Introduction Credits:
Ken Albers

Introduction Date:
05/01/2006

Introduction Text:

For better than one hundred twenty-five years, Eastern Market has provided the residents of Capitol Hill with a public space in which they could purchase a wide variety of goods, but especially fresh produce and meat. While others, artists especially in recent years, have used the hall to sell their goods, farmers, butchers, and fishmongers have generally served as the commercial backbone for more than a century. In the era before chain supermarkets, Eastern Market was vital to its neighbors. In more recent times, it has provided an alternative venue for food shopping as well as a commercial outlet for local fishermen and farmers. However, Eastern Market has also weathered periods of low interest and slow business. While the market’s closure has seemed imminent several times during its history, its value to the community it serves has averted this possibility time and again.

Eastern Market was originally planned during George Washington’s second presidential term as one of three (along with a Central Market located at 7th St. and Pennsylvania Ave.—where the National Archives is now located—and a Western Market at 21st St. and K St.) public marketplaces in the District of Columbia. Designed by Adolph Cluss and finally built in 1873, it is the only one of the three still remaining. Eastern Market seems to have quickly become a popular addition to the neighborhood. By 1884 locals and merchants alike were lobbying the city to open the market every day, rather than the three it was normally open. It is clear that from the start that not only would neighborhood residents have much to say about the affairs of the market, but also that the District’s role as owner and operator of the physical market space is integral to understanding the Eastern Market’s livelihood. Various neighborhood tensions and political power struggles would play out in the debates over the market’s presence, utility, and future.

The story of the efforts to preserve, renovate, and develop Eastern Market is one of competing interests, slow moving bureaucracy, and democracy on a local level. Over the course of more than thirty-five years, citizens, politicians, local businesses, and market tenants would contend to determine the future look, feel, and use of Eastern Market. In the 1960s, when it became apparent that the market needed major repairs and renovations, as well as a new business model in order to survive, an era of bureaucratic investigation began which still continues to this day. In 1965, the National Capital Planning Commission was asked to recommend the best use for the property Eastern Market occupies. A year later they endorsed preserving the market as a landmark, and investing funds into its restoration.

So began a process of debate, legislation, and promises made and broken over funding, which has spanned four decades. Several times, a study on how the market might best be renovated and its space allocated has been performed. However, after intense debate between tenants and residents who want to ensure the market retains its local and old-fashioned flavor and those who want to move the market in a new direction, these plans founder and are forgotten. Within the last ten years a proposal was finally agreed upon, only to see the funding allocated by the District disappear. As recently as April 2004, funding earmarked for the market’s restoration was cut, only to be hastily returned amid protest. And a year later residents were claiming the money was being mismanaged.

The debate during early 1980s exemplifies the issues at stake and the legal and bureaucratic wrangling which has marked attempts to plan and execute the market’s renovation. This was the first of three studies regarding the development of Eastern Market which would be performed during the decade. Here, a group appointed by the mayor representing Capitol Hill citizen groups, business organizations, and politicians, as well as market tenants comment on a proposal made by the development company Dewberry & Davis to not only repair the market space, but to make renovations with increased revenue streams in mind. This study ultimately bore no fruit. As The Washington Post described it, “In 1982, when an Eastern Market study group used $80,000 in federal funds to write a report, the city's only apparent response was the 1985 appointment of another commission.” ¹ However, even these early stages the major questions and points of contention are beginning to take shape, and these documents provide an interesting window into the Capitol Hill neighborhood and its historic market.

Notes

¹ “Eastern Market Gets a New Boost,” The Washington Post, 17 September 1987, sec. District Weekly, p. J1