The ‘magic of the market’
Spanning centuries, Penn’s new Reading Terminal photo archive will soon be open to the public.
As manager of Reading Terminal Market in the 1980s, David K. O’Neil oversaw a pivotal period of rebirth at the Philly food institution. It was an exciting, make-do time in the life of the market — and one that O’Neil documented in thousands of photographs. Candid snapshots captured a market on the rise, and evoked everyday exchanges between bygone merchants and generations of old and new market travelers.
“The magic of the market,” O’Neil said.
O’Neil left in 1990 to consult on public markets across the globe, but he collected vintage photos of the iconic Philly food hall for decades, as well as market ephemera, like pins and posters, menus, and vendor bags.
Considered the most mammoth trove of public market materials in the world, O’Neil’s collection will open to the public in January as a permanent archive at Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.
On a recent morning at the library, O’Neil, 70, lean, bespectacled, and soft-spoken, perused his photos, recalling with joy his old market times, and the characters he met there.