Then & Now: Havemeyer Sanitary Market

The above photo is a view north on Havemeyer Street between South 3rd and South 2nd Street, circa the 1940s. The Havemeyer Sanitary Market was a public market constructed by the City of New York in 1939 or 1940, and was intended to replace pushcarts on the streets of the neighborhood (pushcarts, or the elimination thereof, were a particular obsession of Mayor Laguardia).

 

To the right is a picture of the site today, complete with a building that brooklyn11211.com calls "soul-deadening"? Mind you the old market was no architectural gem, but at least it served a public purpose. This apartment building is an instant eyesore with no redeeming social value.

And below, a picture of three of the six rowhouses to the north of the Sanitary Market, which still stand today. The buildings probably date to before the Civil War (they appear on an 1869 map of Brooklyn), and while they are all there, they have certainly seen better days.