Freight House Marketplace to Celebrate Centennial
Quad Cities Food Hub and the City of Davenport, in conjunction with the other tenants of the Freight House Marketplace (Front Street Brewery Taproom, Fresh Deli, and the Freight House Farmers Market) are planning a centennial celebration of the Freight House Marketplace for Saturday August 26, 2017. The celebration will take place from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM, with a brief program with Mayor Klipsch, the Davenport City Council, the Riverfront Improvement Commission and tenants of the building at 11:00 AM in the concrete octagon center pavilion of the Freight House Marketplace. The Quad Cities Food Hub will be providing cake and children’s activities such as face painting and cookie decorating. The River City Dixie, Racing, Marching Society Good Time Brass Band will be marching throughout the market from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM.
After 1900, Davenport’s downtown gained importance as a retail and wholesale center. To serve these commercial activities, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad constructed this Freight Station in 1917. The functional building consisted of a two-story office block at one end and a low warehouse and loading dock at the other. With railroad tracks on the south, tracks and street on the north and loading docks on both sides, freight hauled in by train could be easily transferred for distribution to Davenport’s wholesale warehouse and retail stores.
As of 2017, the Freight House Marketplace is completely comprised of local businesses. The Quad Cities Food Hub and the Freight House Farmers Market both provide fresh, locally sourced foods, which echoes back to the original intention of the building when it served as a wholesale center and warehouse for fresh foods. Fresh Deli and the Front Street Brewery Taproom both boast local entrepreneurs that have proven themselves as integral parts of the downtown riverfront collection of businesses.
About the Quad Cities Food Hub – The mission of Quad Cities Food Hub is to support local
food production, connecting producers and consumers; cultivate education and training programs; preserve and expand sustainable agriculture; foster local economic development; and promote healthy lifestyles through use of local foods, including underserved individuals and communities.
Some of the Quad Cities Food Hub’s programs and events are a Community Kitchen, Garden Series, online resources for growers, Local Market Store, Virtual Market, Veggie Mobile, Seed Savers Exchange, Community Gardens.
