West Side Market
Near Cleveland, Ohio
The yellow-brick tower you can see from the road belongs to West Side Market, Cleveland's oldest publicly owned market and one of the great urban market halls in the country. The land was set aside for a public market as far back as eighteen forty, when local landowners Josiah Barber and Richard Lord deeded the corner of West Twenty-Fifth and Lorain with the legal requirement that it always remain a market. The current building, designed by the firm of Hubbell and Benes, was dedicated on October thirty-first, nineteen twelve, with Mayor Newton D.
Baker presiding over the ceremony. Its one-hundred-and-thirty-seven-foot clock tower became an Ohio City landmark instantly. Inside, up to one hundred vendors sell fresh meat, produce, cheese, and baked goods under a soaring vaulted ceiling, much as they have for more than a century.
The market is still publicly owned and still running.
