Brick wholesale warehouses with cast iron fronts and covered sidewalks, their brick paved streets mostly unchanged since the turn of the last century.
What Old Market looks like
South 10th Street, 13th Street, Farnam Street and Jackson Street mark the four sides of the Old Market. Inside them, three to six storey brick warehouses run block to block. Their cast iron fronts, arched window heads and pressed metal cornices are largely intact. Ground floors have been cut into storefronts for restaurants, galleries and shops, some still standing under the metal sidewalk coverings built over their entrances a century ago.
Original brick paving covers several blocks, including Howard Street between 10th and 12th. The 's brick front rises at 12th and Harney, its round arched windows set under a bracketed cornice, an art gallery filling the ground floor today. On Jackson Street, the , put up in 1914 and 1915, was converted into lofts in 1996.
On Howard Street, occupies the ground floor of the building raised for the Gilinsky Fruit Company in 1891, its dark storefront and striped awning facing the brick sidewalk. A block over, a narrow brick passage between two warehouses has been fitted with a row of shopfronts under a slatted wooden canopy, one of the loading platforms the produce warehouses used still standing above it.
On 13th Street, THE BAUM IRON COMPANY is painted directly onto the brick of a corner warehouse. Its lettering for hydraulics, bearings and steel is still legible above the ground floor storefronts. A block north, the stands at 11th and Harney, put up in 1881 and 1882. Its ground floor is now home to the restaurant Jams Old Market.
Shot in Old Market
Downsizing shot a going away party scene at Jams Old Market, on the corner of 11th and Harney Streets, in April 2016. All Is Merry and Bright shot exterior scenes across the district in December 2024, without settling on one block.
Downsizing, 2017
Jams Old Market
The going away party for the characters Paul and Audrey was shot inside Jams Old Market, on the ground floor of the Millard Block building at 11th and Harney. The restaurant is still open on the same corner. Street View
Larimer Street's block of 1870s to 1890s Victorian commercial buildings runs two to four storeys in brick and stone, with decorative cornices and tall storefront windows, a close match for the Old Market's own scale and period. Larimer Square today is a pedestrian retail block with string lighting and planters along the storefronts that would need clearing for an unadorned period look. Try searching Victorian brick storefront block now.
The Strand's five block run of Victorian commercial buildings is now restaurants, antique stores and curio shops inside a former warehouse and port district. The shift mirrors the Old Market's own move from wholesale trade to retail. Galveston's flatter light and palm trees give away coastal Texas in a wide shot, so tighter frames on the storefronts hold the illusion better. Try searching Victorian commercial warehouse storefronts now.
The largest collection of Victorian era industrial brick buildings in North America, its lanes paved in brick and closed to general traffic, gives filmmakers a similar unbroken run of warehouse facades to work with. The district's sculptures, banners and modern signage are a bigger dressing job than the Old Market needs, and its pedestrian only character reads differently from a working lane with parked cars. Try searching brick warehouse lane now.
