Central Market on 16th and State Street in Erie, PA
 The Central Market was a huge retail outlet where people could buy fresh produce, fruit, meat, bread, milk and other items. Merchants could rent individual stalls, or a series of stalls, to sell their goods. Stalls on the State Street side had a door facing State so that goods could be unloaded from the trolley or from horse-drawn carts. I have the original slide of the picture shown above, so if you see it on some other site, it's a bootleg. In addition to the Central Market, dealers could also rent stalls at the State Street Market or the Parade Street Market. It was not uncommon for a retailer to have stalls in two or three market houses. This shot was taken a little bit above the Erie Maennerchor Club, looking north on State St. The 'Black Label' beer billboard was on top of the building which now houses Jr's Last Laugh. You can see the railroad bridge which crosses state just south of 14th Street. The Central Market was demolished by the Erie Redevelopment Authority. A bowling alley was built on this site. It was later turned into the Erie School District administrative offices and then became Perseus House at 1511 Peach St.
Here is a shot of the interior of the Central Market from the 1920s
Enjoy more historic facts and photos of Erie, PA at: Old Time Erie |
Thanks for posting this, and refreshing our memories. We couldn't remember if it was on State St. or Parade ... now we know that there were Central Markets on both streets.
ReplyDeleteMy grandma's house was on 16th street just west of Central Market. The Erie Demolition Authority bulldozed her entire neighborhood and the Central Mkt when I was young. My grandma came to live in a trailer in our back yard. She hated it. This was my first brush with eminent domain and the destruction it causes.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember the State Street location being damaged by a multi-alarm fire in the late forties or early fifties. Does anyone know what year this happened?
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