New Orleans has always had popular locally-owned grocery chains. Remember Schwegmann’s? But back in the 19th century, most New Orleans markets, such as the Poydras Market seen in this 1867 photograph by German-born New Orleans photographer Theodore Lilienthal, were all owned by the city.
According to UNO Professor Robert Sauder’s history of city markets, New Orleans during the 19th and early 20th centuries had more city-owned markets than any other place in the nation. And, he continued, they operated here longer than in most other cities. Here’s the way it worked: the city built and managed the markets and then, to better centralize and “protect consumers from high prices and food of poor quality,” rented retail space and stalls to various merchants.
Looking back, the earliest public market in town was the French Market. But as the city’s population grew, public markets popped up in practically every neighborhood. Between 1784 and 1911, the city constructed 34 of them, and as late as 1918, 28 were still in business. By 1920, however, the system was in sharp decline due in part to commercial refrigeration and poor administration.
“Adequate supervision of the markets by the city had lapsed,” wrote Sauder, “and in 1920 an injunction was issued against the operation of several public markets by the State Board of Health, claiming that they were unsanitary and dangerous to public health. Many of the markets were unscreened, exposing the food to flies, and refuse scattered throughout the markets, in the gutters, and on the streets.”
The Poydras Market exemplified the ups and downs of the city’s market system. Built in 1837 and early 1838 on Poydras between South Rampart and Baronne streets, it suffered many of the same sanitary problems throughout its history.
On Nov. 11, 1858, The New Orleans Daily Picayune (forerunner to the Times-Picayune), described the market on Poydras as “intolerably filthy from the want of facilities for obtaining water…The public are often disgusted at the uncleanliness which is the inevitable result.”
By the late 1920s, city officials had decided to widen Poydras to develop its commercial potential. That expansion, however, didn’t actually happen until the mid-1960s. Meanwhile, in June 1932 the city demolished the century-old Poydras Market using Depression-era unemployed labor.
On June 16, 1932, the Times-Picayune gave only slight attention to the demolition. According to the paper, the long-vacant market, “for generations a landmark at Poydras and South Rampart streets,” had been become a traffic hazard. The paper went on to say salvaged materials would be used to repair police and fire stations and the land “shelled” for a parking lot.
Today, only a few former public market buildings remain — the French Market, St. Bernard Market at Claiborne and St. Bernard avenues, and St. Roch Market on St. Roch at St. Claude.
As to this photograph, it too has an interesting back story. According to Gary Van Zante’s biography of Lilienthal, city officials commissioned him in 1867 to photograph a series of New Orleans street-scenes to exhibit at the 1867 World Exposition in Paris and to present to Emperor Napoleon III. Within a few months, Lilienthal completed 150 images, including this one of the Poydras Market now in the collection of the Napoleon Museum in Arenenberg, Switzerland.