To Market, to Market: An Old-fashioned Family Story : the West Side Market
Cleveland Hights, Ohio: Edgewater Book Co, 1981.
Before supermarkets, there were voices, faces, and hands across the counter. This is the West Side Market as it was lived.
A documentary-style photographic and oral history capturing one of America’s great urban public markets at the moment when traditional market culture was beginning to fade into memory.
Lewis presents the Cleveland West Side Market not simply as a place of commerce, but as a living social institution—where immigrant traditions, family businesses, and daily human exchange shaped the rhythm of city life. Through a blend of personal narratives, historical context, and visual documentation, the work preserves a vanishing world of mid-century American market culture.
DETAILS: Large-format softcover. 11 inches tall; 224 pages. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white photography by John Szilagyi, combining documentary portraiture with environmental and architectural views. Published by Edgewater Book Co., Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 1981.
The rear cover outlines the structure: oral histories from vendors, pictorial documentation of market life, architectural history of the landmark building, and the broader cultural story of immigrant communities shaping the market across generations.
CONDITION: The bindings are tight and square. Text is clean; light, even age-toning. Moderate shelf handling wear to the covers, consistent with age. A solid, presentable copy.
The work stands as a regional documentary piece with crossover appeal to collectors of urban history, food culture, and vernacular photography—particularly tied to Cleveland’s well-known West Side Market (established 1912).
Subjects: Cleveland Ohio, West Side Market, Urban Markets, Immigrant Communities, Food Culture, Oral History, American City Life, 20th Century Documentary, Documentary Photography, Regional History, Cultural History.
Item #21782
ISBN: 0937424110
Price: $24.00
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