# History of Eastern Market

Eastern Market is one of three remaining 19th century public market buildings in the District and only one still active. The Old Georgetown Market building is now a Dean & Deluca gourmet food store. O Street Market stands vacant since a snowstorm collapsed the roof in 2003.

Eastern Market has struggled to survive over the years. The first neighborhood supermarket, the Sanitary, opened at G and 8th Streets SE in 1923. In 1929, the North Hall was transferred to the Fire Department. By 1962, only two food merchants still operated from the South Hall.

Efforts to save the building resulted in the building being listed on the DC Inventory of Historic Sites in 1964. In 1968, Eastern Market Pottery opened in the Center Hall. Market 5 Gallery opened in the North Hall in 1973. In 1991, the interior was listed on the DC Inventory of Historic Sites, one of the few buildings in the city with this honor.

Center Market was razed in 1931 to make way for the National Archives Building.

Old Georgetown Market, this 1865 building is on the site of the earliest market in D.C. (1966 image)

O Street Market was built in 1881 as the New Northern Market. (1974 image)

Eastern Market view of South Hall in 1972. The center-aisle stall configuration began in 1963.

## Public Markets in the late 1800s

A Georgetown Market: 1796

B Center Market: 1871-razed 1931

C Western Market: 1871-razed 1963

D Eastern Market: 1873

E Northern Liberty Market: 1874-1946 (fire) partially rebuilt, razed 1988

F New Northern Market (O Street Market): 1881

A-4

Market Decline