Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The City Public Market – a rough equivalent to today’s farmers markets – was apparently thriving at Stevens Street and Second Avenue.

According to an ad, the City Public Market included Bowman’s Sanitary Bakery (layer cakes, 22 cents), Fuller’s Butter Market (“everything kept in dustproof, flyproof cages”), Ito’s Fruit and Vegetables (“fancy home grown tomatoes”), Weeks’ Market Store (“Walla Walla Creamery Butter, 30 cents”) and Lane’s Bakery (“strictly homemade bread”).

It also included the Lewis Meat Market and the Welch Meat Market.

The ad said that these meat markets “bought in such large quantities to enable them to sell you the choicest cuts for just about half what your neighborhood market would ask.”

The City Public Market also touted its “up-to-date refrigeration.”

From the war beat: The war in Europe was having unexpected effects in the Northwest.

A dispatch from Portland reported that the price of imported Coburger beer, from Germany, was rising in local taverns from 10 cents to 15 cents “due to the war menace.”

Not everybody found this to be a bad thing.

Upon hearing the news, a local prohibition leader said, “Lord be praised!”