Market Street looking north from 9th Street, Wilmington, DE, 1946

About this postcard

Looking north along Market Street from Ninth Street, with tall commercial blocks lining both sides, pedestrians on the sidewalks, and automobiles parked and moving at the curb. A yellow trolley or bus recedes toward the horizon under a warm evening sky, and the street runs on toward Rodney Square, one block north. Market Street was Wilmington's principal shopping and office thoroughfare through the mid-20th century, and the tight packing of commercial buildings here shows how much of the city's retail life fit into a few blocks of one street. By the late 1940s the trolley lines that had shaped the street were giving way to buses, and the automobiles in the view had become the main way shoppers reached downtown.