232 Acadia Avenue, Former Swaim’s Fair Price Food Store, c. 1939

A flat-roof brick-veneer Art Deco commercial building with large display windows in the facade, a 9-section transom above them, and soldier course lintel. On the north and west elevations, which face Acadia Avenue and Hollyrood Street, is a cast stone cornice ornamentation with scallops above fluting. Brick projects at the sides to form "pilasters," which continue above the parapet on the less visible east elevation. Centered in the upper facade is a concrete square engraved with “Swaim 1939.”

The building was occupied in 1940 by the Fair Price Food Store which was originally across Hollyrood Street at 300 Acadia. The business was run by Miles Walter Swaim, who lived at 2310 Violet Street where his wife ran a florist business in the basement. When Swaim bought the property, it included a c. 1909 house and a former meat market in a block building behind the house. Swaim demolished the block building and moved the house to its current site, turning the house to face Hollyrood as #2113. (Directly behind 232 Acadia Avenue.) Today Swaim's 1939 building houses Swaim’s Grocery Bar.

Art Deco style (1920 - early 1930s) – an architectural style that took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris in 1925. It is usually characterized by angular, zigzag, or other geometric ornamentation on building facades. It also emphasized new materials and technologies, especially reinforced concrete.