With more than 60 vendors offering food options from local classics to international favorites, Central Market has been a cornerstone of Lancaster”s food scene for generations.
Locals and tourists alike flock to the red brick building just off Penn Square at the center of the city, with literally thousands of shoppers visiting the market each week.
If you’re a Lancaster County resident, you likely know of Central Market’s reputation as the oldest continuously operating public farmer’s market in the country. But there may be pieces of the market’s history that you don’t know.
Here are five nuggets of Central Market history that help tell the story of this local landmark.
1. The market is just about as old as the city itself
Serving as the county seat of the newly-formed Lancaster County, Lancaster was laid out in March 1730. The land that the city currently occupies was then owned by Philadelphia attorney Andrew Hamilton who, along with his son James, was a major player in the establishment and early politics of Lancaster.
As part of the original plan for the community, Hamilton designated a plot of land along what is now West King Street to serve as a location for a farmers market – roughly the same spot that the current market building occupies.
2. Lancaster was once a “royal market town”
In 1742, King George II of England officially chartered Central Market, bestowing on Lancaster the status of a “royal market town” – a coveted title and a longstanding tradition dating to medieval times.
Records from the market’s early years are spotty at best, but it’s reasonable to assume that the market was an outdoor affair in its earliest days.
3. There were at least two market buildings before the current building
The first reference to a “market house” at the Central Market location dates to 1757. Then, in 1795, Old City Hall – the building on the northwest quadrant of Penn Square that currently houses the Lancaster City Visitor Center – was built on the site of the old market house.
The next year, a new market house was constructed behind Old City Hall at the market’s current location.
The building we know today as Central Market wasn’t built until 1889 – nearly 160 years after the market itself was founded.
4. The architect of the current market had a background in designing churches
When the city decided in 1888 to finally invest in a top-tier market building, James H. Warner, a London-born architect who had recently relocated to Lancaster, was enlisted. In his home country, as well as in Canada and in Harrisburg, where he lived prior to moving to Lancaster, he built a reputation in church architecture. (Several churches in Harrisburg and Reading are credited to Warner.)
For Central Market, Warner designed a brick building with a terra cotta roof in the Romanesque revival style to replace the old market house, which the New Era described as an “unsightly old structure.”
When the market opened on Oct. 5, 1889, the New Era published a glowing appraisal of the new building:
“It is a market house of which our people may well feel proud, for it combines, to a marked degree, the properties of architectural beauty, durability, comfort and convenience, besides being so arranged as to secure the best sanitary conditions.”
(If you’ve ever wondered why the floor of Central Market slopes downward from east to west, that’s a result of those “sanitary conditions” – the slope was engineered so the entire market could periodically be hosed out to eliminate lingering odors and waste.)
5. Central Market is on the National Register of Historic Places
Though some aspects of Central Market have remained largely unchanged over its lifetime, renovations did occur periodically. From electrical lighting to restrooms to wash stations at vendor stands, changes to the market were inevitable over time.
One particularly costly renovation plan in the 1970s led to the market gaining federal recognition.
A plan for market renovations in 1972 was running upwards of $500,000, so city officials decided to ask the Pennsylvania Historic Museum Commission to place the market on the state and national registers of historic places.
As the national designation would allow the market to receive federal funds, the application for historic status was tied to an application for $300,000 in federal money.
Just two months later, the city received word that the National Park Service had included the market in the National Register of Historic Places – which also made the renovation project eligible for matching federal funds.
That 1970s renovation project was completed as planned, but was outstripped – in both cost and quality of results – by a 2011 renovation that was designed to bring the market closer to its original historic state. The building remains enshrined as a national landmark today.
Sources: LNP archives, Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, Friends of Central Market.
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