The Belmont street of bakeries and butchers, then the covered retail market: stalls under one roof, hanging provolone and salami, the works over the counters.
Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section of the Bronx has been the center of an Italian community since the early 1900s. The Arthur Avenue Retail Market opened in 1940, built by the city under Mayor La Guardia to bring pushcart vendors indoors under one roof. Butchers, cheese makers and bakers still run stalls there. The street is named for President Chester A. Arthur.
Source · Bronx County Historical Society ↗
The 1940 market hall with its skylit steel roof, the long aisles of stalls, cheeses and sausages hung from rails, crates of produce, cigar rollers by the door, the avenue of awnings outside. Mood: saturday morning. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.