The Belmont street of bakeries and butchers, awnings down both sides and the produce out on the sidewalk, then the city market the pushcarts moved into: one long brick hall with light coming down the aisles, provolone and salami hanging over the counters, and the works hung over the stalls where the prices would be.
Arthur Avenue in Belmont has been the heart of the Bronx's Little Italy since a wave of Italian immigrants arrived with the building of the Bronx Zoo and the Jerome Park Reservoir at the turn of the twentieth century. The city built the Arthur Avenue Retail Market under Mayor La Guardia to bring the pushcart vendors off the street and under one roof. The Historic Districts Council dates its opening to October 28, 1941, with 120 stalls; other accounts give 1940. The avenue is named for President Chester A. Arthur, and in 2016 the American Planning Association named it one of America's Greatest Streets.
Source · Arthur Avenue Retail Market, Historic Districts Council ↗
The retail market La Guardia built to bring the pushcarts indoors, its brick front and name over the door, the skylit aisles, the stalls with salami and provolone hung from rails, the slicer at the deli counter, the cigar roller by the door, the avenue of awnings with bread and fruit out front. Mood: saturday morning. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.