A Decoration Day morning of buying and selling at the Canal Street flower market

Looking to buy fresh flowers, plants, or other greenery in the New York City of 1880? Various flower markets existed across the city, and one small market sat at the foot of Canal Street and the Hudson River. Here, flower and plant dealers hauled their wares every day and set them out from horse-drawn carts and wagons. Business might have been pretty good for these dealers, as New York “spends more money annually upon flowers than any other city in the world,” proclaimed an 1893 article in The World. But this scene shows the Canal Street flower market on Decoration Day, when flowers would have been in very high demand. Decoration Day, of course, was the original name for Memorial Day, a Federal holiday instituted in 1868 so people could decorate the graves of Civil War soldiers with flowers and flags. Presumably, the women and girls (and a few men) looking over the goods at the flower market in the illustration will be heading next to Green-Wood or Cypress Hills Cemetery, or another…