It began in the 1870s. On Saturday afternoons, wagons loaded with produce, meat, poultry, bread, and seafood would arrive at the center of a growing tenement neighborhood on Ninth Avenue and 42nd Street.

Rows of trucks, wheelbarrows, and pushcarts would also park themselves of Ninth Avenue, displaying cheap delicacies like salted fish, mutton necks, pig heads, cabbage, and turnips and angering brick and mortar store owners selling similar products at higher prices.

The vendors unloaded their goods and posted signs, ignoring the store owners. Torches were lit to illuminate the street. By 8 p.m., under the rattling and rumbling of the elevated train, what was known as Paddy’s Market would open for business.

For the next three hours, thousands of working-class and poor residents from Hell’s Kitchen—at the time a predominantly Irish area, which is likely the source of the market’s name—would begin the hunt for Saturday supper and Sunday dinner food bargains.

Outdoor neighborhood markets similar to Paddy’s existed all over the city in the late 19th century, particularly in impoverished neighborhoods. Food shopping was a daily task in an era without refrigeration or roomy pantries, and pushcart markets offered inexpensive prices.

But Paddy’s Market, which stretched down Ninth Avenue to about 34th Street, was so large and lively it became something of a spectacle—a place curious New Yorkers could visit not to shop but for entertainment every Saturday night.

The amount of food for sale, the jockeying of the vendors, and the merriment of the crowds became entertainment. At Paddy’s, “the sightseer may observe more scenes of interest than any theater can offer him and learn a good deal about life among the lowly,” per the New York Herald in 1893.

“Women throng the walks, carrying huge market baskets, the hucksters shout hoarsely in praise of their wares, and a thousand gasoline lamps light up the strange and picturesque scene.”

In 1904, the New York Times ran their own feature on the local color of Paddy’s. “If you have never seen it, it is well worth a Saturday night trip to Ninth Avenue and 42nd Street—a picturesque phase of West Side Life.”

The Evening World went into more detail, describing “hucksters, vendors, fakers, street salesmen, and itinerant marketmen” who hawk produce at ridiculously low prices: peas for 5 cents a pail; pineapples, 5 cents each; potatoes, 3 cents a basket; and garlic, 5 cents a bunch.

The vendors also sold ladies’ hats, household utensils, perfume, and other items, as Paddy’s transformed into more of a flea market than food market.

The female shoppers, often described as housewives pushing strollers, were circumspect buyers, circling a hundred vendors before determining who landed their business. And with cholera spreading in the city in 1892, health inspectors worried about disease transmission came to visit regularly that year, per an 1892 Herald article.

Though Paddy’s market in its early days was something of a pop up market, by 1890 the city passed an ordinance making it a legal entity.

It survived Prohibition in the 1920s, when “the street was filled with grapes for home wine making, which was still legal,” states community newsletter W42ST.com.

“People came over from New Jersey, down from the Bronx, and up from downtown to buy vegetables, fruits, olive oil, pasta, bread, meat, fish, flowers, and poultry, as well as spices, herbs, coffee, and tea.”

A decade later, Paddy’s was threatened with closure. Mayor LaGuardia had taken office, and he didn’t like open-air markets, deeming them unsightly and unclean. Paddy’s ceased to exist in 1938, shut down supposedly because it impeded traffic to and from the new Lincoln Tunnel.

But the tradition of low-priced food from a variety of cultures continued on Ninth Avenue, with many markets and restaurants operating out of the very same post–Civil War tenements that lined Paddy’s market for roughly 70 years.

A 2021 proposal to honor this food legacy and create a Paddy’s Market Historic District is working its way through city and state bureaucracy. The district would run along Ninth Avenue from West 35th to West 40th Street.

The black and white photos in this post show Paddy’s Market as it was in the 1930s. In these images, food vendors were still gathered under the elevated tracks, set to be demolished in 1940.

But the sidewalks lined with culturally diverse food shops look more like a typical streetscape in Depression-era Manhattan and less like the sprawling bazaar Paddy’s was decades earlier.

[Top image: NYPL Digital Collections via 6sqft.com; second image: MCNY, X2010.12.60; third image: New York Herald, 1890; fourth image: Evening World 1905; fifth image: Alamy; seventh and eighth images: NYPL Digital Collections]

Tags: Ninth Avene NYC Food Restaurants, Open-Air Markets in 19th Century New York City, Paddy’s Market 1890s Food Vendors, Paddy’s Market Hell’s Kitchen NYC, Paddy’s Market Historic District NYC, Paddy’s Market Ninth Avenue, Pushcart Markets in New York City, Pushcart Markets Tenement Districts

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