Bahamas Philately: Straw Market

Located on Bay Street in downtown Nassau, The Nassau Straw Market has been growing throughout The Bahamas and the Caribbean since the early 1940′s. Following the end of World War II, many North Americans began visiting The Bahamas for their vacations, and straw craft souvenirs soon grew in popularity.

The craft and skills of plaiting, braiding, and weaving were one of the most important cottage industries in the Bahamas. Bahamians led subsistence lifestyles, with baskets being used for carrying fruit and fishing traps.

The straw industry in Bahamas started in the 1920s when the Prince George Wharf was built. A group of enterprising Fox Hill ladies began taking their sisal goods to Rawson Square to sell to ship passengers. They were soon followed by fruit and vegetable vendors who began selling straw work on the Market Range .Over the next few decades the straw trade grew along with tourism.

During the 1950s, the growing number of straw vendors became a cause controversy, competing as they did with the powerful Bay Street merchants for tourist dollars in the heart of the city. There were frequent complaints about the poor conditions in which these enterprising women had to work.

By the next decade the straw market had become a big political football. In 1963 the 62-year-old Market House was condemned and there was talk of a new market on the Adderley property. Although that never panned out, the government did build an open-air arcade for straw vendors in Rawson Square.