Arthur Avenue Retail Market

In the mid-1930s New York City’s streets had over 50,000 pushcart vendors doing business. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia decided to construct some indoor markets throughout the City to house some of these vendors. One of them was in the Italian neighborhood of Belmont, the “Little Italy of the Bronx.” The Arthur Avenue Retail Market opened on October 29th, 1940 and had 117 stalls for vendors and merchants.

Though the market went through a rough period in the 1960s and 1970s (as did the Bronx as a whole), in the 1980s the merchants in the market organized into a co-op and renovated the interior and exterior of the market. Over a dozen merchants currently reside in the market including Joe Liberatore’s Garden of Plenty, Peter’s Meat Market and Mike’s Deli, a two-generation family-owned business which sells the finest quality homemade antipasti, breads, meats, pasta, and imported cheeses.

The Market, which is one of the few remaining indoor markets in the country, is visited by locals as well as people from throughout the tri-state area, and even from as far away as Europe, who come to buy products and experience an “old-world” ambiance.