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\n The Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket.
\n Photo: Courtesy of GrowNYC\n <\/p>\n
On a dreary Saturday morning this spring, the chef Peter Hoffman was giving out hugs. We\u2019d arrived at the Union Square Greenmarket to shop, but Hoffman kept running into people he knew, embracing an employee at Deep Mountain Maple<\/a>, saying \u201chi\u201d to a book publisher he hadn\u2019t seen in a while, checking in on a former neighbor\u2019s daughter. Eventually, he started bagging up some wavy Romano beans at the Lani\u2019s Farm<\/a> stand while I checked out its collection of homemade soy sauce and kimchee. Then we hit some other stands, and within 15 minutes, I\u2019d bought Chioggia beets, radishes, strawberries, cucumbers, a croissant made with local wheat, and blue-shelled tea eggs from a Finger Lakes\u2013based wine-maker.<\/p>\n Hoffman, who helped jump-start this city\u2019s farm-to-table, locavore era when he opened Savoy<\/a> in Soho in 1990, doesn\u2019t live in the city anymore \u2014 he moved to the Hudson Valley four years ago \u2014 but he still makes a point of shopping at the Greenmarket whenever he passes through. Why? \u201cThe diversity,\u201d he says. Not only are the people shopping and selling food diverse, but the food is, too. Because the Greenmarket program extends to farmers within a 250-mile radius, it\u2019s possible to buy produce from five or six different growing zones, Hoffman explains. That means, to give an example from this time of year, strawberries and asparagus from New Jersey may arrive in the city several weeks before upstate farms have them. \u201cCould I have lived somewhere else and done my career?\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s just, like, no.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, Union Square wasn\u2019t always filled with overflowing displays of purple kale and Sungold tomatoes. The city\u2019s first Greenmarket launched 50 years ago \u2014 July 17, 1976 \u2014 on 59th Street and Second Avenue. The market at Union Square, then a part of the city filled with drugs that most New Yorkers tried to avoid, came a month later.<\/p>\n The markets\u2019 opening was part of a larger plan to revitalize urban spaces as European-style open-air food markets, says Angela Davis, the director of food access and agriculture at GrowNYC<\/a>, the nonprofit that currently runs over 60 Greenmarkets. The urban planners Bob Lewis and Barry Benepe were behind the plan. Benepe, Davis explains, \u201chad seen the disappearance of farmland, so he had this crazy idea: Let\u2019s get farmers together and let\u2019s find a profitable place for them to connect to customers and connect to New Yorkers.\u201d<\/p>\n The city\u2019s first Greenmarket \u2014 at 59th St and Second Ave. \u2014 in 1976.<\/p>\n The arrival of the Greenmarket gave city residents easy access to fresh produce.<\/p>\n The Union Square Greenmarket opened a month after the first location proved the idea could be a success.<\/p>\n The ultimate goal for the markets was to create gathering spots where neighbors could connect. <\/p>\n Shopping during the Greenmarket\u2019s earliest days.<\/p>\n \n Photographs Courtesy of GrowNYC\n <\/p>\n Benepe summed up the first day in a 1978 booklet called The Rebirth of Farmers Markets in New York City: \u201cFarmers accustomed to small crowds at roadside stands were amazed and pleased to be surrounded by throngs of customers for hours on end, while the market customers were equally astonished to find farmers from the country selling a variety of fresh-picked seasonal produce right in the city.\u201d The name Greenmarket was trademarked, Benepe writes in the book, to help distinguish the markets from \u201ctoo many so-called \u2018farmers markets\u2019 which sell the usual Hunts Point wholesale produce imported from all over the U.S. and Mexico and the Caribbean.\u201d<\/p>\n That first Midtown East location was chosen to prove the project\u2019s viability in a highly visible, well-trafficked part of Manhattan. It opened with seven growers from Long Island, New Jersey, and upstate farms who sold early-summer sweet corn, lettuce, tomatoes, and ripe peaches. Many of the farms were barely scraping by. On the first day, Davis says, they\u2019d sold out of everything by the early afternoon.<\/p>\n By all accounts, convincing New York to embrace these markets was not easy. From the early 19th century to the 1930s, New York City had been teeming with street vendors, particularly in immigrant enclaves like the Lower East Side. But increasing chaos and unsanitary, unregulated conditions led to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia\u2019s \u201cwar on pushcarts,\u201d which saw the formation of many indoor markets (including the still-open Essex Market). Even in the 1970s, three decades later, the idea of bringing outdoor food shopping back to New York had not been popular. To make it happen, Lewis handled farmer outreach, while Benepe worked to persuade city agencies to pass permits amid public outcry over the parking spaces that the proposed markets would engulf.<\/p>\n \u201cBarry\u2019s wheelhouse was very much tenacity \u2014 not taking \u2018no\u2019 for an answer \u2014\u00a0and he really battled through so much to change the way people thought about open-air markets,\u201d says Liz Carollo, GrowNYC\u2019s assistant director of food access and agriculture.<\/p>\n \u201cThey pushed and shoved and demanded the space, and it\u2019s important to not take that for granted,\u201d says Michael Anthony, a chef whose style at Gramercy Tavern<\/a> has been defined by his devotion to the Greenmarket. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t always here, and it won\u2019t be here unless we keep supporting it.\u201d<\/p>\n Even into the \u201990s and early 2000s, getting great ingredients was a far more difficult job for chefs than it is now. \u201cAs a Swedish guy, it took me a while to get access to the best purveyors,\u201d says Marcus Samuelsson<\/a>, who moved to New York three decades ago to work at Aquavit<\/a>. Even with the right contacts, success wasn\u2019t guaranteed. \u201cSo much of sourcing was importing,\u201d says Lena Ciardullo<\/a>, the executive chef of Union Square Cafe, \u201cwhich means ingredients that were great at one point in time, but by the time they got here, they weren\u2019t.\u201d The Greenmarket democratized the whole process, and even more than that, it allowed for a real dialogue between chefs and growers. Would ingredients like ramps, shishito peppers, or Tristar strawberries be coveted like they are today without these kinds of conversations? \u201cI don\u2019t think New York would be the culinary capital it is without the Greenmarket,\u201d says Anita Lo<\/a>, who ran the small restaurant Anisa from 2000 to 2017. \u201cWe\u2019d be less connected to the land and our ingredients, and that would be very sad.\u201d<\/p>\n We might also be less connected to one another. As Hoffman reminds me while we tour Union Square\u2019s Greenmarket, a light drizzle beginning to pick up, the whole project was envisioned as a public gathering space. It wasn\u2019t founded by chefs or activists; it was the result of urban planning. When we run into people we know at the markets, it\u2019s because we share at least one interest: good food.<\/p>\n