Video Details      

New York City "ghetto" fish market



The view, photographed from an elevated camera position, looks down on a very crowded New York City street market. Rows of pushcarts and street vendors' vehicles can be seen. The precise location is difficult to ascertain, but it is certainly on the Lower East Side, probably on or near Hester Street, which at the turn of the century was the center of commerce for New York's Jewish ghetto. Located south of Houston Street and east of the Bowery, the ghetto population was predominantly Russian, but included immigrants from Austria, Germany, Rumania and Turkey. According to a description in a 1901 newspaper, an estimated 1,500 pushcart peddlers were licensed to sell wares (primarily fish) in the vicinity of Hester Street. At one point the film seems to follow three official looking men (one in a uniform) as they walk among the crowd. They may be New York City health inspectors, who apparently monitored the fish vendors closely.                                              
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Video Information
Year: 1903
Genre: Historical
Keywords: Markets--New York (State)--New York; Crowds--New York (State)--New York; Immigrants--New York (State)--New York; Lower East Side (New York, N.Y.); Actuality--Short;
Duration: 00:02:53
Color: No
Sound: No
Amount of Motion: Medium
Language: English
Sponsor: Thomas Edison
Contributing Organization: Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division
Transcript Available: No

Digitization Information
Digitization Date:
Digitizing Organization: Library of Congress

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