History of markets

The daily interaction and mutual respect between town and country at the marketplace encourage an unofficial popular culture. Buyers and sellers, stall holders and traveling vendors, import merchants and local artisans produced an urban laboratory where members of the community attempted to reunite their differences’. A second world within the official world was becoming noticed by people; a unique atmosphere of independence and openness and adopted a universal language and behavior that differed from that found in institutions such as church.4 Markets became not only a place for buys and sellers to do their jobs, but a place where people can come freely and socialize and interact within each other. The transition from making a living to a profit-based commercial economy began in the middle ages. It was essential to acknowledge the significance of local markets and domestic trade in the medieval economy. Agrarian economy and society in medieval England have increasingly focused on the penetration of medieval Agriculture by market forces, seen as in patterns of peasant appreciation. Medieval economies inner workings - local markets and regional trade - explain the crucial shifts that had moved western society toward a capitalist economy by the end of the middle ages. Farmer’s markets were all outdoors, where you would see farmers and vendors pull up with their wagon to sell their products out in the open with nothing but the natural sun shining down on them. ‘Farmer's markets were meant to link peasant towns and market towns together. Therefore, the location was very important for the farmer's and the peasants because of weather. For protection of the consumer and to be able to charge taxes on trade, European markets regulate, weigh and measure the frequency, location and organization of the markets. At the time, most Europeans lived as everyday farmers, producing most of what they eat and eating most of what they produce. Therefore, the most desirable products during the medieval time was wheat, barley, oats and beans. From 1100-1300, the population of most western Europe grew dramatically, increasing productivity.’ With the climate entering a period of warming and stabilization, visible knowledge of farming was also improving across Europe.5 When the European settlers came to north America, they brought their own market traditions with them. Markets flourished up and down the colonial eastern seaboard. Philadelphia began opening its markets twice a week. Opening a farmer market twice a week was a big change during the renaissance. Markets then were the primary source of food for the growing urban population, and were products

Indian Old market Illustration

of necessity that were produced and consumed locally. Local foods traded in the marketplace were gathered or hunted from nearby forests or grown on the outskirts of the city in the fertile bottom land near the Mississippi river. This was convenient because the river also provided the means to move goods long distances.6 Merchants and colonists carried the public market tradition - its laws, architecture, and culture - to the North American colonies, with the hope that structured public markets would defend the colonists, encourage settlement, and boost trade and agricultures. The western market, eastern market, and farmers markets were among twenty companies incorporated in Philadelphia from 1859 to 1861. The buildings were designed for large scale storage and regional distribution of food. There was a dynamic process by which markets were demolished, rebuilt, adapted and reused reflecting the active presence of the moral economy in the 19th century.7 Grocery stores and later supermarkets started to replace public markets at large. As places of civic pride, they remained the focal point of neighborhoods and communities; they continued to nurture direct contact between producer and consumer; and with the recent design of the streetcar, they discovered ways to attract suburban and middle-class consumers. Within the fast pace of life, large-scale spaces of the modern city, food venues, give us a sense of relationship. When the food we eat, grow or buy is local, we also experience a connection to the region, the seasons and the ground we live. Our connection to organic life, within all the perceptions of the modern city, is strengthened. And with the explosion of food products and meals from distant cultures, we find another kind of connection. Food in the city enriches our everyday sensations of sound, sight and smell through the ways in which it is produced, displayed and consumed. What a welcome alternative these markets are to the many sanitized, sterilized and essentially anesthetizing streets and supermarkets of modern cities.8