Reading Terminal Market

We had breakfast at the Down Home Diner in the Reading Terminal Market. The Reading Terminal was built by the Reading Railroad (one of the four “Monopoly Railroads”) and opened in 1893. It was built on the site of a open air market that had been in continuous operation since 1653. There was a tremendous outcry over the plans to build the train station on the site. To mitigate criticism, the railroad agreed to raise the trainshed and all the tracks one story above street level and to place the market underneath. Even during renovation of the trainshed into the Philadelphia Convention Center in the 1990s, the market remained open.