Shops and Walthamstow Market
The High Street is dominated by Walthamstow Market, which began in 1885, and occupies all but the last 100 metres of the street. It is reputed to be a mile long, but in fact measures approximately one kilometre. The market is open five days a week (not Sunday or Monday), and there is currently a Sunday farmers' market. Occasionally, a 'French' market takes place although the stalls are not necessarily French. The street is lined with shops: a selection of high-street chains, but also many independent small shops specialising in food, fabrics, household goods etc. as well as cafés. The overall tone is downmarket and unique. There are two patches of new-ish development: at Sainsburys, and The Mall Selborne Walk covered shopping centre both of which have large multi-storey car parks.
The historic Central Library on the High Street was one of many built with money donated by the Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, whose portrait bust can be seen on the exterior of the building. It was modernised and expanded in 2006-2007, although there were claims that this was at the expense of book holdings. According to the Waltham Forest Guardian, "almost a quarter of a million books have gone missing from Waltham Forest libraries amid claims they have been burned or pulped" and the borough's library stock fell by 60% over the two previous years. At the same time, a large plot at the corner of High Street and Hoe Street was set for substantial redevelopment as a retail space. This site was previously the location of the town's central Post Office and a shopping arcade, originally built in the 1960s. Plans for the redevelopment of this site fell through in 2005. It is now a pedestrianised area and is occasionally used as a site for funfairs, charity events, the council's Christmas tree and various other activities.
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Famous quotes containing the words shops and, shops and/or market:
“I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Some men love only to talk where they are masters. They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand—a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods—or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)