Eastern Market has operated here since 1891, the largest historic public market district in the United States. Eastern Market has operated on this site since 1891, its long open-sided sheds filling each Saturday with farmers, butchers, bakers, and tens of thousands of shoppers, a tradition that has run unbroken for well over a century. It grew up to feed a booming industrial city, and it fed waves of immigrants, Germans, Poles, Italians, and later many others, who settled in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Beyond the produce stalls, the district is now famous for its murals, with hundreds of large-scale works painted across the warehouse walls during annual mural festivals. The wholesale meatpackers and food businesses that ring the market have anchored the local economy for generations. Walk under the open sheds into the noise and color, vendors calling out prices, the smell of flowers and fresh bread, and the painted walls above — a working market that has fed Detroit since before the automobile.