Haverhill's Farmers Market Moves Indoors for Winter, Into a Shoe Factory on Essex Street
October 29, 2026
October 29, 2026
Saturday, Oct. 31, is the last outdoor Haverhill Farmers Market of 2026 on Bradford Common, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 10 Church Street. In past years, that was the end of the season. This year the market comes back three weeks later on the other side of the river. Starting Saturday, Nov. 21, it runs inside an eight-story concrete building on Essex Street that went up in 1912 as a shoe factory.
The move makes the Essex Street factories the center of a winter Saturday downtown. The Historic New England Center at 143 Essex Street has been open since June. The Museum of Printing on Thornton Avenue is open only on Saturdays. What the two lacked was a reason for people to come back every month. Now there is one.
Over the winter, the market switches from every Saturday to one Saturday a month. It also opens an hour later. WHAV reported that the winter market falls on the third Saturday of each month and runs 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
| Date | Location | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Saturday, Oct. 31 | Bradford Common, 10 Church Street | 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
| Saturday, Nov. 21 | Historic New England Center, 143 Essex Street | 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
| Saturday, Dec. 19 | Historic New England Center, 143 Essex Street | 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
| Saturday, Jan. 16 | Historic New England Center, 143 Essex Street | 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
| Saturday, Feb. 20 | Historic New England Center, 143 Essex Street | 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
The schedule published so far stops at February. No March dates have been announced. Historic New England has agreed to host for one year at no cost, according to WHAV's report. That makes this first winter a trial run.
For parking, WHAV pointed to the MeVa garage on Granite Street and a surface lot just past the railroad underpass near Historic New England's buildings.
This is the market's second attempt at a winter season. Market manager Jeff Grassie told WHAV that he ran an earlier version years ago at the Universalist Unitarian Church on Kenoza Avenue. That space turned out to be too small. He had been looking for an indoor space that could hold about 40 regular vendors.
"This has kind of been in the planning stages for about two-three years now," Grassie told WHAV, adding that his vendors kept pushing for it.
The opening came from Historic New England. Project manager Marilyn Keith Daly had been promoting plans for the organization to run a regular booth at the summer market. That's how the two sides got talking. WHAV reports that nearly all of the market's 38 current vendors have signed on for the winter, each paying $25 per market to sell fall and winter crops, gifts, prepared foods, and drinks. Three of the vendors WHAV named:
Team Haverhill provides volunteers for the market, in partnership with Creative Haverhill.
The vendors set up at the back of the renovated mill floor. To reach them, you walk through the center's main reception area and past its first exhibit, "Shoe Stories: Past, Present, Future." Daly described that layout to WHAV as part of the plan.
"So, when people come and visit us at the Historic New England Center for the winter farmers market, we hope that they will stop in, see our inaugural exhibition, learn a bit about our 38 historic New England properties in New England and perhaps get a membership," Daly told WHAV.
The building itself is part of the exhibit. Haverhill architect Charles Willis Damon designed it and its twin, the Lang building at 151 Essex Street, in 1912 for Boston bankers William H. Burgess and Howard W. Lang. At the time they were the largest concrete shoe factories in the world. Historic New England bought the Lang building in 2006 to store its collections and bought the Burgess building at 143 Essex in 2023. Stuart Weitzman started his career in Haverhill in one of these buildings, working with his father at Mr. Seymour Shoes.
WHAV's preview of the opening lists the exhibit's five sections:
The same preview mentions footwear designed for Beyoncé, Walter Gropius, and Boston Ballet principal Diana Albrecht. Historic New England's exhibit page says the show begins with eighteenth-century shoes and ends with sneakers from JEMS, which it calls the first Black sneaker factory in the United States. The exhibit listing runs it through December 2027, so it will be there for every winter market date.
Admission is free, and you don't need a ticket. The center is closed through Wednesday, Nov. 4, for planned exterior work on the building. When it opened in June, the center's hours were noon to 5 p.m. on Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and noon to 8 p.m. on Fridays. The market opens at 10 a.m., two hours before those Saturday gallery hours began. Check the visit page before you go if you want to see the galleries along with the market.
The Museum of Printing at 15 Thornton Ave. is open to the public on Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The museum opened in North Andover and moved to Haverhill in 2016, according to Harvard Magazine. Its collection covers printing presses, typesetting, photography and plate-making, and bindery. The museum says it holds the world's only collection of phototypesetting machines, fonts, and related materials.
The two institutions have already been planning Saturdays together. On Oct. 10, they co-hosted Jeff Jarvis's book launch. Coffee and the talk took place at the Historic New England Haverhill Center in the morning, and a Linotype demo followed at the Museum of Printing that afternoon. The winter market gives that kind of pairing a monthly date to build on.
The first one lines up neatly. The museum's calendar lists a Garage Sale on Nov. 21, the same Saturday the market opens on Essex Street. Other dates at the museum this season:
Book Arts Open Studio meets on the second Saturday of each month, and participants pay a $10 studio fee. The museum's events page lists the Dec. 5 viewing at $25 for members and $50 for everyone else.
Using only the published hours, the first winter market Saturday could go like this:
The Historic New England Center isn't waiting until December to host its next market. On Friday, Nov. 27, the day after Thanksgiving, the center hosts "Handmade in New England, A Holiday Market," presented by Lindsay Jordan, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It features pottery, jewelry, home goods, artwork, and specialty foods, with live music, and no registration is required.
Other dates on the Greater Haverhill Chamber calendar:
Before any of that, there's one more outdoor event. HILL-O-WEEN, from the Chamber and the Mayor's Office, fills Washington Square with jack-o'-lanterns on Friday, Oct. 30. Bring your carved pumpkin between 5 and 6 p.m., and they're lit after 6 p.m.
Ward 1 City Councilor Ralph T. Basiliere told WHAV he was "thrilled" the market is coming "to Historic New England in the heart of Ward 1," describing the center as "this beautiful public space to come together and support local vendors." The next test is Saturday, Dec. 19, the second winter market, when the space will show whether people come back a second time.
I keep a close eye on downtown Haverhill, and Essex Street is one of the spots I'm watching this winter. If you'd like to talk about what the Historic New England Center and the winter market mean for your own corner of the city, Juan Concepcion would be glad to hear from you. Schedule a consultation, in English or Spanish.
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