It stood there at the foot of the street whose name it bears when the writer was a boy—and many long years before—and will, no doubt, stand there long after he is dead and gone, a low, narrow shed of rotten wood, in color a dingy brown, with three half-round windows on the ferry side—we mean the ones over the oyster booth, where they used to give a round dozen saddle-rocks to every stew, and over the coffee and cake saloon, where the butter-cakes were always fresh on the pan—looking like the eyes of some great monster standing majestically alone in the center of the little square, calmly watching the crowds that pour out of the ferry-gates as the sun rises up, and pour in again as it goes down.
Now there is nothing stylish about the Catherine Market, nothing in any way smacking of "tone."
It is not one-third the size of the Washington Market, nor does it profess to have that far-famed celebrity for succulent meats, fat turtle, fish, oysters and clams to which Fulton Market lays claim.
But it does a driving, thriving business of its own, just the same, does the Catherine Market—make no mistake about that!
For here come to purchase their daily supplies the denizens of Water, Cherry and Oliver streets, of Madison, Monroe and Hamilton streets, to say nothing of East Broadway, equal in number, when taken all in all, to the population of a good-sized city in themselves.
If one wants to see the Catherine Market in the full tide of its bustling trade, Sunday morning is the time to come—when the fish peddlers cluster outside its walls, between the hours of four and five.
They spread themselves up South street; they stand beside their pails, tubs and baskets on the sidewalk facing the old tumble-down rookeries on the side of Catherine street to the right of the market itself, and before the second hand clothing stores on the left.
Blue-fish, white-fish, weak-fish, porgies, twisting eels, and soft clams strung on strings, lobsters alive and lobsters boiled, soft-shell crabs, packed in moss-lined boxes, hard-shell crabs, not packed at all—all are spread about outside of this singular building on the sidewalk in the gutter—yes, even in the very street itself, while the bawling of the fishermen as they cry the merits of their wares, the cackle of housewives, moving about here and there with giant market baskets on their arms, are all mingled in one unearthly clatter and din.
Nor is this all.
Other branches of trade must needs elbow their way into this busy spot as well, all carried on from baskets in the open streets, be it plainly understood, whose owners sit or stand beside them on the pavement as best they can.