ROAST CORN MAN
Northeast Corner of Hester and Orchard Streets
MAY 3, 1938. ABBOTT FILE L-3

Roast Corn Man, full negative

This peddler selling roasted corn from a rented cart stood at the corner of Hester and Orchard Streets about fifty yards from the mid-block site of Hester Street. The building selling trousers across Orchard Street remains and still sells clothing.

Images of peddlers belong to a tradition of "street cries," a tradition most familiar to Abbott through Atget's Parisian examples. In Abbott's day, street peddlers were not only picturesque but were also the subject of heated political controversy. Increasing the congestion of the city's poorer neighborhoods, pushcarts and peddlers violated health and fire codes and were subject to political graft. At the time the photograph was taken, the city's Department of Markets was on the verge of outlawing peddlers and pushcarts in favor of enclosed markets. The greatest resistance to this proposal came from the poor themselves, for whom peddling was a primary source of income and consumption. Licensed peddlers still serve New York's pedestrians, and unlicensed vendors continue to arouse controversy.

The negative of Roast Corn Man includes much more of the streetscape than was retained in the print: it shows the full curb and a crowd of shoppers across Orchard Street, with the Second Avenue El visible in the distance on Allen Street. Abbott cropped out these elements, monumentalizing this street vendor as she had Hot Dog Stand and Traveling Tin Shop. Her stolid figures of peddlers have the grandeur of Millet peasants and perhaps carried a political message.

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