Public Markets: A Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebook

Helen Tangires

Overview

City dwellers have always depended on outside sources for food production and supply, and the buying and selling of food has shaped towns for centuries. At the heart of this exchange has stood the public market—the buildings and spaces in which meat, produce, and other commodities are sold by diverse sellers. Public markets thus have origins as old as cities themselves. Although a public market need not necessarily be located on public land or owned by a public entity, it does, by its very nature, create a public space, making it different from a roadside stand, grocery store, or other independently-owned food retailing establishment.

Public Markets is a richly illustrated compendium of the wide variety of buildings and spaces devoted to the urban marketplace. More than 800 historical and contemporary photographs, architectural drawings, maps, and posters from around the world depict the many types of public markets, including open-air marketplaces; street markets; markets in public buildings; market sheds; enclosed market houses; central markets; and wholesale terminal markets. Examples are organized in sections that define the form and function of these principal market types, and the repertoire of design strategies that have been and still are available. As the images attest, public markets persist as the most enduring form of global, urban food exchange, and a strong sense of tradition continues to inform their architecture and design. Public Markets is a singular resource for designers, urban planners, and all those intrigued by the intersection of history, commerce, and architecture that defines the public market.

The accompanying CD-ROM contains high-quality downloadable TIFF files of all the illustrations. It offers a direct link to the library’s online, searchable catalogs and image files, including the hundreds of thousands of high-resolution photographs, measured drawings, and data files in the Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Records, and other collections.

About the Author

Helen Tangires holds a PhD in American studies from The George Washington University. She is a frequent contributor to books and journals on urban foodways and is the author of Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (2003). Dr. Tangires is also the administrator of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

ISBN 10: 0-393-73167-7
ISBN 13: 978-0-393-73167-5
850 black-and-white illustrations / 336 pages / hardcover + CD
April 2007