The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-09-18
Tho City Markets-A Nuisance and the
Remedy.


The committees of the Board OF Aldermen
and Common Council have personally inspected
two of the leading markets, and their expert
ence was given in the HERALD yesterday.
There are very few people in the city who do
not know as well as the committees that the
markets are disgrace and nuisance that
they must be regarded as disgrace to vast
city like ours, with its wealth, its domestic
comforts, its ambition to be the handsomest
and cleanest as well as the greatest city in the
Union, and regarded as a nuisance because
they are fruitful sources of filth and propa-
gators of disease. While we are not particu-
larly indebted to the municipal committees
for any additional knowledge-any fresh infor-
mation-as to the condition of the markets,
we look to them to recommend such remedies
as, for example, have been proposed by
competent engineer like General Viele, who
has given much time and study to sanitary
science in connection with the health of the
city. He suggests that the area covered by
Washington Market shall be enclosed under
Mansard root, supported by iron columns,
ventilators and skylights, and from below by an
open entry at each end, instead of the misera
BILE entrances now in use 1t is evident that
this is just what Washington Market requires
In order to convert 1t from the present abOmi-
nation into clean and decent place where
one can procure the necessities of the table
without being Disguised at the market stalls
In Philadelphia, Cincinnati, New Orleans and
nearly all the Western and Southern cities the
markets ore objects of public interest to
strangers, whose attention can be directed
with some pride to their peculiar advantages as
public marts, their cleanliness and the con-
veniences they afford to the residents;
while in the first city of the country, if we
should desire to convince visitor that we were
living in the great metropolis Of the great
republic, having some regard for hygiene and
domestic comfort, we would carefully chaperon
him as far from our markets as possible
There is no reason why this should be So
There are no better opportunities for good
sewerage to be found anywhere than in New
York; and yet the refuse of the two principal
markets on the North and the East rivers
Washington and Fulton markets-is discharged
into these streams, to rise and fall with the
tide in increasing putridity and fill the air with
poisonous miasma, instead of being deposited
in sewers and Golfer dams running along the
water 'front.' as is done in London and other
riparian cities in Europe, to the great improve
ment of their sanitary condition. That the
city of New York should be behind all the
other cities of the country in this matter may
be attributed to the corruption of our municipal
government the system Of jobbing which pre-
walls and has prevailed for years in all its
departments and the management of the mar
kets has not been thu, least fruitful source of
profit to the Corporation jobbers.
If the committee are sincere in their pur-
poses they can do much good in obtaining a
reconstruction of the markets upon the plans
suggested to them. The disgraceful structures
now in existence should be all swept away
and something worthy of the city erected in
their place. Not only in a sanitary point of
view is this desirable, but the interests of the
dealers who occupy the markets would be
immensely benefited by the change.