Public Markets (Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks)

An illustrated history of the buildings and spaces devoted to the urban marketplace for fresh food.

The public market is a worldwide urban phenomenon with a tradition as old as cities themselves, continuing today in the greenmarket movement. Surveyed here by type are open-air marketplaces, street markets, street vendors, markets that occupy the ground floor of public buildings, open-sided sheds situated in the middle of wide streets, and fully-enclosed market houses, as well as central markets and wholesale markets, whose complex of buildings and streets encompass entire market districts. Special features include an essay on the nearly two-hundred-year history of the Fulton Fish Market in New York City and a section on the people and activities that make the public-market system work―from the farmers and fishermen who travel before dawn to the sanitation staff who clean up at the end of the day. Public markets persist as an enduring and universal form of urban food marketing and distribution, and a strong sense of tradition informs their architecture, design, and engineering.