Mercado Central de Santiago

1 · Opening

The Mercado Central was not built as a market. It opened on 23 August 1872 as the venue for the Exposición Nacional de Artes e Industrias, and became a market afterwards.

2 · Why it matters

A fire destroyed the old Plaza de Abastos in 1864; construction of a replacement began in 1869. What went up was among the major prefabricated buildings of the late nineteenth century: an iron structure designed by the English engineer Edward Woods with the architect Charles Henry Driver, cast by Messrs R. Laidlaw & Sons in Glasgow, shipped to Chile and assembled on a square plan enclosed by masonry — a central pyramidal roof under a domed tower, ringed by eight smaller two-tier roofs.

The building drew international attention for its ironwork before it sold a single fish. It was inaugurated by President Federico Errázuriz Zañartu during the national exhibition staged by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, then intendant of Santiago — an honour not usually extended to a food market, because on that day it was not one.

Every other conversion in this register runs the other way. San Miguel and Enfants Rouges were markets that became dining rooms; Florence built a food hall over a market. Santiago is the only case of a market that began as a display of national industry and then had to be filled with trade.

3 · Signature & ritual

Fermín Vivaceta is the signature, and the omission is the point. He was born in 1829 to a working-class family, apprenticed in a furniture factory at thirteen and studied at night, and became one of the first students of the Academia de Bellas Artes. He was the architect in charge of erecting an imported British iron skeleton in a seismic country — with the builder Juan Estephani, and after Manuel Aldunate had laid out the masonry square the structure would cover.

The British publications of the period record Woods, Driver and Laidlaw. They do not mention the Chilean architects. The register has now met this three times: Jahanara built so her name would not be forgotten and the market is called her father's; Kipling is credited for the carvings of Indian farmers at Crawford; and here the men who put the thing up are absent from the account of who made it.

5 · LHL connections

• LHL-S-231Ver-o-PesoThe other South American iron hall cast in Britain and shipped across the Atlantic.
• LHL-S-228Nagycsarnok — Central Market HallThe Belle Époque market hall built at home, by a national architect who is remembered.
• LHL-S-218Borough MarketThe other market held and run by the people who trade in it.

6 · Timeline

• 1817A Plaza de Abastos operates on the site beside the Mapocho.
• 1864Fire destroys the Plaza del Abasto.
• 1869Construction begins; the iron structure is cast by R. Laidlaw & Sons in Glasgow to Woods and Driver’s design and shipped to Chile.
• 1872The building is inaugurated on 23 August by President Errázuriz Zañartu as the venue for the Exposición Nacional de Artes e Industrias, organised by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna.
• 1927–30The northern face of the market is demolished.
• 1984The building is declared a National Monument on 15 June.
• 2012National Geographic ranks it among the leading food markets in the world.

7 · LHL story

“Assembled by a Carpenter’s Son” — Santiago’s market arrived from Glasgow in numbered parts and opened as a national exhibition. The Chilean who put it up is missing from the British account of who built it.