A vast collection related to public markets comes to the Penn Libraries

From blueprints to business records, postcards to photographs, buttons to bags, the tens of thousands of items related to public markets acquired by Penn alum David K. O’Neil create a collection that is unique in size and scope. Spanning four centuries from locations near and far, with a concentration on Philadelphia, his collection now has a home at the Penn Libraries. 

Now an international market consultant, O’Neil was operations manager at the historic Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia for a decade, credited with bringing the market back to life starting in 1980. 

“It’s just such a good home for the collection here at Penn,” says O’Neil, a 1977 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences, during a recent visit for an update on its processing and preservation. Philadelphia’s markets date to the late 1600s, and Southeastern Pennsylvania has the highest concentration of historic market houses in the nation, he says, “so this is a really good, natural place for the collection because of this deep well of market history.” 

O’Neil grew up just outside of Philadelphia in Wyndmoor, and he now lives on property within the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in the city’s Roxborough neighborhood. “I am still, to this day, extremely grateful for my time at Penn, for having the opportunity to go to school here,” says O’Neil, who majored in modern European history. 

It took over a year of discussions to bring the collection to the Libraries’ Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, says Mitch Fraas, director of special collections and research services. The Libraries used donations to purchase part of the collection, and O’Neil donated part. Delivery was in December, and the Libraries staff has been working to process it since, Fraas says. 

“There’s an incredible range of detail that I don’t think anyone else has assembled besides David,” Fraas says. “It’s just an amazing variety of things.”

Why did he give up the collection? “It became too big. I could have kept taking care of it, but it was taking up too much room in my house and I thought about if I have a flood or if there’s a fire. This is a really good collection. It’s one-of-a-kind. So, I thought, okay, I’ve got to do something with this,” O’Neil says. 

He thought of Penn and sent an email to Penn Libraries. “When I started in markets, there was no academic understanding; there was no place to go for any information. So having this in an accessible academic environment that people can access is really, really wonderful for the market field,” says O’Neil, who has given guest lectures about markets to classes at Penn. 

“The field is really growing; it’s really maturing. Markets are back and their status is rising again because people see their value,” O’Neil says. “The markets are extremely important for that human-scaled interaction that is eternally supported by very, very small-scale commerce. It’s really a great building block of society.” 

Working independently, O’Neil also helped create the market program at the nonprofit Project for Public Spaces in New York City, where he continues to assist building the market field around the world.

‘Extraordinarily interdisciplinary’ 

Most of the collection is historical printed materials, but there is a remarkable number and range of types of ephemera including posters, postcards, pamphlets, signs, even such everyday items as branded buttons and paper bags, things that would be given to customers. “It’s visually a really striking array of material,” Fraas says. 

The collection also contains O’Neil’s day-to-day records of the Reading Terminal Market during his 10 years there, and his business records from consulting with hundreds of other markets around the world in the years since. The records cover markets in 166 cities in the United States, including 23 market sites in Philadelphia, 12 cities in Canada, and 29 cities in 25 other countries around the world, says Lauris Olson, the Libraries’ coordinator and librarian for social sciences collections. The documents range from phone conversation notes with market managers to detailed descriptions of grant applications.

“The nature of this collection is so extraordinarily interdisciplinary. It’s of interest to people across the humanities,” says Nicholas Okrent, coordinator and librarian for humanities collections. “I never expected to have the opportunity to purchase this vast a collection about the inner workings of public markets, as well as their public representation.”  

Researchers in several different disciplines will be interested in this collection, the librarians say, including students and faculty who are studying Philadelphia, and those who are in food studies, urban studies, historic preservation, sociology, anthropology, sustainability, business, and economics. The collection also lends itself to Ph.D. dissertation research, they say. 

Fraas is especially enamored with historical material for what he says is “fantastic for academic reasons” but may not be what most would consider the most interesting. “The category for me that might seem boring are the sheer number of local, regional, national reports and business documents about revitalizing markets,” Fraas says. “To have in one collection these reports from 100 different markets and all these local bodies trying to do things is pretty special.”

One of the challenges in collecting information about market performance is that stall owners keep their business dealings confidential, in part because they are in competition with their stall neighbors. “David would write down the prices that he saw on the chalkboards at the stores and in the individual stalls to get that kind of snapshot of the operation of the market,” Olson says. “It’s just invaluable information.” 

And O’Neil took photos, more than 46,000 digital images and thousands more prints, Olson says. The snapshots catch unscripted moments, giving “a real sense of who was there, what they were wearing, how they were interacting, who the people on the ground actually were at different points in time,” says Okrent.

Philadelphia concentration

O’Neil’s collection has a “tremendous concentration on Philadelphia, which is something we're always interested in, both present-day Philadelphia and historical Philadelphia,” Olson says.

It includes materials from several markets that have been demolished, such as the records from the final manager of a large, lively market at Ridge Avenue and18th streets. The collection shows “the important place that markets occupied in the civic realm for so long. And it’s such a shame to see all these amazing places that are just gone. They were little engines that kept the little communities around them going,” says O’Neil.

The Reading Terminal Market, now an acclaimed tourist destination, figures prominently in O’Neil’s collection, notes Olson. “The finding aid section that is just Reading Terminal Market and its history is going to be extremely valuable,” Fraas says. O’Neil’s research for his book “Reading Terminal Market: An Illustrated History,” published in 2000, is also included.

The 47 large blueprints of Reading Terminal, once held in a canvas binder, now cleaned and conserved by the Libraries’ conservation team, recently were out on a table at the Kislak Center to show to O’Neil. Also on the table was a floorplan O’Neil had created, working with another Penn alum, by measuring every stall. “A lot of these vendors are still there,” O’Neil says, noting that he had only previously seen the schematic under glass. 

The markets in Philadelphia on High Street and then Market Street started in the late 1600s, O’Neil says, although there were probably earlier informal markets along the Delaware River. He contends that Reading Terminal Market is rooted in that history, making it the oldest market in the country, although others make that claim. 

The laying of trolley tracks displaced the sheds and market stalls in Market Street in the 1850s. Vendors were accommodated into two newly built indoor market houses on Market Street between 11th and 12th streets. Those two markets were demolished in 1892 and vendors moved once again into today’s Reading Terminal Market which opened in its current location on Feb. 23, 1892, O’Neil says. One of his favorite collection items is a print from a copperplate engraving of a view of the High Street Market sheds from the early 1800s created by William Russell Birch.

Creating a collection

O’Neil says he went to Bassett’s Ice Cream at Reading Terminal Market in 1980 in search of inspiration for a murder mystery he was writing. “I needed dialogue,” he says. Back then the Market was “really down and out” with only 23 vendors. In talking with new owners, they offered him a job to bring in new vendors, which was a challenge, he says, because it seemed like the market was on the verge of closing. 

“Then I just became the manager because there wasn’t even a manager,” he says, noting that there were virtually no files or records when he started. “So, I just became interested in the idea of markets.”

He would look through vintage postcards wherever he saw them. “I would ask, ‘Do you have anything with markets?’ And they would look at me like, markets, what do you mean markets? Stock market? Supermarket? And I asked ‘Where are you from?’ Then I would tell them the name of the market where they’re from. And they’d say, oh, you mean markets?” O’Neil says, laughing. 

“The postcards were helpful to me because I would see different designs, different layouts, lighting displays,” he says. “Then I started getting some books. I realized at a certain point that no one was collecting anything about markets. It was not a category that was even on the radar in this country. Markets were at a very low and sort of forgotten point. So, I had open season to get stuff.”

He went to flea markets and country markets on the weekends, picking up things like display fixtures, or scales, or old signs, to decorate the Reading Terminal Market. Around 1999 he got hooked on eBay. “People started to send me things on approval and I bought everything,” says O’Neil.

O’Neil stored the collection in his house, which he describes as small. “That’s why I had to be super organized. I put everything in boxes. And then I put boxes on top of boxes. I had them three or four high, two or three deep, and maybe seven or eight long,” O’Neil says. He kept meticulous records.

“David is an example of the opposite of going to someone’s garage and just having jumbles of stuff everywhere,” Fraas says. “Things were highly organized. He had inventories and lists and rigorous categories and folders.”

Still collecting

Now that the unique collection is at the Kislak Center, others who have material related to public markets may realize its scholarly value. “I believe we can build on this and make it something which is even more significant,” Okrent says. 

A long-term goal is to digitize some of the collection, Fraas says, especially the visual material like photographs, postcards and blueprints. Items may be become part of a Libraries exhibition, he says. 

Fraas is already adding to the collection. “I think it could be an exciting area of growth, especially for teaching,” he says. “I think there's a potential in a lot of different disciplinary classes for students to get interested, and then to be able to dive in and pick a market or a town or a particular area of research and do some real work on it.”

O’Neil says he still loves markets, regularly shopping at those in and around Philadelphia. And he continues to buy market items, sharing some on his Market Polo Instagram, and offers them to the Libraries. “I can’t stop,” he says.