West Side Market
West Side Market is a supermarket at 110th and Broadway. After being closed for three years due to the construction of a new building on its site, it reopened on June 1, 2007.[1]
History
The market originally located on the ground floor of the terracotta building then located on the northeast corner of 110th and Broadway. With a reputation for being much cheaper than other local supermarkets, particularly Morton Williams and D'Ag, it was highly popular with Columbia students. West Side shared its building with Columbia Hot Bagels and the Chinese Dynasty Restaurant. When the building owner decided to build a condiminium at the site, West Side Market, CoBag, and Dynasty had to close. [2]
The shuttering of West Side was a traumatic event for the Morningside Heights community. When its front windows were boarded up, locals wrote love letters to the old store, recalling episodes from their lives that took place in its aisles and threatening to move away from the neighborhood if it did not return.
Legal wrangling over zoning law caused several months of construction delays, ending in the destruction of what was then the oldest existing commercial structure in Morningside Heights. [3] West Side Market opted to return to the new building, while CoBag and Dynasty chose not to. [4]
