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Eastern Market (and Interiors)

Architects
Adolf Cluss Snowden Ashford
Year
1873
Style
Renaissance Revival
City
Washington, DC
Eastern Market (and Interiors)
Photo: AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0
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Eastern Market has sold produce and meat from the same 7th Street building since 1873, when German-born architect Adolf Cluss designed it as a public market hall for the growing Capitol Hill neighborhood. Snowden Ashford later contributed additional work, and the market has remained in continuous use ever since, surviving a 2007 fire that badly damaged the main hall before it reopened in 2009.

the building

Rundbogenstil brick facade. Cluss designed the market in the round-arched Rundbogenstil idiom he favored for Washington's public buildings, giving the Renaissance Revival brick facade a rhythm of arcaded openings along 7th Street SE where market stalls once opened directly onto the sidewalk.

2007 fire and rebuild. An early-morning fire in 2007 badly damaged the market building; it underwent an extensive renovation and reopened to the public in the summer of 2009.

the style

The Rundbogenstil, or 'round-arch style,' was a favorite of Cluss for Washington's 19th-century civic buildings, pairing Renaissance Revival massing with round-arched brick openings suited to a working market hall.

More on Renaissance Revival

the architect

Adolf Cluss was a German-trained engineer and architect who emigrated to Washington and became one of the city's most prolific 19th-century designers of schools, markets, and public buildings; Snowden Ashford, later the District's municipal architect, added to the market afterward.

significance

Eastern Market is a DC Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1971) and the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites. It remains the anchor of its Capitol Hill neighborhood and is served by the nearby Eastern Market Metro station.

nearby

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