As TravelGumbo readers have probably noticed, we love markets. And especially markets with a history and markets that serve a broad spectrum of shoppers. I mean, I won’t sneeze at a gourmet galleria, but it’s not the same.
And the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, going on 130 years in its present incarnation, has pretty much got everything you might love in a market: fresh regional produce, local meat and seafood, regional and ethnic food specialties, and a big crowd of locals across gender, race and wealth.
While public markets like this started as the main way people living in U.S. cities got their food, home refrigeration and the growth of supermarkets have made many of them redundant, or turned them into gourmet boutiques serving more meals than ingredients.
Fair warning: the maple glaze on the doughnuts above is addictive. I had to leave town to avoid having even more!
And the Reading Terminal Market hasn’t been immune to those changes, but it has the best balance I’ve seen between eat-it-here and take-it-home, and it isn’t sectioned off into fancy restaurants, either. Eat at the counter, or carry it over to one of the seating areas. Other than weekends, the busiest times I’ve seen it have been lunchtime in the surrounding offices.
While the Market has been operating in its present space since 1893 (and two of the tenants have been there for the whole ride), it’s been at the location since 1859, the year the city closed down a six-block street market along Market (what else?) Street, and set up seventeen markets around the city. Two of them, the Franklin Market and the Farmers Market, shared the corner of Market and Franklin streets with indoor markets.
Thirty years later, the Reading Railroad planned to build a huge and beautiful new city terminal on that location. They did, and it’s still there, though as a trainless convention center these days. The operators of the markets, though, refused to move, and a compromise was reached. The viaduct leading into the station was raised to a second-floor level, with the market underneath.
The original stallholders were mostly farmers and small food producers including bakers, butchers and even brewers. Over the years, and especially by the 1930s, that shifted; the farmers stayed home, and sold their produce to established marketers, often with a connection to several farms in an area.
There’s also long been a contingent of Amish stands in the market; for religious reasons they operate Tuesday through Saturday while the rest of the market is open every day. The Reading Railroad served as their link to the market. The railroad had another connection with the market: for many years families could order from the market and have their food delivered to the nearest Reading station.
Under the huge market floor, a state-of-the-art refrigeration system was built to serve the stallholders above. When the railroads declined in the 1950s and 1960s, the Reading reduced its support of the market, and it declined quite a bit; by 1960, the cooling system in the basement was shut down. Eventually, the railroad went bankrupt, stopped operating and wanted to ditch the market to make selling the building easier.
Fortunately that plan ended when the Terminal was bought by the Convention Center authority and operation was turned over to a new non-profit Reading Terminal Market Corporation, which has invested in upgrades, promotions, and re-established the cold-storage system.
While the Market’s first decades emphasized a trade in fresh food from the region, these days there’s not only a lot of ready-made regional specialty foods (including more cheesesteaks than you could shake a can of Cheez Whiz at), the offerings also reflect a wide range of Philly ethnicities, from South and Central American to Southeast Asian to some that appear ready to sell anything you suggest.
The Market’s fortunes are looking pretty good these days. The Convention Center draws a crowd, obviously, and several hotels surround it as well as quite a few new office buildings. And, deep below the market, is an underground station for commuter rail travelers who still have the opportunity to shop at the market for their trips home.
