Reading Terminal Market: Philadelphia's Living History Room

In eighteen ninety-three, the Reading Railroad completed its new terminal in Center City Philadelphia and built the train shed over a covered market that had operated in that block for decades. Farmers from Lancaster County drove their wagons in before dawn. Fishmongers from South Jersey set up on the east side. Butchers, bakers, and produce sellers took their stalls. The market opened before the commuters arrived and closed when the last train left.

The railroad that built the shed went bankrupt twice in the twentieth century. The terminal above the market stopped receiving passengers in nineteen eighty-four. Urban renewal projects proposed replacing the market entirely with a convention center, a plan that would have eliminated one of the oldest continuously operating public markets in the United States. The market's vendors organized, argued, and stayed. The Pennsylvania Convention Center was built around the shed. The Reading Terminal Market survived inside it.

What you encounter today is several different histories occupying the same floor plan. The Amish market stalls in the southwest corner, operated by Lancaster County vendors, have been in continuous operation since nineteen eighty. On weekdays, workers from the convention center and nearby offices fill the aisles for lunch. On weekends, tourists from every state stand next to families who have been buying produce at the same stall for twenty years.

The market opened one hundred thirty-three years ago. It has been through depressions, wars, urban renewal, the death of the railroad that built its roof, and the rise of supermarkets. The vendors adapt, the food changes, the mix of languages spoken in the aisles shifts with each wave of immigration. The stalls are still there before the commuters arrive.