Market Square has been Harrisburg's public heart since 1785, and you are at its center where 2nd and Market Streets cross. Feel how this place has served as the navigational center of Harrisburg since that plan by John Harris, Jr.’s son-in-law, William Maclay, laid out a town of 207 quarter-acre building lots. Maclay set streets at a standard width of fifty-two feet six inches (16.00 m) and reserved Market Street as a grand avenue, eighty feet wide, carving ample setbacks at Second Street to allow space for this very square.
Imagine the two market “sheds” that once sat in the center so residents could buy food. Over the centuries the square has endured and, after a post-1980s revival, welcomed new commercial, residential, and retail spaces that reshaped its edges. Today, it still functions as a hub for Capital Area Transit buses, keeping the square busy and connected.
You’re also just one block from Riverfront Park and the Market Street Bridge that crosses the Susquehanna River, so this is where the city’s plan, its markets, and its riverfront all meet. Just one block on, Riverfront Park and the Market Street Bridge carry this square's story out to the Susquehanna River.