The Old York City Market
About the Project
In early October 1963, York’s City Market on Duke and Princess Streets was unceremoniously demolished, the ornate Gothic Revival tower mistakenly coerced into a brutal, crashing plunge onto Duke Street below. While somehow no one was physically harmed in the accident, the callousness of the event is now a pointed metaphor for how dramatically – and destructively – the times were changing in York City.
The removal of this architectural marvel left a massive hole in its stead. Once a vital anchor for both the surrounding neighborhood and York City as a whole, the market’s site is now an array of ruins, the old brick foundation walls and stone window sills still peaking out from beneath the gravel and asphalt. Standing at the center of the empty lot, you can’t help but feel a slight discomfort; a notion that something belongs
there and is missing, but in more than just a physical sense.
For the last seven years, the City Market and its story have lived rent-free in my brain, every walk through the site leaving me more captivated by the combination of historic grandeur and conspicuous absence. The place was a friend to so many for so long, yet has been a complete stranger to multiple modern generations of Yorkers, including myself. So, out of that desire to understand this place better, and help York get to know the old City Market in a new way, I’m at last able to share this collection of 3D-modeled renderings documenting this beautiful, lost work of architecture. Each image illustrates the market as it would have appeared in the late 19th century, before additional building wings, concrete steps, and a canopy were added along Duke Street.
