Helen Tangires 336 pages hardcover
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.
