May 17, 2012Jamestown Public Market
Located at the southwest corner of Forest Avenue & Harrison Street
The modern-day supermarket is not a new concept. Since the earliest times in human history, farmers, producers of all sorts of foods and goods, merchants, and vendors have gathered together in open air markets to display and sell their wares. They have erected stalls or booths of varying degrees of sophistication as protection from the elements. Open air markets are still in use in many parts of the world today, and they can be spotted along roadsides and in city parking lots during the summer and fall months elsewhere.
Open air markets were a feature in various places in Jamestown in its early history, but they were most prominent in Brooklyn Square, which was the hub of the village and, after its incorporation in 1886, the city. In 1913 city fathers under the leadership of Samuel Carlson, erected the Jamestown Public Market, complete with different sized stalls, utilities, and most importantly, heat for the winter months. Farmers, vendors, and merchants rented their desired space and were able to conduct business in comfort throughout the year. Some of them were recently arrived immigrants, giving the Market an international flavor. Customers, many of them also newly arrived immigrants and thus not always proficient in English, could converse with the stall keepers in their native languages.
The Public Market was a prominent gathering place for Jamestown’s citizens for many years. The advent of the supermarket and it proliferation and growing popularity following World War II led to the gradual demise of the Public Market. It closed its doors in 1965, ending an era whose sights and smells live on in the minds of the city’s more mature population.
PUBLIC MARKET
FORESHADOWING SUPERMARKETS AND MALLS, NUMEROUS VENDORS, OFTEN RECENT IMMIGRANTS, SOLD PRODUCE, MEATS, AND OTHER FOODS INCLUDING ETHNIC SPECIALTIES FROM 1913 TO 1965.