The Italian Market, in the Bella Vista neighborhood of South Philadelphia, became the popular name for the food shops and curbside stands on Ninth Street between Fitzwater and Wharton Streets, where merchants sold fresh produce, prepared foods, imported products, goods, and equipment for both household and commercial consumption.

The market evolved as the principal food shopping hub for the Italian immigrants who began to settle South Philadelphia in large numbers at the end of the nineteenth century. Existing row houses on Ninth Street, formerly occupied by Irish, German, and Jewish residents, provided building stock of contiguous structures that were easily modified for family businesses, with stores at ground level and living spaces for relatives and boarders on the upper floors.  

The commercial character of Ninth Street was secured in 1915, when the community’s leading businessmen (second-generation Italian Americans with ancestral roots in central and southern Italy and eastern Sicily) formed the South Ninth Street Business Men’s Association, whose mission was to promote commercial development on Ninth Street between Catharine and Federal Streets.  

By the 1940s commerce on Ninth Street was commonly known as the Italian Market, owing to the dominance of Italian-owned businesses and clientele. The linear arrangement of contiguous businesses with awnings appended to storefronts provided an uninterrupted covered sidewalk. Over the course of the twentieth century the Italian Market became a popular destination for street foods such as cheesesteaks, hoagies, pizza, Italian ice, and soft pretzels.

After World War II, following the broad pattern of assimilation and dispersion of other ethnic groups in the United States, the character of the Italian Market began to change. The traditional practice of living above one’s shop disappeared, as subsequent generations dispersed and settled in other parts of the city, the suburbs, or in southern New Jersey. The availability of commercial space for rent attracted new immigrant groups as tenants, marking a change in the ethnic composition of merchants. In 1983 the Italian Market introduced its first Korean-owned establishment at 1000 S. Ninth Street, and over the following decades a significant number of Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, and Mexican-run businesses joined the traditional Italian shops.  

In 2000 the city Planning Commission certified the South Ninth Street area including the Italian Market as blighted. As a result, the Italian Market was slated for redevelopment in 2006, and the city and business community joined in a commercial revitalization initiative to improve sanitation and to rehabilitate the market stalls and awnings. The storefronts were maintained to reflect the individual tastes, trends, and upkeep of the vendors, with varied facades of red brick, yellow brick, faux stone, aluminum siding, and stucco. By the early 2000s the area built on the popularity of outdoor shopping, sidewalk dining, specialty food shops, and ethnic street festivals. Patrons included a varied clientele of local shoppers, gourmet cooks, restaurant suppliers, and tourists, all of whom were attracted to its special product offerings and ambience.  

Adapted from the new book Greater Philadelphia and the World, Vol. 3, A New History for the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press): “Italian Market,” by Helen Tangires.