Charlottetown Market louses: 1813 ~ 1958

Charlottetown
Market louses: 1813 ~ 1958
by Mary K. Cullen
{^Markets came late to Charlottetown.
The few hundred people who formed
the population of the village before
1800 depended on British imports and
the produce of their own gardens to
maintain their families. A site for a
market had been reserved at the waterfront when the town was laid out in
1768,
but building was delayed for
several reasons. Provision for administrative and judicial accommodation took
precedence in planning public buildings. Farmers, moreover, required time
to establish themselves before producing a marketable surplus; and once
established they needed roads to bring
their goods into town. Thus, it was only
after a Court House and Assembly
building had been constructed in 1812
that attention was focussed on a market
house to end the precarious supply
afforded by the irregular visits of country
vendors. The 1813 market was the first
of four buildings which were to serve the
Island capital for the next 145 years.
When Governor Charles Douglas
Smith and his Executive Council decided a regular market should be
established in Charlottetown, they felt
that the building would be most conveniently situated, not at the waterfront,
but in the centre of Queen Square, the
present location of Province House. In
August, 1813, Samuel May Williams
Public Archives of Prince Edward Island
Drawing of the Round Market, circa 1830. The building to the right of the
market was the residence of former Lieutenant-Governor Edmund Fanning.
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contracted to build the market according to John and Robert McDonnel's
proposal for a rectangular building, 18 x
26 feet, "framed and picketed." Frame
and picket was a common mode of
pioneer building in Prince Edward
Island. It was described by contemporary observers Lord Selkirk (1803) and
Walter Johnstone (1820) as either logs
or whip-sawn boards fixed vertically to a
frame and then covered with boards or
shingles. The first market (for which
there is no extant illustration) shared
space on Queen Square with two other
wooden structures — the 1795 Anglican
Church and the 1812 court house and
legislative building.
By 1819 the market house was
considered too small and plans and
estimates were ordered for a new
building. "Public Architect" John Plaw,
who had designed the court house and
other local works, was paid £10 for his
plans of a wooden market, but no action
was taken before his death in 1820.
Three years later tenders were called for
erection of the Plaw market and Isaac
Smith and Daniel Hodgson were
awarded the contract to build it. Construction commenced in the summer on
the site of the old frame and picket
building and was finished in November,
1823. Charlottetown's second market
followed the vogue for circular market
buildings in British North American
towns of this period. The one-storey
structure was divided into twelve even
bays and capped by a high conical
shingled roof projecting several feet
beyond the main wall and supported by
slender columns. The semicircular
shape of the doors and windows in each
bay was repeated in the openings of the
round cupola which crowned the roof,
giving the whole a picturesque gazebolike appearance.
The interior of the "round market"
(as it was commonly called) was lined
with butcher stalls, while the centre
space was reserved for the sale of
butter, poultry, eggs, and other light
articles. Bulkier produce was sold outside where hucksters or petty traders
jostled with the farmers whose carts or
sleighs were laden with potatoes, oats,
fish, hay, wood, and carcasses of beef
and pork.
Operation of the market was regulated by Order-in-Council and, after
1855, by city by-law. Market was held
both winter and summer with Wednesday and Saturday designated as market
days. About mid-nineteenth century the
stalls in the round market rented at £ 4
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Public Archives of Prince Edward Island
Looking southeast to Queen Square, circa 1855, the Round Market, Colonial
Building (Province House) and St. Paul's Church.
Public Archives of Canada
Arthur Newbery's New Plan of Charlottetown 1869, showing the site of the
1867 market and the separation of Market Square from Queen Square.
Public Archives of Prince Edward Island
The south side of the third market house showing the 1876 western
extension and belfry.
per annum with no sub-letting permitted. Blown meat was seized for sale by
the market clerk, while diseased meat
was publicly burned and the offender
tried in the Mayor's or Police Court. A
railing was erected around the market in
1855 to separate the hucksters from the
wagons and carriages.
To provide the central position on
Queen Square for the construction of
Province House, the round market was
moved 294 feet northwest in
November, 1842. When the Supreme
Court and Legislative Council and
Assembly moved into their new quarters
in the Colonial Building (Province
House) in 1847-8, the "old Court
House" was used as a flour and meal
market. Later, with the incorporation of
Charlortetown, this building became
City Hall. It was thus the round market
and "old Court House"-City Hall which
formed the Queen Square vista during
the historic confederation meetings at
Province House in 1864.
In the decade before Confederation
the increasing congestion of Queen
Square on market days and the barnyard appearance of the grounds prompted debate on relocation of the market.
Party leaders in the Legislature, and
both Islander and Examiner newspapers, strongly argued that the area
surrounding the Colonial Building
should be ornamented and kept up as a
park. A market location in the suburbs
seemed ideal; however, despite its
rhetoric, the Government was not prepared to spend money for market
property and decided to grant the city a
part of the original crown reserve in the
southwest corner of Queen Square. In
March, 1861, the site designated for the
market was marked off and tenders
advertised for the best plan.
The question of who should pay for a
new market house — the colonial
government or the city — delayed
building for six years. Isaac Smith, the
architect of Province House and builder
of the round market, won the 1861
design competition with his plans for a
brick building. By the time the construction contract was signed in 1865,
however, Smith's plan had been rejected in favour of a more reasonably
priced building designed by cabinetmaker and city councillor Mark Butcher.
The Butcher Market House, opened
in January, 1867, was hailed by the
Patriot as "the largest and the best
building of the kind in the Lower
Provinces." It was seen by travellers,
however, in a less complimentary light.
Some called it plain, others ugly. Although far from elegant, the long
narrow two-storey structure did exhibit
some pleasant Italianate detailing: a
central projecting pavilion, cupola,
semi-circular ground floor windows,
labelled windows in the second storey,
and bracketed eves. The dimensions of
the building were 150 feet long, 45 feet
wide, and 30 feet post (to the top of the
wall). The ground floor, or principal
storey, was divided into three sections:
one for butchers; another for country
produce, fruit, and fowl; and the third
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Public Archives of Canada
1878 Bird's Eye View of Charlottetown. The Post Office-Dominion Building
(1871) and the Court House (1876) have been added to Queen Square and
the old Court House-City Hall has been removed from Market Square.
Public Archives of Prince Edward Island
A butcher stall (circa 1900), probably in the third market
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for meal and flour. Main floor stalls and
ten apartments in the stone cellar were
let by auction at rates varying from £ 8 to
£21 a year, the cheapest stalls thus
doubling the cost of those in the round
market. The upper storey of the market
was finished as a public hall.
The desire to further beautify the
grounds in the vicinity of Province
House prompted a late-1860s decision
to build a road dividing the market
house-City Hall area from central
Queen Square. The separated west side
of Queen Square was officially called
Market Square, a name which endured
as a popular reference point in the
geographical lexicon of Charlottetown
citizens for nearly a century.
For sixteen years of the late
nineteenth century the third market
house also accommodated City Hall.
This latter function was reflected in
several structural changes to the market
building. City officials were moved to
the market after the Plaw Court House
or City Hall was sold in 1872. Four
years later an extension was made to
the west end of the market to provide
space for a police station and a belfry to
house a new fire bell (named "Big
Donald" in honour of the Chief of the
Fire Department, Donald McKinnon).
When a new City Hall was completed at
the corner of Queen and Kent Streets in
1888, "Big Donald" was placed in its
tower and the belfry removed from the
market. The original cupola also disappeared about this time, leaving the
building towerless throughout the
1890s. In December, 1902, the third
market, then 35 years old, burned to the
ground.
The design of a market house to
replace the burned structure was the
subject of an intense competition between leading Charlottetown architects
C.B. Chappell and W.C. Harris. Examples of the work of both men were
already evident throughout the Island:
Chappell had designed City Hall
(1888), the Prince Edward Island Hospital (1898), and Prince of Wales College
(1900), while Harris was responsible for
such buildings as the Georgetown
Courthouse (1887), Cabot Building
(1887), and St. Paul's Anglican Church
(1895). Harris's plan was originally
accepted, then dropped when Chappell
altered his design to lower the cost.
Harris protested that his opponent's
altered plan was almost identical to his
submission and he promised to change
his design to reduce the cost from
$50,000 to $38,000. The Harris plan
was finally adopted and the construction
contract let to Maritime Contracting and
Mining Company for $39,470.
Charlottetown's fourth and last market was opened 30 August 1904.
Almost square in its dimensions (130 x
116 feet), the building was basically
Gothic in style with Romanesque Revival overtones. It had a high pitched roof,
asymmetrical gables, rough dressed
walls of Island sandstone, and heavy
voussoirs (window and door trim) of
Wallace freestone. Cellar and first floor
spaces were devoted to market uses,
while the second floor was designed as a
hall capable of seating 1300 people with
a stage for 300. Use of concrete flooring
meant that for the first time the fish
market joined the other stands under
one roof.
The 1867 and 1904 market houses
did more than just provide shops for
agricultural produce: they also served as
community centres, a use that in time
superceded marketing. Many Islanders
will remember momentous political and
social gatherings in market hall. The
1867 market house was the home of no
less than three city bands, while quarters
in the upper storey of the Harris Market
were successively occupied by the Old
Strand and Empire Theatres and Little
Theatre groups.
As the twentieth century advanced,
transportation improvements and the
development of food processing plants
created larger and more profitable
outlets for agricultural produce, with the
result that the number of rural residents
using the market dwindled to a handful.
Portions of the building were remodelled in the 1950s to contain the Prince
Edward Island Travel Bureau and the
Island Motor Transport Bus Terminal. A
few public stalls, Roop's Meat Market,
Peter's Egg Candling Station, and the
City Fish Market were the remaining
food businesses left when fire broke out
on 30 April 1958. That day the
54-year-old market house was totally
consumed, symbolically ending a pattern of marketing which was already
dying. Market Square was subsequently
used as a parking lot until the 1960s,
when it became the site for the Fathers
of Confederation Memorial Complex.
Markets and market houses have
enjoyed a resurgence in several Canadian cities in recent years. Their popularity springs from a growing consumer
demand for fresh and pure food products; concentrated populations ensure
their vitality. Should these same forces
lead to a fifth Charlottetown market,
Courtesy Keith Rckard
Presentation drawing by William C. Harris of his design for the fourth
Charlottetown market.
Public Archives of Canada
The W.C. Harris Market, 1904.
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citizens will see the continuation of a
tradition that is an integral part of the
history of the Island capital.
Sources
Much of the documentation for this
article was compiled during the course
of my Parks Canada research on
Province House. Executive Council
Minutes, Statutes of Law, Legislative
Assembly debates, and nineteenth and
twentieth century newspapers were the
principal sources. Reports of the Accounts of the City of Charlottetown, 31
Dec. 1878 (Charlottetown, 1879) was
particularly useful for its history of city
affairs in Appendix 13. City Council
Minutes were only consulted for the
decade 1855-65. Later minutes, unavailable when the foregoing research
was conducted, have recently been
acquired and organized by the Prince
Edward Island Archives. Known as
Record Group 22, these minutes undoubtedly constitute the richest source
to date for the urban history of
Charlottetown.
Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, Toronto Public Library Post Card Collection
1906 post card of the public buildings in Charlottetown showing the fourth
market completed in 1904.
Photograph by Wayne Barrett
The Fathers of Confederation Memorial Complex which today occupies the
former site of Market Square and a portion of Queen Square.
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