Between 1954 and the time it closed, my father and I used to go there. I recall my fascination as a little boy with the immensity, the variety, and the festiveness of the place. Throughout my life, I have traveled to many parts of the world and I always seek out similar marketplaces. I suppose that traces back to Crystal Palace. I'm grateful for having experienced this wonderful place. Thank you for the excellent presentation.
My father-in-law, Maurice M. Marshall was the general manager when it opened, he was only 25 years of age! Amazing. We have a large engraved silver vessel congratulating him on the one year anniversary, dated December 1923. There are 53 names, two being AF Rousseau and OM Rousseau. J. Koret is also listed. Also included are many other names belonging to the original vendors and San Francisco businessmen. Your presentation was impressive. It gave us an understanding of the life he lived at the time. Thank you
Fantastic discussion of a very historic San Francisco location which any lover of San Francisco history would enjoy! This is top grade!!! I wish I could say I know anything about the Crystal Palace Market but the reality is that my family never went there to shop. I was born in 1936 and when it closed I had graduated from high school and was in my first year at SF State College. We lived in the Mission and we had our own "Crystal Palace Market" (next to the New Mission Theater). (Can't remember the name.) I love San Francisco history!
You can look at all the old photos, but there is one thing that can never be experienced again; the wonderful smell. The smell of all the different foods that mixed together and filled this little boy with wonder. So many foods that smelled so good and made this little boy hungry. Then at Christmas time with the smell of fresh pine.
I remember going there as a kid. I remember sawdust on the floor and huge wooden pickle barrels that had the best dill pickles I have ever had. I always wondered exactly where the Crystal Palace market was located. I was very happy to come across this presentation....very well done.
I loved your video. I’m a huge fan of the history of San Francisco, and I worked in the radio industry in the early 1980s, but moved away and I’ve missed your city ever since. Tony Bennet was right. I’m going to move back in retirement soon, and I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your video
Just watched the video. Really liked it. There is now a Whole Foods that sits on the street level of the newly built Trinity Plaza. It's the city's flagship store and recently opened.
The spacing in the Crystal Palace Market poem by James Laughlin appears to be a small section of a much larger floor plan of the vast market which was The Crystal Palace Market itself, with a wide aisle going down the middle, branching out left and right, and the stanzas themselves representing the individual food stalls. You can read the poem intelligibly by reading the left-hand column first followed by the right-hand one, top to bottom. The poet seems to be playing generally with relationship between getting lost and losing someone in an enormous market as well as the odd-feeling we sometimes get in very crowded places of getting a glimpse of someone we once knew or loved, but in this case, the speaker of the poem gets the shakes from the sight of someone who resembles his missing "darling" and it frightens him so that it gives him "the shakes." Why would the speakers be so frightened? You could argue that his darling was no more. Among the hustle and bustle of the busy market, the speaker of the poem either hears or remembers hearing a song lyric from a radio that seems to be communicating his inner feelings, "Darling why did we/ ever drift apart?" and "darling says the radio / why did we ever part? As a reader of the poem, we feel a sense of double nostalgia for the reader who has lost his darling and has the lost the place, The Crystal Market, where he was once reminded of her. In the end, we are left no knowing what happened to the speaker's darling, has she passed away, or did they just "drift apart," or did she choose to leave him. The speaker of the poem is playing with the the various meanings of the verb "lose" and we have a sense that he has lost his "darling" in all possible ways.
It was much like Grand Central Market, still open for business in downtown LA, unlike the Whole Foods, open less than a year on the site of Crystal Palace.
Between 1954 and the time it closed, my father and I used to go there. I recall my fascination as a little boy with the immensity, the variety, and the festiveness of the place. Throughout my life, I have traveled to many parts of the world and I always seek out similar marketplaces. I suppose that traces back to Crystal Palace. I'm grateful for having experienced this wonderful place. Thank you for the excellent presentation.
My father-in-law, Maurice M. Marshall was the general manager when it opened, he was only 25 years of age! Amazing. We have a large engraved silver vessel congratulating him on the one year anniversary, dated December 1923. There are 53 names, two being AF Rousseau and OM Rousseau. J. Koret is also listed. Also included are many other names belonging to the original vendors and San Francisco businessmen. Your presentation was impressive. It gave us an understanding of the life he lived at the time. Thank you
Great documentary.
Fantastic discussion of a very historic San Francisco location which any lover of San Francisco history would enjoy! This is top grade!!!
I wish I could say I know anything about the Crystal Palace Market but the reality is that my family never went there to shop.
I was born in 1936 and when it closed I had graduated from high school and was in my first year at SF State College.
We lived in the Mission and we had our own "Crystal Palace Market" (next to the New Mission Theater). (Can't remember the name.)
I love San Francisco history!
You can look at all the old photos, but there is one thing that can never be experienced again; the wonderful smell. The smell of all the different foods that mixed together and filled this little boy with wonder. So many foods that smelled so good and made this little boy hungry. Then at Christmas time with the smell of fresh pine.
I remember going there as a kid. I remember sawdust on the floor and huge wooden pickle barrels that had the best dill pickles I have ever had.
I always wondered exactly where the Crystal Palace market was located. I was very happy to come across this presentation....very well done.
I loved your video. I’m a huge fan of the history of San Francisco, and I worked in the radio industry in the early 1980s, but moved away and I’ve missed your city ever since. Tony Bennet was right.
I’m going to move back in retirement soon, and I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your video
Just watched the video. Really liked it. There is now a Whole Foods that sits on the street level of the newly built Trinity Plaza. It's the city's flagship store and recently opened.
My great grandfather had a produce stand there, he was known as the banana king. I have one of his produce scales.
The spacing in the Crystal Palace Market poem by James Laughlin appears to be a small section of a much larger floor plan of the vast market which was The Crystal Palace Market itself, with a wide aisle going down the middle, branching out left and right, and the stanzas themselves representing the individual food stalls. You can read the poem intelligibly by reading the left-hand column first followed by the right-hand one, top to bottom. The poet seems to be playing generally with relationship between getting lost and losing someone in an enormous market as well as the odd-feeling we sometimes get in very crowded places of getting a glimpse of someone we once knew or loved, but in this case, the speaker of the poem gets the shakes from the sight of someone who resembles his missing "darling" and it frightens him so that it gives him "the shakes." Why would the speakers be so frightened? You could argue that his darling was no more. Among the hustle and bustle of the busy market, the speaker of the poem either hears or remembers hearing a song lyric from a radio that seems to be communicating his inner feelings, "Darling why did we/ ever drift apart?" and "darling says the radio / why did we ever part? As a reader of the poem, we feel a sense of double nostalgia for the reader who has lost his darling and has the lost the place, The Crystal Market, where he was once reminded of her. In the end, we are left no knowing what happened to the speaker's darling, has she passed away, or did they just "drift apart," or did she choose to leave him. The speaker of the poem is playing with the the various meanings of the verb "lose" and we have a sense that he has lost his "darling" in all possible ways.
It was much like Grand Central Market, still open for business in downtown LA, unlike the Whole Foods, open less than a year on the site of Crystal Palace.
An early version of the BIG BOX store?