The Original Farmers Market (1934): the vacant lot at 3rd and Fairfax that became LA's first food hall

Before “food hall” was a real-estate category, Los Angeles had one at the corner of 3rd and Fairfax, and it started the way the best LA institutions tend to: improvised, on land nobody was using. In July 1934, a businessman, Roger Dahlhjelm, and an advertising copywriter, Fred Beck, pitched A.F. Gilmore — whose family’s old dairy ranch (later the Gilmore Oil land) sat at 3rd and Fairfax — on a “Village” where local farmers could sell fresh produce, and about 18 farmers parked their trucks on the vacant lot and sold off the tailgate ^[1]. That ad hoc produce market grew, put up stalls, added a white clock tower that became its landmark, and never really stopped. The slogan — “Meet me at Third and Fairfax” — has been doing its work for the better part of a century ^[1].

What it became

The Original Farmers Market is, functionally, a food hall that predates the term: a sprawl of independent stalls — produce, butchers, a fishmonger, candy, nuts, ice cream, and a wide ring of prepared-food counters under open-air roofs, with shared tables in the middle. It’s not a restaurant and not a mall; it’s a permanent market that happens to be one of the densest concentrations of small food businesses in the city. That’s the structural reason it should be carried in the directory as a parent place — an anchor record with its stalls hung off it — rather than a single listing. (As of this writing it is, oddly, not yet a DB record at all; this note is partly a flag to create one.)

The old tenants

Two names anchor the “still here” story:

• Magee’s Kitchen — dates to 1917, which makes it older than the market itself: Blanche Magee’s kitchen debuted inside downtown’s Grand Central Market on October 27, 1917, and moved onto the 3rd-and-Fairfax lot when the market was established in 1934, becoming its first restaurant tenant. It is the only original 1934 tenant still operating ^[2].
• Du-par’s — the coffee shop / pie counter opened at the market in 1938 (founders James Dunn and Edward Parsons combined their surnames into “Du-Par’s“), and the Farmers Market Du-par’s is the original of what later became a small chain ^[3].

The newer ring

The market kept absorbing tenants. Over the decades the prepared-food ring picked up Pampas Grill (the churrasco-by-the-pound Brazilian counter that became a cult favorite), ¡Lotería! Grill — which began here as a Farmers Market counter stall in summer 2002 before chef Jimmy Shaw spun it into a four-restaurant group — Singapore’s Banana Leaf, and a long list of others (tacos, gumbo, Korean, French crêpes, doughnuts, the works) ^[3]. The market is a genuine incubator: a low-rent stall where an idea can prove itself before it needs a lease elsewhere — the same dynamic the rest of this project keeps finding in LA strip malls, just older and roofed.

The Grove next door

In 2002, Caruso Affiliated opened The Grove — an open-air shopping center — on the parcel immediately east, connected to the market by a trolley line ^[4]. The relationship is uneasy and much-discussed: the Grove brought foot traffic and a much larger crowd; it also brought a manufactured-streetscape adjacency that makes the genuinely-old market feel, to some, like the Grove’s quaint annex. Both things are true. The market predates the Grove by sixty-eight years and will, with luck, outlast it.

Why it’s in the directory

The Original Farmers Market is an LA legacy-food landmark and a “founded here, still here” story — 1934, the clock tower, Magee’s (1917), Du-par’s (1938) — and it should be modeled as a parent_place anchor: one record for the market, with the notable stalls (Magee’s, Du-par’s, Pampas Grill, Loteria’s origin, Singapore’s Banana Leaf, and the rest) attached. On the Fairfax/3rd map it’s the legacy node alongside Canter’s (Fairfax, 1948/1953) and the broader Mid-City–Fairfax district.

Draft — Search session, 2026-05-11. Citations hardened 2026-05-12. Fact-check status: 1934 founding (Roger Dahlhjelm + Fred Beck, ~18 farmers on the Gilmore land), Magee’s 1917 origin at Grand Central Market and 1934 move to the lot, Du-par’s 1938 (Dunn + Parsons), and ¡Lotería! Grill’s 2002 stall-origin (Jimmy Shaw) — all CONFIRMED. OPEN ITEM: the Original Farmers Market is still not a DB record — parent_place_slug: original-farmers-market-1934 here is a placeholder; muy must create the parent-place record this note anchors to before publish. Confirm the Caruso/Grove URL when adding it.