Grand Central Market has fed downtown from the ground floor of the Homer Laughlin Building continuously since 1917, the oldest and largest public market in Los Angeles. When it opened, Grand Central Market served a dense immigrant working-class neighborhood downtown; its stalls offered fresh produce, butcher counters, and prepared food to families who lived within walking distance. The neighborhood changed, the demographics shifted, the market adapted.
For decades it was a Latino market serving the communities of Central America and Mexico that replaced the earlier immigrant populations. In the 2010s a wave of new vendors arrived alongside the longtime stalls, and today the market is a mix of the old Los Angeles — pupuserias, juice stands, egg counters that have been here for generations — and the new, with craft coffee and artisanal everything. Look up at the exposed iron structure and the old signs painted on the walls; they record the history of every wave that passed through.
Walk the length of it and you are walking through a century of the city's appetite.