley, 1986 video, Hopewell Valley Central High School
- [DD] – Douglas Dixon, many 2026 building and interior photos
- View the PQM images in the Pennington Market Photo Album in the History Project Image Gallery
Please contact us if you have additional photos, materials, or information about the Pennington Quality Market that we can share.
