Rīgas Centrāltirgus

After Latvia became an independent republic in 1918, Riga was actively changing, and in 1922 the Riga City Council decided to establish and build a central city food market. This idea and its promotion belonged to Klavs Lorents, the head of the Riga City Council’s trade department. By this time there were many small, specialised places with market stalls in Riga, apart from the market by the Daugava River.

To make room for the new Central Market, several warehouse buildings in the Spīķeri neighbourhood were demolished or rebuilt. Riga had already had experience in building market hangars—in 1902, the Vidzeme market pavilions were built. Later, in 1925, the city built the Agenskalns Market, which was built in parallel with the construction of the Central Market, the main character of this text.

It is known that the hangars were called “Valhalla” and “Walter”. The project to reuse their structures was approved, and students of the University of Latvia started to develop it. It is known that engineers G. Tolstoy and V. Isaev were the direct executors, and architect P. Pavlov was the organiser of the work (but we do not even know the full names of these people).

The two identical hangars were 37.4 meters high, 47.2 metres wide and 240 meters long. Initially, the plan was to keep them as they were: to dismantle the steel structures, transport them to Riga and reassemble them. But the height of the hangars did not meet the objectives of the market premises: it would have been difficult to heat the spaces that were too high. As a result, the team decided not to use the entire steel frame, but only the upper parts with vaults—these elements became the structural trusses in the new market pavilions, which made it possible to cover a large space without additional supports, while the walls of the market pavilions were built of reinforced concrete and brick.

In parallel, in 1925, the dismantling and transport of the metal frame from Vainode to Riga took place. Due to the impressive size of the German hangars, they required serious equipment and precise calculations. Sometimes failures occurred: for example, in his book about the Central Market, Eric Hanberg quotes technical documents related to the demolition of the hangars: “Stars had completely failed to take into account in the preliminary calculations the possibility of overloading the metal. […] the sudden release of the cable caused a violent jolt, which caused the half-section to fall inside the hangar.” Several workers were injured. However, this was the only serious case where something went wrong because of incorrect calculations.

In 1926, during construction, it became clear that several changes and additions had to be made to the original project, which exceeded the planned project costs—the work was suspended. The construction of the market was resumed only in spring 1928 and was completed in autumn 1930: on 2 November the market was ceremonially put into operation.
The pavilions, which were built for several years between the two world wars, turned out to be interesting from the point of view of architectural aesthetics: their forms managed to absorb both features of rational (vertical) Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

The new market was very modern for its time: all buildings had central heating and electric lighting. A low-pressure steam heating system was used to provide these—it operated until 1986, when the market was connected to the city’s central heating system.

The market pavilions contained large refrigeration units with 1,258 m² of freezer space, lifts for transporting goods in all hangars, impressive warehouses and cellar entrances that provided vendors with easy access to all pavilions.

It was planned to transport goods to the new market by water through the City canal (Pilsētas kanāls) and by railway. A virtually underground city of 2 hectares was built under the market: passages with tunnels led to quay platforms on the canal side, from where goods could be easily transported to the market warehouses and freezers in the cellars.

They even started building a railway trestle near the wholesale pavilion opposite the canal, but it was not finished. It was planned to extend the railway line to the last pavilion—the basement under the market was so far away. However, the railway project was never completed: the Second World War interrupted its construction. The apron and a landing stage for unloading goods between the canal and the modern Meat Pavilion have survived to this day. Today this place is empty.

To make it convenient for shoppers to get to the market, a tram ring was built nearby, and two bridges were built over the canal.

Food sales at the Rīgas Centrāltirgus began on 10 November 1930. It is believed that at that time Centrāltirgus was the largest and most modern market in Europe.

The central market was three times bigger than Daugavmala market, the historical Riga market, which we described at the beginning of the text and which supposedly existed on the Daugava embankment for about five centuries. A considerable part of the market area was occupied by administrative premises, warehouses and cellars. Traders were allocated an average of about 4m² of selling space, which cost them up to LVL 165 per square meter.

Meanwhile, other commercial premises in the city could be purchased for 20 lats per square meter, and space in the Vidzeme market for 80 lats per square metre. Small traders, who could not afford to rent new premises, and wholesalers, who had nowhere to place their employees and goods, were also dissatisfied. Refrigeration chambers and warehouses were also characterised by high rents. Because of all this, the prices for food at the Central Market were higher than in other parts of the city and were constantly rising—visits there were also unprofitable for customers.

The first Soviet occupation (from the summer of 1940) did not significantly affect the operation of the Central Market. However, during the occupation regime of the Third Reich, trade was extremely limited and from 1 September 1941 it was done only with cards. The arrangement of the market square for military purposes began. The two pavilions closest to the River Daugava were converted into a workshop for repairing car engines, and a firewood warehouse was built behind a temporary fence. Several pavilions of the Riga Central Market were destroyed during the active fighting in Riga in 1944. They were later rebuilt.

After the Soviet army entered Latvia and the end of World War II, the Central Market gradually regained its status as an important trading point of the city. At the same time, the operation of the Central Market changed fundamentally, as property rights and economic relations changed.

The pavilions of the central market were restructured: the former wholesale pavilion was used to sell meat products, while the other four pavilions were arranged by types of food products: the first pavilion sold milk and dairy products, the second pavilion sold cereals and bread, the third pavilion sold fruits, vegetables and root crops, and the fourth pavilion sold fish.

During the Soviet period, all Latvian markets became collective farm markets, while opportunities for trading products from household farms were preserved. In the mid-1970s, only 62 trading places in the Central Market were occupied by collective farms, and 800 by private farmers. At the same time, 144 trading outlets from state organisations selling industrial goods were operating in the market, while 21 collective farms were waiting in line for a place to trade.

Presumably in 1982, a fire broke out in a vegetable pavilion at the market due to an electric heater left on over the weekend. When extinguishing the fire, an unexpected complication was caused by the pavilion’s design features: the roof insulation between the layers of wooden battens was provided by peat plates, which were constantly smoldering, maintaining a very high temperature. To dismantle it, firefighters spent three days tearing off the roofing iron sheet by sheet. As the pavilion was filled with goods, the doors were not opened, and a cordon of soldiers from the Riga garrison was set up around the pavilion to ensure their safety. On the third day, the water in the pavilion was up to the waist.

On 18 October 1983, the Council of Ministers of the Latvian SSR declared the pavilion complex of the Central Collective Farmers’ Market a cultural monument of national importance.

After Latvia regained its independence in 1991, the introduction of free (market) economic relations was an important milestone in the development of the Central Market: it was quickly revitalised and many private entrepreneurs became active.