By SARAH DORSEY
Observer Staff
NOV. 1, 2007

A woman inspects the bell peppers at Eastern Market.
Photo by Nathalie Laville

When a three-alarm fire engulfed one hall of D.C.’s historic Eastern Market this spring, Mayor Adrian Fenty promised to rebuild it. But behind the scenes, a local non-profit helped keep the market vendors afloat until a temporary structure could open.

The Capitol Hill Community Foundation sold T-shirts, held happy hours, and collected individual donations. They printed posters for DC shop owners that said, simply, “Our market – more than a building.”

The Eastern Market has been a beloved Capitol Hill institution for 134 years. Before the fire in April, vendors had been selling fresh food, flowers, and crafts continuously since 1873. Neighbors gathered on weekends to hear jazz, blues, bluegrass and klezmer.

“The Eastern Market is sort of like a city hall – a town square for Capitol Hill,” said Gary Peterson, Eastern Market Steering Committee Chair of the foundation. “For many customers, the merchants are just like family.”

Outdoor stalls quickly sprouted up in the weeks after the fire. But some merchants were having trouble making ends meet without the amenities they’d enjoyed in the market’s destroyed South Hall.

By mid-August, the Capitol Hill Community Foundation had raised $385,000 – most of it in individual donations – for the market. They bought tables, scales, and refrigerated trucks for merchants who couldn’t afford them. Because business slumped after the fire, the Community Foundation gave small grants to help cover mortgage payments. And they helped the vendors find other jobs.

Alfonso Morales, an urban planning professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said open-air markets are crucial to the health of urban centers.

“The Eastern Market is a case-in-point,” he said. “It has incubated new businesses, fostered the socialization of new immigrants, and spurred entrepreneurship for over 100 years.”

Morales said that places like the Eastern Market continue to thrive despite official neglect because they provide a niche for certain groups to succeed.

“A hundred years ago the government thought public markets were very important,” Morales said. “The federal census even used to use ’street vendor’ or ‘peddler’ as occupational categories.”

That’s not the case today. But open-air markets continue to thrive, he said, because they’re a flexible and stable way to do business.

“When a consumer demand or product, such as organic produce, arises, storefront businesses don’t accommodate it [as quickly] because they have too much existing investment. But street vendors can.”

Morales said places like the Eastern Market also meet an important social need.

“There are always some new immigrants unable to work in traditional industry, so they do vending,” he said. “In Chicago, for example, it was Eastern European Jews, then African-Americans, then Latinos. It’s an indicator of social mobility – they come, make money, get their kids educated, then move on.”

As for the Eastern Market, Gary Peterson said there is also a good deal of continuity among the vendors.

“The Glasgows have been there for 50 years,” Peterson said. “The Calomiris have been there for oh, 43 years. Mel Inman has been selling there probably 22 years. And the Bowers, who sell Bowers cheese – they’ve been there for three generations.”