Agoraphiliacs Rejoice: Greenmarkets Bring Bounty to Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan’s seasonal farm-to-table market scene is in full swing, with half a dozen venues offering comestibles from more than 100 artisanal sources throughout the region. The oldest of these is Tribeca’s Saturday market outside Washington Market Park, which began in 1981. On the east side, the Fulton Stall Market, a non-profit indoor/outdoor farmers market, has offered locally grown fresh food since 2015.
“We reopened our outdoor market last Saturday,” notes Bob Lewis, a board member at the Fulton Market Association, which oversees the project (located on South Street, near the the Imagination Playground and the intersection with John Street). He adds, “Lower Manhattan is the historic district where the City’s public markets began in the 1700s,” and cites as a local antecedent the Fulton Fish Market, which moved to the Bronx in 2005. When publicly owned properties in the South Street Seaport neighborhood were designated for redevelopment after the Fulton Fish Market’s departure, community leaders demanded that plans include a new public market. This led to the creation of the Fulton Stall Market, now housed in a historic building at 91 South Street, where it offers fresh produce year-round.
Mr. Lewis (right) has spent half a century on public markets. In 1976, he co-founded the Greenmarket Farmers Market program, which launched with 12 vendors in a parking lot alongside the 59th Street Bridge. The operation grew so fast that it quickly needed a larger venue, and moved to Union Square Park, where it soon hosted more than 100 vendors and helped spark a local restaurant renaissance.
Today, Mr. Lewis spends most of his time at the Seaport market. “The products of these dozens of family farmers and small-batch specialty food producers are a bounty for this neighborhood,” he says, pointing to tables of colorful fresh produce.
Fulton Stall Market also operates a community-supported agriculture program (CSA). Customers may join the CSA at any time, subscribing to summer farm shares that entail weekly deliveries of farm products and local foods. CSA items, which differ every week, include vegetables, fruit, sprouts, eggs, bread, mushrooms, farmstead cheese, fresh pasta, seafood, beef, buffalo beef, chicken, pork, trout & lox, buffalo dairy, charcuterie, and local flowers. “No other CSA offers this many choices,” Mr. Lewis says.
Customers will find outdoor vendors at Fulton Stall Market on Saturdays, from 10am to 4pm, through the end of summer. The indoor Fulton Stall Market is open from 11:30am to 5pm every day except Sunday, throughout the year. Items ordered through the CSA program are available for pickup at 91 South Street on Thursday and Friday, beginning June 25.
Elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, farmers put out their bounties every week at:
- City Hall, Chambers Street and Broadway, Tuesdays, 8am to 4pm
- Bowling Green, Alexander Hamilton Custom House, Tuesdays, 8am to 3pm
- Tribeca, outside Washington Market Park, Saturdays, 8am to 2pm
- Battery Park City, at the Irish Hunger Memorial, Sundays, 9am to 2pm