West Side Market

At a glance

Overview

The West Side Market is Cleveland's last historic public market house, a city-owned hall of yellow brick with a 137-foot clock tower at West 25th Street (old Pearl Street) and Lorain Avenue in the Ohio City neighborhood. Its roots go back to land that west-side developers Josiah Barber and Richard Lord set aside for public use in the 1820s and 1840, and to an open-air market that moved to the Pearl and Lorain corner in 1859 and got a wooden market house, the Pearl Street Market, in 1868. After years of lobbying by west-side merchants and delays under Mayor Tom L. Johnson, the present hall designed by Hubbell and Benes was built from 1907 or 1908 and opened on November 2, 1912, with an outdoor produce arcade added in 1914. Generations of immigrant families, German, Italian, Slovene, Hungarian, Greek and later Middle Eastern, have run its stalls. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and in 2024 the city handed day-to-day management to the nonprofit Cleveland Public Market Corporation while keeping ownership.

The name

After Cleveland annexed Ohio City in 1854, the land west of the Cuyahoga River became known as Cleveland's West Side, and the open-air public market then held at Franklin Place (Franklin Circle) soon came to be called the "West Side Market," perhaps to tell it apart from the Michigan Street Market near Public Square. The name followed the market when it moved to Pearl Street and Lorain Avenue. (source)

Native American history

Nothing is recorded about Native people at the market site itself. The market stands on the Cuyahoga River's west bank, a stretch that stayed Native land for ten years longer than the east bank: the Treaty of Greenville (1795) gave up Native title only east of the Cuyahoga, and the western part of the Connecticut Western Reserve, including the future Ohio City, was ceded in the Treaty of Fort Industry in 1805. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History notes that the river's name is thought to come from a Mohawk word meaning "crooked river," while the Senecas called it "Cuyohaga," or "place of the jawbone," and that the river's old mouth once ran west along the shore to present West 54th Street. Near that old mouth, a classic Hopewell spear point was recovered from what seemed to be a mound at the West 54th Street Division waterworks. Across the Cuyahoga valley the Whittlesey Tradition people lived in villages until about 1640; the area then had no permanent settlement until Wyandot or Ottawa groups moved in from Detroit in the mid-1740s.

• Possible mound at the West 54th Street Division waterworks: mound, Near the Cuyahoga's old mouth, West 54th Street, Cleveland (about 2 miles west of the market), Middle Woodland (Hopewell)
• Treaty of Fort Industry cession west of the Cuyahoga: treaty, Western Reserve lands west of the Cuyahoga River, including the future Ohio City, 1805

Stories

The square that almost disappeared

When Josiah Barber and Richard Lord laid out their village of Brooklyn around 1822, they set aside a square at Pearl and Lorain as the village green. After Ohio City absorbed Brooklyn in 1836, their new subdivision plat left the square off entirely and centered instead on Franklin Place, half a mile north, which left it unclear whether the old square was still public. By 1857 a blacksmith shop and two commercial buildings owned by businessman David Pollock stood on it. Pollock sued in February 1858 to have the land declared private, but on December 18, 1858, Judge Horace Foote, a first cousin of the original surveyor, ruled that it was still public land. The city cleared the buildings and moved the West Side Market there in the summer of 1859; the old square is now Market Square Park, across West 25th Street from the market hall. (source)

Tom Johnson's market

By the 1890s the wooden Pearl Street Market was so crowded that shoppers lined up for blocks, and in 1897 west-side merchants asked the city for a new hall and won state permission to sell bonds for it. Mayors Robert McKinnon and John Farley let the project languish. Tom L. Johnson, elected in 1901, took it up, moving the site across the street in 1902 because owners of land on the old corner wanted too much money and the city's title there was in doubt. The project then stalled through a power struggle with his market commissioners and a lawsuit by retired architect Frank Cudell over how Hubbell and Benes had been chosen. Construction finally began in 1907, and the market opened on November 2, 1912. Johnson had left office and died in 1911 without seeing it. (source)

The clock tower

The market's clock tower, built like an Italian campanile, rises 137 feet above the street. For decades a maintenance man climbed about 180 steps every week to wind the clock, until electric controls were installed in the 1950s. The tower also held a large water tank used to flush out the stalls and to guard against fire; the tank was taken out and sold for scrap during World War II. (source)

Families behind the counters

When the hall opened in 1912, vendors drew numbers out of a hat to decide who got which stall, since some spots were thought better than others. Robert J. Stumpf, trained as a pharmacist in Germany, worked for a sausage maker at the old Pearl Street Market and opened his own stand in the new market in 1914; his son and grandson ran it as Kitchen Maid Meats until the grandson's death in 2017. In 1977 members of families that had run stands for all 65 years posed together in front of the building. (source)

Timeline

• 1805: The Treaty of Fort Industry removes the remaining Native claims to Western Reserve land west of the Cuyahoga River. (source)
• 1809: In the last division of Western Reserve lands, Josiah Barber, his father-in-law Samuel Lord and brother-in-law Richard Lord receive the land along the Cuyahoga's west bank to the lake. (source)
• c. 1822: Barber and Lord lay out a village called Brooklyn west of the river and have surveyor Edwin Foote set aside a 132-by-132-foot public square at Pearl and Lorain streets. (source)
• 1836: The Ohio legislature incorporates the City of Ohio (Ohio City) on March 3, absorbing Brooklyn village. (source)
• 1840: Barber and Lord dedicate land at Pearl and Lorain for an open-air public market, with the condition that it always be kept as a market site. (source)
• 1854: Cleveland annexes Ohio City, and the open-air market at Franklin Place becomes known as the West Side Market. (source)
• 1855: The city decides to build a park at Franklin Place, so the market is moved temporarily to a site north of Franklin Circle. (source)
• 1858: On December 18, Judge Horace Foote rules in the city's favor that the old Brooklyn village square is still public land, defeating a businessman's claim to it. (source)
• 1859: The West Side Market moves permanently to the old square at the northwest corner of Pearl Street and Lorain Avenue. (source)
• 1868: The city builds a large one-story wooden market house on the site and names it the Pearl Street Market. (source)
• 1895: The Plain Dealer reports on May 10 that the Pearl Street Market looks more like a barn than a market house, with lines of shoppers stretching blocks down Lorain. (source)
• 1897: The Western Improvement Association of west-side business owners petitions the city for a larger market house. (source)
• 1902: Mayor Tom L. Johnson moves the new market's site across the street to the northeast corner of Pearl and Lorain, partly because owners of land on the old corner asked too much and the city's title there was in doubt. (source)
• 1907: Construction of the new market house begins after litigation over the choice of architects Hubbell and Benes (the state marker gives 1908). (source)
• 1911: Tom L. Johnson dies, never seeing the market he had spent years siting and planning. (source)
• 1912: The West Side Market opens for business on November 2, after 14 years of planning and building. (source)
• 1914: The city builds the L-shaped Produce Arcade on the north and east sides of the market house for fruit and vegetable vendors. (source)
• 1915: Vendors form the West Side Market Tenants' Association. (source)
• 1934: Italian immigrants open the DeCaro family vegetable stand in the Produce Arcade, one of several produce stands passed down through generations. (source)
• 1953: A $1.1 million modernization program is carried out at the market (Cleveland Historical dates the work, which added elevators, refrigeration and an electric clock, to 1954). (source)
• 1973: The market is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 18. (source)
• 1978-1979: A renovation cleans the building and covers the concourse's big arched windows with aluminum panels, on which murals by Nancy Martt and others are painted. (source)
• 1988: Budget troubles lead the city to cut its subsidy, and tenants' rents are raised to pay for upkeep. (source)
• 2001-2004: The city encloses the vendor stands in the Produce Arcade and removes the 1978-1979 aluminum panels and murals, restoring natural light through the arched windows. (source)
• 2008: The American Planning Association names the market one of its "10 Great Public Places in America." (source)
• 2016: The market adds regular Sunday hours for the first time, starting April 3. (source)
• 2021: With fewer than a third of the original stalls occupied, the city hires a consultant to study how to revive the market. (source)
• 2024: On April 24 the city transfers day-to-day management to the nonprofit Cleveland Public Market Corporation, keeping ownership of the land and buildings. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: West Side Market
• case.edu: west side market
• case.edu: barber josiah
• case.edu: western reserve
• case.edu: cuyahoga river
• case.edu: prehistoric inhabitants
• clevelandhistorical.org
• clevelandhistorical.org
• clevelandhistorical.org
• remarkableohio.org: 45 18 west side market
• westsidemarket.org: about
• npgallery.nps.gov