Market hall

“ In the very middle of the market, surrounded by smaller wooden buildings, was the great Cloth Hall, used for the sale and exchange of cloth goods, already swarming with merchants who had been traveling all night, and for many nights perhaps, in order to close bargains early on market day before the money of purchasers had been, spent elsewhere. ”

“ One of the pleasantest sights, to a Londoner at any rate, is the market-place of an old-fashioned country town on a market-day. In many such towns the weekly market is held, in the open air, in the same place where it has been held for centuries. Probably none of the houses round the market-square is as old as the market, but the buildings, altered and rebuilt as they have been, take us back several centuries, and speak of days long gone by. ”

“ The great market house filled an entire small block, for, from its birth, Faneuil Hall had been primarily a market. Henry walked completely around it. Dozens of market dealers in dozens of stalls offered all sorts of green foodstuffs for sale. Their wares were temptingly displayed along the sidewalk. ”

“ Below the toll house and the market generally are vast cold storage cellars and refrigerating plants for the preservation of surplus supplies till the demand in the market above calls for their delivery. Each market hall is devoted to a separate section of produce, and the cellars below are correspondingly distinct, so that there is an absence of confusion, orderliness is ensured, and rapid deliveries facilitated. ”

“ The town-hall reels with an unwieldy sense of self-importance: ‘the very stones prate’ of processions: the common pump creaks in concert with the uncorking of bottles and tapping of beer-barrels: the market-cross looks big with authority. Every thing has an ambiguous, upstart, repulsive air. ”

“ And sometimes the market women bring to the open square hats of their own crude weaving, or little carved crosses, or even bunches of delicate wild-flowers and sell them for the big round Canadian pennies. There is hardly any barterable article too humble for this market-place, and with it all the clatter of small sharp pleasant talk between a race of small, sharp, pleasant folk.
From the market-place leading out from before the ugly City Hall and the uninteresting Court House, our best walk leads west through Notre Dame street up to the nearby Place d'Armes. ”

“ There are many of our modern 112 towns which have grown up in manufacturing districts, near great railway centres, or near docks and railway stations, which have no market. Nearly all of our old towns have, or at one time had, the right of holding markets.
Nobody can set up a stall in a market as he pleases. On the market-day you will see the beadle going about from stall to stall taking the toll from each stall-holder. In many cases he wears an old-fashioned dress trimmed with gold lace. He reminds us of the time when no one except a freeman of the town could trade freely. ”

“ Some places had, and still have, more than one market a week. In many places the market has quite died out now, but in the early days one of the first steps of a "tun" towards becoming a "town" was to obtain the right to hold a market. ”

“ One square from Arch street is Market, designed years ago by the far-sighted Quaker to be just what it is today—a great commercial thoroughfare of one of the metropolitan cities of America. At its feet the ferries cross the Delaware to the fair New Jersey land. Up its course to the City Hall—or as the Philadelphian will always have it, the Public Buildings—are department stores, one of them a commercial monument to the man who made the modern department store possible and so doing became the greatest merchant of his generation. ”

“ Shops and churches, colleges, divinity schools and Town Hall all jostle one another around this wide open space, void on most days, but on Saturday so crowded with the canopied stalls of the market that it presents one vast area of canvas. Few markets are so well supplied with flowers as this, for in summertime growing plants are greatly in demand by the undergrads to decorate the windows of their lodgings. ”

“ The Union Stock Yards make a complete town, with its own banks, hotels, Board of Trade, Post-office, town-hall, newspaper and special Fire Department. The extensive enclosure is entered by a modest, gray sandstone turreted gateway, surmounted by a carved bull's head, emblematic of its uses. The Horse Market is a large pavilion, seating four thousand people. ”

“ Primarily a place of business rather than of pleasure, one soon learns to admire and to respect it; there is nothing garish and little that is fashionable about it. Not many of its buildings are calculated to make an impression on the visitor, except the Market Hall that makes Market-Jew Street a rather striking thoroughfare, and the church of St. ”

“ In the past century they have spent $730,000 on extensions and improvements. Of the present modern buildings, the fruit hall cost $170,000 and the flower building $243,000. Formerly the producers were chiefly concerned in the market, holding their stands at a yearly rental. But with the expansion of London the growers have gradually given place to dealers and commission men, who pay twenty-five cents a day per square foot of space, and on the produce, at a regular scale, according to its nature. On flowers there is no toll, but each stand holder pays a fixed rental. ”

“ Stalls are rented from four to ten cents a day, according to the accommodation. Supplies come by boat, rail and wagon, and when there is pressure on the interior market space sales are allowed from the boats and wagons at a toll of ten cents a day. Otherwise only merchandise is allowed to be sold outside the market halls. Not only must no fish, game, meat or poultry be sold without first being passed by the veterinary inspectors, but none of these articles of diet must be brought to market packed in straw, cloth or paper. Unripe fruit must not be sold to children. ”

“ Though the new market halls have not been established long enough to provide a definite financial statement, the live-cattle market and slaughterhouses do afford an indication of the success of municipal administration in Munich. Last year the income was $416,500 and the expenditure $410,100, thus showing a profit of $6,400. The new produce halls are certainly the best equipped in the world, and the only element of doubt as to their success arises from the fact that three old-fashioned open markets are nearer the center of the city and for that reason are even now preferred by many retailers. ”

“ Man, man, is there no feeling at your heart? Have ye a heart? I—I—a rude, untaught savage, whose hands are stained with blood, even to the very bone; who have been as a whirlwind, scattering desolation; over the deck of whose vessel has floated the pennon of every land, working destruction as a pastime; I, myself, would brand myself as a brigand and a Buccaneer—scorch the words, in letters of fire, on my brow, and stand to be gazed upon by the vile rabble at every market-cross in England, sooner than suffer my humble child to sacrifice the least portion of herself for me! ”

“ Therefore, if the quantity of corn in the country was not small in proportion to this diminished consumption, there would be, towards harvest, a great deal of corn remaining in the hands of the farmers, which the farmers would, if they considered their own interest, then bring to market in greater quantities than they had done before; for they must suppose that, after harvest, the price would fall, and, consequently, that they should be great losers. ”

“ The country people generally spend their time at home, working on their own land, grubbing, planting or fretting out timber for their own use or market. The men do the out-door work, except digging and pulling vegetables, raising poultry and the like. They generally visit the towns or villages on Saturdays, which is a kind of market day, to make purchases, sell produce, &c. In the towns the greater part of the mercantile business is done in the forenoon, and I may say mechanical business also, for I am forced to confess to the indolence of the Liberian mechanic. ”

“ Having examined every land title from Wellingsley to Cold Spring, and found no mention of a market anywhere except under the town house, I am satisfied that the basement of both the old and new building contained a market from 1722 to the time of its comparatively recent abandonment in 1858. The tradition therefore concerning the change of the entrance to admit of the establishment of a market probably refers, not to the present building, but to the old one in which a change of plan may have been made to admit of the establishment of a market in 1722. ”

“ Inside the rail the clerk and the stenographer, having returned from a short visit to Tom Foley's saloon across the way, were languidly discussing the condition of the stock-market. A nebulous illumination in the vastness above only served to increase the shadowy dimness of the room. ”

“ But it isn't the European shops, good as they are, that occupy our mornings. Much more fascinating haunts await us, the New Market and the China Bazaar. The former is a kind of arcade which contains everything that any reasonable person could require; fragrant fruit and flowers, fresh-smelling vegetables, and the wares of butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, all laid out on booths and stalls for the world to choose from. ”

“ The light iron columns which serve to support the roof, also serve to divide the market into a series of narrow gangways, and within these gangways the dealers take their stand to vend and auction the fish every morning, book and pencil in hand, and their aprons hanging from their chests to their knees. There is a clock tower on the building and a bell which is rung at five o'clock every morning to announce the opening of the market, and then is witnessed a general rush like the retreat of an army. ”

“ It dominates the vast quadrilateral occupied by the Central Markets.
The Central Markets were founded by Philip Augustus, and they were soon surrounded by houses and shops. These markets in their present form were constructed on one design, and, so to say, at a stroke, under the reign of Napoleon III., by the architect Beltard, who sought his model in the finest of the Paris railway stations. The principal office of the fish market, at the corner of the Rue Pirouette and of the Rue Rambuteau, is in the ancient Hôtel du Heaume, a building of the fourteenth century. ”

“ But when night falls, swallowing up the neighborhood of tangled streets and obscure alleyways, Jefferson Market assumes prominence. High up in the square brick tower an illuminated clock seems perpetually to be hurrying its pointing hands toward midnight. From many windows, barred for the most part, streams an intense white light. Above an iron-guarded door at the side of the building floats a great globe of light, and beneath its glare, through the iron-guarded door, there passes, every week-day night in the year, a long procession of prodigals. ”

“ This market house, or place, as it is often called, was an open building, except one end enclosed by a meat-market, and was about forty by one hundred feet with benches on either side and one through the center for the convenience of those who walked, carrying their produce in a home-made basket. Those in vehicles backed to a line guarded by the city marshall, forming an alleyway the width of the market house for perhaps half a block, depending on how many farmers were on hand. There was always a rush to get nearest the market house ”

“ Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person from the center of the market-place to the church-door; and Michael Johnson might very conveniently have located his stall and laid out his literary ware in the corner at the tower's base; better there, indeed, than in the busy center of an agricultural market. ”

“ The ordinary foodstuffs and materials, just as in the open market held at the present time in the long and broad Parliament Street, formed of Thursday Market and Pavement and the space formerly occupied by a compact mass of old houses between the two originally distinct squares, were the things sold and bought at the mediæval markets: such as butter, meat, fish, linen, leather, corn, poultry, herbs. Some, for example butchers' shops, kept open market every day. ”

“ Every kind of merchandise is sold in a particular street or quarter assigned to it exclusively, and thus the best order is preserved. They sell everything by number or measure; at least so far we have not observed them to sell any thing by weight. There is a building in the great square that is used as an audience house, where ten or twelve persons, who are magistrates, sit and decide all controversies that arise in the market, and order delinquents to be punished. ”

“ The Market House is modern, but harmonizes pleasantly; there is a monumental drinking-fountain, and a mysterious old stone, known as “the coronation stone,” fenced carefully round. There is the old church and its churchyard just touching the street. One Sunday morning, when I was wandering here, there came across the old Market Place a small procession, the town clerk leading, his fellows behind, one bearing a mace, and behind the Mayor! ”

“ The site of the New Market which was opened a year ago, was formerly covered by the Cattle Market, which is now removed to Islington, in the suburbs. The building is of mixed stone and brick, and the cost was about half a million pounds. The ground on which it is built is also nearly as valuable as the building. The market is about four hundred feet in length and a hundred and fifty in width. The roof is of iron, and a vast avenue, high, broad, and spacious in every way, runs through the entire building. ”