For more than 70 years, Essex Street Market has been a source of comestibles for Manhattan's Lower East Side. It was built in 1940 by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to move pushcarts and vendors indoors, off the teeming streets. Today, the market continues to house an eclectic mix of food purveyors within its historic walls.
Some of my Essex Street Market favorites include chocolates from Shoppe Roni~Sue (a 2010 Comestiblog Valentine's Day pick), and cheeses from Saxelby Cheesemongers and Formaggio Essex.
Sadly, I can no longer buy meats from a butcher shop that has operated here for four generations. Jeffrey Ruhalter, who represented the market's last remaining original vendor, closed Jeffrey's Meat Market recently.
The fortunes and flavors of its vendors may have changed over the decades, but now Essex Street Market itself is in jeopardy. In her blog, The Saxelby Almanac, Anne Saxelby reports that redevelopment plans call for the possibility of razing the historic building and moving the vendors elsewhere. Can we afford to lose another Lower East Side icon?
Essex Street Market
120 Essex Street (NE corner Delancey St),
Lower East Side, Manhattan (map)
By train:
to Essex St;
to Delancey St
By bus: M9, M14A
For further information about Essex Street Market and how you can help, please visit the sites below:
https://www.savetheessexstreetmarket.org/
https://saxelbycheese.blogspot.com/
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Save-The-Essex-Street-Market/
Hi Kelly. Unfortunately, New York seems to be especially good at demolishing its past. As The Times wrote in its farewell to Penn Station, "We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed." Thanks for your comment.
Posted by: Comestiblog | 28 May 2011 at 06:19 PM
Hi, i loved the post even though its not nice to see history disappearing. It seems to be happening everywhere around the world. Even here in Ireland history is being ripped down to build new state of the art high rise apartments. Its great for you to highlight this problem.
Posted by: Kelly Collins | 28 May 2011 at 12:39 PM
The "progress" is especially noticeable—and intrusive—on the LES. Thanks for your comment, Mike.
Posted by: Comestiblog | 02 May 2011 at 08:52 AM
I am saddened by the amount of New York history that keeps disappearing in the name of progress.
Posted by: Michael Richardson | 01 May 2011 at 04:58 PM