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WEST WASHINGTON MARKET The West Washington Market consisted of 10 two-story brick buildings backing on the piers and fronting West Street. Between them ran access streets, one of which was Loew Avenue. Completed in 1889, these city-built structures replaced a 40-year old market on the same site, which had deteriorated into a shantytown. In Abbott's time, it specialized in kosher poultry. To photograph the site, Abbott stood with her back to the Gansevoort Market Stand, a huge open-air produce mart. The foreground shadow was cast by the newly built elevated highway. Abbott was lucky to find a painter on the market's tin roof, who lent her image an anecdotal touch. The 1941 opening of the Queens Live Poultry Terminal precipitated the decline of the West Washington Market. It was demolished in 1950 and was replaced by the Gansevoort Garbage Terminal, where garbage was loaded onto barges. The terminal closed in 1981, and today the site is occupied by the city's Sanitation Department. Although the poultry market is gone, the neighborhood remains the center for the city's meatpacking industry. Across West Street is the Gansevoort Meat Market, with numerous wholesalers in the surrounding blocks. Return to the Lower West Side |