A contemporary market hall with a folded white ceiling, glass frontage and independent vendor islands turned into portrait kiosks.
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia built indoor municipal markets to clear the pushcart peddlers who had crowded Lower East Side streets since the 1880s. The Essex Street Municipal Market opened on January 9, 1940 with four buildings and 475 vendors serving Jewish and Italian immigrant families. After a 1995 consolidation the market operated at 120 Essex Street. In May 2019 the vendors moved across the street into a larger, modern hall at 88 Essex Street, part of the Essex Crossing development.
Source · Essex Market, Our Story ↗
Modern 2019 market; double-height volume; glazed street edge; vendor islands and mezzanine. Exhibition stalls replace retail contents. Mood: a shared table. 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.