This day in history in 2001 September 4 a fire on bay street swallowed up the historic world famous straw market in Nassau… a fire said to be set after a lover’s quarrel; peanut vendor Courdney Gardiner was arrested and sentenced to two years for the mammoth blaze which sent vendors screaming from the building… today there is a new 38,000 sq ft site for the 500 straw vendors on Bay Street in Nassau. That original straw market was established in the 1940s after the sponging industry plummeted.
