Luen Wo Market was built in 1951 by the Luen Wo Land Investment Company Limited, which was formed by a group of local leaders and merchants in 1946.
When Luen Wo Market was inaugurated in 1951, it was the largest market built in the New Territories at that time. People went there to buy daily necessities including vegetables and fish. It became a thriving and important market centre with a bazaar of open-air stalls behind it and shop-houses in the surrounding streets. Luen Wo Market and Shek Wu Hui of the Liu Clan were once two major markets and landmarks in Sheung Shui.
Until the 1980s, the large open space in front of the Market building maintained a “1-4-7 schedule” when hawkers or farmers would sell their goods and farm produce on particular days of each lunar month. The “1-4-7 schedule” was intentionally set in order to clash with that of the Shek Wu Market, so that people could choose which market to attend. Luen Wo Market lasted for 50 years until 2002 when all the stalls were relocated to the Luen Wo Hui Market and Cooked Food Centre. The building is now being leased out on short term lease for use as a recyclable collection centre and green market.
The architect was Mr. Mok Yeuk Chan who adopted an early Modernist style for this simple one-storey building. The building has a symmetrical E-shaped plan with brick and concrete columns supporting a reinforced concrete roof of beams and slabs. Two management offices, two toilets (now demolished) and rows of stalls situated on both sides of the aisles were provided. There are seven entrances altogether. The rendered walls are painted. The flat roof, which has a portion of raised pitched roof with clearstory over the aisles, is concealed behind stepped up parapet walls at entrances. Projecting canopies over the entrances and windows also run around the building.