Steps of old York City Market mark its former location
The City Market loomed large over the southeastern part of York. One reader believes its location is often misidentified. Background posts: York’s Penn Street Farmers Market, nearing 150 years old, seeks to replant for new customers and York-area picture book not your typical coffee table publication and York County … ‘A smorgasbord of architectural styles’.
“All the time I read about the location of the City Market it is always at a different spot,” a York reader wrote in an e-mail.
I wrote back to say that my recent identification of the now-demolished York covered market’s location having been to the rear of the Voni B. Grimes Gym was accurate. I was trying to locate the former site of the Dempwolf-designed market relative to an existing landmark.
The e-mailer said he would send photos showing where the market was located.
This he did… .
And he concisely wrote: “The City Market was located at Duke and Princess St.”
No quibble there. In fact, the steps to the old market are still there along Duke Street. They rise from the sidewalk and lead to a parking lot. Kind of eerie.
Still, I contend the market was to the rear of the Voni B. Grimes Gym.
York Collegiate Institute, now site of a park, was to its west. Indeed, the Grimes Gym is YCI’s former facility. (YCI has now been merged into York College.)
In his “York Since 1941,” Jim Rudisill comments that the J.A. Dempwolf-designed market house was supported by side walls but with no interior vertical floor-to-ceiling supports. That was a rarity for buildings of that size constructed in the late 1870s.
And it was built on the site of Christ Lutheran’s “overflow” cemetery.
Today, the market site is mostly a parking lot with a gas station on the Duke/Princess corner.
The 1960s demolition of this most majestic of York’s five markethouses in the 1960s was a travesty.
A sampling of other York market posts:
– York County farm vs. factory tension relieved in overnight raid .
– Going to market a longtime York County pastime.
– York’s Central Market sells steak … and sizzle.
– The forgotten fifth York market house.
– York Market House No. 1 – Penn Street Farmers Market.
– York Market House No. 2 – The architecturally striking City Market.
– York Market House No. 3 – The first Eastern Market.
– Market House No. 4 – Central Market, York’s most popular.
– York Market House No. 5 – Carlisle Avenue Market, revisited.
