York Town Square

A former York market house is hidden in plain view.
Dreamwrights, a local theater group, is quite correctly touting rehab plans for their large brick playhouse on Carlisle Avenue.
For years, I’ve wondered about the original use of that beautiful building… .

My research has shown that it was the original Carlisle Avenue Market — a covered markethouse serving West End residents. It formed kind of a bookend to the Eastern Market built in the 1880s to serve the East End. Three other market houses served the rest of the town — the Penn Street Farmers Market, the now-demolished, ornate City Market that stood beside the current Voni B. Grimes Gym and the Central Market, so-named because it served the center of town.
These market houses replaced open-air market sheds popular in York since almost its earliest years.
When I presented information on the Carlisle Avenue Market to senior groups, no one could remember use of the Colebrook-Terry building, as it is sometimes called, for that purpose. This has long puzzled me.
I recently queried Historic York about the building, just to get another opinion.
Architectural historian Barb Raid helpfully pointed to historian George Prowell’s description:
“Carlisle Avenue Market and Storage Company was organized in 1902, and the
same year the company erected a large and commodious brick market house on
Carlisle Avenue, near the railroad. Markets are regularly held here on
Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.”
The Western Market, as it was sometimes called, may have not been used for that purpose for long. Barb Raid examined maps that show it was used as a sugar warehouse and furniture storage maybe as soon as the late 1920s or early 1930s.
Its proximity to a railroad siding might have given the building value for other uses that some of the other market houses didn’t have.
Historic York doesn’t have a file on the building, which indicates its low profile over the years. But when you look at the building, it indeed looks like a market house.
So there it is, overlooked York County landmark No. 24, the Carlisle Avenue Market. Other overlooked York County sites and landmarks (See posts under York Town Square):
— The Little Courthouse
— Prospect Hill Cemetery
— War Mothers Memorial
— Work War II USO at former York County Academy gymnasium
— York’s Salem Square soldiers monument
— York’s Cookes House
— York’s rowhouses
— Wrightsville’s monuments
— The Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge
— Memorial trees along highways Route 30 & Susquehanna Trail.
— The Inches
— Camp Stewartstown
— The Wrightsville Bridge supports
— New York Wire Co.’s factory whistle
— Mary Ann Furnace
— York’s Hartman Building
— Hanover’s Iron Mike and The Picket
— York’s Eberts Lane
— Helen Reeves Thackston Memorial Park
— WW II defense worker housing
— Shiloh’s former town square
— Loucks one-room school
— Red Lion’s Fairmount Park
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.