Western Market pics anyone?

[szla]

When I was a small child we lived near Michigan and Cecil and went to the western market [[Michigan and about 20th) to buy crates of strawberries and medium hot peppers for canning every summer. At some point they tore the market down and started building the Jeffries freeway and 1-75 interchange and my mom said we were going to the eastern market. She said it was the largest in the country. As a small child it didn't look any different and didn't seem any larger. It seem much like the south shed at eastern market. Wrought iron pillars holding up a shed roof. Anyone have any pics

[EastsideAl]

My mother used to go there as a kid too. From the WSU Virtual Motor City site:



There are a few more pictures there. Do a search for Western Market.

[CLAUDE G]

I thought Western Market was where Tiger Stadium is today?

[EastsideAl]

I thought Western Market was where Tiger Stadium is today?

That was the old Hay Market [[back in the days of horse transportation all cities had to have large hay marketplaces)

The Western Market was at Michigan Ave. and 18th St. It was, as the original poster indicates, torn down in the mid 1960s in preparation for the building of the Fisher - Jefferies interchange.

The only tiny piece of evidence left that the market was ever there is the New Life Rescue Mission building that sits on the northeast corner of that intersection, across 18th St. from where the market once stood. It was built to be a bank [[door at the corner) and a post office [[rear door on 18th St.) for the market and its surrounding businesses.

[cman710]

Does anyone have any idea what the mission-style building on the right of the picture is? I do not know of many examples of that style in Detroit.

[beanietek]

i remember western market - but think after they tore down the structure, they still held an open air market there for a while prior to the freeway coming in -

grew up on mcgraw and central - does anyone remember the market that was between mcgraw and warren and livernois and cicotte? we used to call it "stinky" market - was painted white and they had fruit/vegetables and live hens, ducks, rabbits, turkeys, etc that they would slaughter on site - that place was so chaotic when you stepped inside it and smelled to high heaven - not sure the real name of the market?

[szla]

It was one of the largest poultry markets I've ever seen.

[EastSider]

At some point in time, The Corner was known as "Western Market."

http://detroit1701.org/Tiger%20Stadium.html

At this time, there were two major agricultural markets in Detroit: Eastern Market where it still stands at Gratiot and Russell, and Western Market at Michigan and Trumbull. Western Market was the sales place for fodder for the city’s horses and also housed the city’s dog pound. In 1895, the city merged the two markets into Eastern Market and prepared to sell the property at Michigan and Trumbull. Vanderbeck recognized that Western Market would be a desirable location for a baseball park so he purchased it to build a new field. He quickly ran into opposition from historic preservationists. There were 28 very old and giant elm and oak trees on the property; indeed, legend held that Chief Pontiac conducted a Council of War under one of the massive trees when Indians attempted to siege the British city of Detroit in 1763. Vanderbeck cut down 23 for his baseball park but agreed to let 5 trees stand. They only lasted until 1900.

[EastsideAl]

At some point in time, The Corner was known as "Western Market."

http://detroit1701.org/Tiger%20Stadium.html

They're just a little off on their history there. The market at Michigan and Trumbull was the Western Market, but it was the western hay market. And the future site of what we would know as the Eastern Market was then the eastern hay market. The city's farmers' market was in Cadillac Square for most of the 19th century.

By the early 1890s though the market had clearly outgrown Cadillac Square. In 1891, with the giant showpiece GAR convention and encampment coming to the city that summer, it was decided to shut the market down in order to ease congestion in the City Hall area. Operations were moved to the eastern hay market site, which was then on the outskirts of town.

This seemed to work out well, and a shed was built to house the new Eastern Market. In 1895 a similar farmers' market shed [[a picture of which I posted above) was built for the new Western Market on the western outskirts of town. The old western hay market, which was in an increasingly built up area, was shut down in the same year. Bennett Park, the forerunner of Navin Field/Briggs Stadium/Tiger Stadium was then built on that site for the opening of the 1896 baseball season.

Here is a picture of the old hay market. Believe it or not, this is the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. You're looking northwest towards the corner that the Tigers' advanced ticket office would occupy for many decades, with Michigan in the foreground and Trumbull fading off in the distance to the north on the right-hand side. The shed in the center of the picture housed the scales for weighing the hay.



Here is a link to a huge and more detailed version of this shot on the U of M wbsite of pictures from the Burton Historical Collection [[click to zoom in):
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/imag...y=0;view=image

[EastsideAl]

And another hay market shot, with a little more detail of the market itself, showing all the hay-laden wagons lined up. Gotta love that guy driving a wagon from atop a giant haystack.



Again, a link to a very large and detailed version of this shot [[click to zoom):
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/imag...y=0;view=image

[EastsideAl]

Does anyone have any idea what the mission-style building on the right of the picture is? I do not know of many examples of that style in Detroit.

I believe that's another market shed, built somewhat later than the original one. It shows as part of the market on maps. The market offices were adjacent to that building. The picture is of the north side of the shed looking south, so that building is to the west.

Here is an aerial shot of the market from about 1961. Michigan Ave. is at the bottom of the shot, with the market to the north. You can see the older main shed running north to south, and a smaller building - which I believe is the building you see in the background of picture of the main shed I posted above - to the immediate west of it.

[old guy]

So...... if you were to plant some oak and elm trees where Tiger Stadium was, you would have come full circle in about one century.

[EastsideAl]

So...... if you were to plant some oak and elm trees where Tiger Stadium was, you would have come full circle in about one century.

Then maybe we could also go back to the good ol' days of this method of watching ballgames:



[[Photo identified as: "Group of men in leafless trees, watching a baseball game")

[Ray1936]

The street bisecting the open areas with the shed on the south half was Perry street. The north boundary street was Butternut. Walked that beat many a time. Was pretty boring until about 4 am when it started to get active. There was a restaurant there called "Gus's" that opened around 4 a.m.; bowl of oats at 4:30 was a pretty good breakfast. You just picked the cockroaches out of the bowl......... Gus, the owner, was the main cook. He was about a hundred and ninety years old. The waitress was Norma. "Norma, giff the boy bowl of oats!" I can hear him saying like it was yesterday.

[jtf1972]

The street bisecting the open areas with the shed on the south half was Perry street. The north boundary street was Butternut. Walked that beat many a time. Was pretty boring until about 4 am when it started to get active. There was a restaurant there called "Gus's" that opened around 4 a.m.; bowl of oats at 4:30 was a pretty good breakfast. You just picked the cockroaches out of the bowl......... Gus, the owner, was the main cook. He was about a hundred and ninety years old. The waitress was Norma. "Norma, giff the boy bowl of oats!" I can hear him saying like it was yesterday.

I love you Ray.

[gsfseng1]

Where Perry T's in with the cross street which I think I remember was Hombolt or a street starting with an H, there was a wholesale store, Midwest Paper Products. This was my fathers store and I do remember Gus's. When I would go to work with my Dad on a Saturday morning he would send me to Gus's with a glass bottle and and bring back coffee. Does anybody remember Midwest Paper from the market?