Kensington Market's identity has been shaped by successive waves of immigration. Originally a Jewish immigrant neighbourhood in the early 20th century — when it was known informally as the Jewish Market — its open-air stalls and tight laneways were filled with vendors selling live poultry, fish, and dry goods. The physical fabric of that era survives almost intact, giving the area a rare density of early 20th-century commercial vernacular architecture.

From the mid-20th century onward, Portuguese, Caribbean, Latin American, and Southeast Asian communities each layered their presence onto the neighbourhood, making it one of the most genuinely multicultural urban pockets in Canada. Designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 2006, Kensington Market remains defiantly independent, a pedestrian-scaled place of vintage shops, global grocers, and an enduring counterculture spirit.