Dashingclaire Runs the Kitchen: Real Fish Markets

The Fulton Fish Market, Bronx, NY - The Fulton market was historically located in lower Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge, just a few blocks from Wall Street. The market first opened on that site in 1807 on land donated to New York City, and at first was a general market for both fish and goods other than fish. In 1822 the fish merchants occupied a new Fulton Fish Market building, located on South Street between Fulton and Beekman Streets.

On November 14, 2005, after 180 years of operation in South Manhattan, the Fulton Fish Market which is the largest consortium of seafood wholesalers in the country, relocated its operations to the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center in the Bronx to an indoor fully refrigerated HAACP facility - The New Fulton Fish Market.

The Maine Avenue fish market is on Maine Avenue west of Ninth Street SW. It offers more than 10 stores. You can buy fresh butterfish, mackerel, croaker, perch, grouper, snapper, porgies and tilapia. You can try soft-shell crabs or spiced shrimp or the raw bar. It's an old-fashioned open-air market, nothing slick, right on the water with houseboats bobbing nearby.

The D.C. Office of Motion Picture and Television Development is pleased to honor the Main Avenue Fish Market as the November One City Location of the Month. The Fish Market, also known as “the Wharf.” The Southwest Fish Market, one of the last surviving open air seafood markets on the east coast, also serves as a location that could easily double for neighboring cities.

Continuously in operation since 1805, the Maine Avenue Fish Market is the oldest operating fish market in the United States, seventeen years older than New York City's Fulton Fish Market. The Maine Avenue Market was relocated in the 1960s, within a few blocks of its original location on the Washington Channel. The original 19th-century Municipal Fish Market building was razed in the 1960s to make way for a waterfront urban renewal project, but the vendors refused to leave and exercised a clause in their leases allowing them to stay for 99 years. As a result, the current Municipal Pier was built for the market underneath the I-395 12th Street highway offramp, to service the new floating barges.