Boston Flower Exchange - History

History

The Boston Cooperative Flower Growers Association leased the first space for a wholesale growers' market in 1892 in an empty storefront on Tremont Street, near the current Park Street T Station. Before the end of the year the location was overcrowded and the Board of Directors decided to lease the basement of the Park Street Church in 1894. As the success of the market continued to attract more growers and buyers, the market was forced to move again in 1903, this time to 163 Columbus Avenue. When the stalls in the newly renovated market were auctioned off, the exorbitant prices pushed some of the growers to form another organization, named the Boston Cooperative Market, which opened in the basement of the old Music Hall.

The Flower Exchange was founded in 1909 when the two organizations combined in order to find a building that could better meet their collective needs. They moved once more to Winthrop Square before settling on the Cyclorama Building on Tremont Street in 1923, which once housed the famous panoramic painting of the battle Gettysburg. Due to the increasingly haphazard parking situation and plans by the controversial Boston Redevelopment Authority to purchase the Cyclorama building, the original home to the Gettysburg Cyclorama, now the main building of the Boston Center for the Arts, the Board of Directors began looking for a new location in 1963.

In 1941 the market became wholesale only with admission by badge at the petition of group of local florists. In 1957 the first product from outside New England, anemones from New York, were admitted for sale on a trial basis. The market was opened to all imported products in 1965 after the Board of Directors approved a petition by one of the wholesalers. Commissioned salesmen were first approved in 1958, allowing salesmen and wholesale companies to sell the product instead of than the growers themselves to attend their booths.

During the first half of the twentieth century the New England region rose to prominence as a cut flower producer, cultivating many varieties of hybrid roses and carnations in greenhouses. The New England Carnation Growers Association had as many as 125 members but rising oil prices forced many out of business and the association was abandoned in 1980.

The Boston Flower Exchange Inc. moved to its location on Albany Street in 1971. As the construction of the new building was on Reclaimed land, the process greatly slowed by the discovery of many old wharf pilings, seawalls and sewers. The 73,000-square-foot (6,800 m2) building has over 10,000 square feet (930 m2) of refrigerated space. When the market first opened there were more than 40 wholesalers accessible through a single switchboard operator.