Before the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, there was the Curb Market, so called because vendors backed their wagons or trucks up to the curb on streets around the Washtenaw County Courthouse.

During the peak season, the market wrapped around the next corner to Fourth Ave., and even across Fourth in front of what was then the YMCA.

It was an attractive setting, with the lawn that surrounded the 1877 courthouse as a backdrop. Vendors could sell what they grew right from the back of their vehicle or set up a display on the sidewalk. Customers shopped by walking on the grass between the street and sidewalk.

The Curb Market was organized in 1919 by the Community Federation, an umbrella organization for several women’s groups. The idea was to reduce prices by eliminating the middleman. Several local grocery stores objected, but the federation prevailed, and the market opened that May.

The first ten vendors set up on the Main St. side of the courthouse, but the farmers worried that it was dangerous to be on such a busy street, while drivers complained that it slowed down traffic. The market soon moved around the corner to Ann St. During the peak season, the market wrapped around the next corner to Fourth Ave., and even across Fourth in front of what was then the YMCA, now the Washtenaw County Annex. (Huron, like Main, was not used because even then it was too busy.)

Merchants made their peace with the market when they found they could buy seasonal produce such as strawberries and onions in bulk to sell in their stores. Some farmers began meeting this need by bringing extra produce, setting aside a certain amount for wholesale.

In the early days, many vendors came in horse-drawn wagons. They’d stable their horses at a dairy barn on Miller and First St. and, after the market closed, some would drive around town and try to sell anything that was left. Ford introduced its Model T pickup the year the market opened, and gradually, more farmers started arriving in trucks.

The Curb Market was such a success that in 1921 the city took it over. The Farmers Market has been operated by the city ever since.

—

Vendors would spend days getting ready to go to the market. One farmer recalled, “We didn’t get much sleep on Thursday and Fridays because we stayed up late picking, sometimes with a flashlight under our arm.”

Blanche Gallup started coming to the market when she realized she couldn’t sell enough of her produce from her front porch. She and her husband Eli Gallup lived on five acres at 2305 Geddes, which was then outside the city limits. They had enough room to keep a cow and chickens as well as grow quite a few crops.

Every spring they would hire a farmer with a team of horses to plow a section of their land for a vegetable garden. They also grew a variety of fruit—Bartlett pears, apples, plums, several types of cherries, currents, grapes, and gooseberries.

In a reminiscence, now in the possession of her son Al Gallup, she explained that she would cook dinner to be ready when her husband got home from his job, at 5:30 or 6. When they were done, he quickly changed into his work clothes and went outside to start picking fruit before it got dark. “Since he was the only one picking, he was able to choose only the ripe and unblemished fruit,” she said. She would join him when she was done with the dishes, and the two of them would sort the fruit, getting rid of the blemished ones. After this, “we had no trouble going to sleep at night,” she wrote.

—

In 1919, the first vendors set up on the Main St. side of the courthouse, but the farmers worried that it was dangerous to be on such a busy street, while drivers complained that it slowed down traffic. The market soon moved around the corner to Ann St.

The Curb Market was run by the vendors themselves. There was no market manager, no assigned spots; it was just first come, first served.

Orchardist Alex Nemeth first came to the market as an infant. Sometimes the whole Nemeth family would sleep in the truck to get an early crack at a stall. His grandson Jeff Nemeth remembers being told that his grandfather was placed in the back of the truck because the floor was warmest there. Alex Nemeth was a market mainstay until his death in 2016. Jeff comes to market now, and Jeff’s daughter Laila, now seventeen, is planning to take it over some day.

The late Robert Dieterle started coming when he was five and continued until 2007. When I interviewed him for a 1998 Observer article, he remembered that the Curb Market was “strictly farmers, no crafts.”

Blanche Gallup would come about 4 a.m. to make sure she got her preferred spot at the end of Fourth Ave. closest to Huron. “That was a busy corner, and I was more certain to sell my fruit there,” she recalled in her reminiscence. She hired a man to help her, since her husband had to work on Saturdays; in his then-job as city forester, he was in charge of the city parks, the airport, and cleaning the streets, and he was also sexton of the cemeteries. Eli Gallup eventually became the city’s first parks superintendent; Gallup Park is named for him.

—

Some farmers sold right from the back of their trucks. Others took their produce out of their truck but left it in the crate or box they’d bought it in.

The first time Blanche Gallup came, she sold her produce from the truck on the curb, as the other farmers did. The second time, she came up with a more pleasing way to do it. “We had a storm door and two carpenter horses which I took to the market the second week,” she recalled. “I laid the table with a white sheet, letting it hang down in front.” She arranged her goods on the table, using the space underneath for storage. She sold much more than she had the first week, even the bouquet of flowers that she had brought just to decorate the table. From then on, she added flowers to her offerings.

Although in competition, the vendors all helped each other, too. An older lady, a Mrs. Biederman who lived on Broadway, had trouble backing her truck into a slot, so several of the men routinely parked it for her.

In 1998, old-timer Margaret Sias explained why the market was appealing to women: “Farm women didn’t work away from home but could do other things to bring in money. Women could make money this way.”

—

As automobile traffic increased, setting up on the street became more hazardous. In 1931, the market moved to its current site at Fourth Ave. and Detroit St. The land was donated by former mayor Gottlob Luick, whose family had owned a lumberyard there. With Works Project Administration labor, the lumberyard was transformed into the roofed market we know today. Thus began the current chapter of Farmers Market
history.