Pike Place Market

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Pike Place Market
(U.S. National Register of Historic Places)

Location:	Seattle, Washington United States
Added to NRHP:	March 13, 1970

Pike Place Market is a public market overlooking the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle, Washington, United States. The Market, which opened August 17, 1907, is the third-oldest continually-operational farmer's market in the country behind Soulard Farmers' Market in St. Louis, Missouri and the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is patterned in part after a Turkish souq. It is a place of business for many small merchants and a popular tourist destination. Located in the downtown area, it occupies over 9 acres (36,000 m²). The Market is bounded by First Avenue to the east, Western Avenue to the west, Virginia Street to the north, and, to the south, a line drawn from First to Western Avenues halfway between Pike Street and Union Street. It is named after its central street, Pike Place, which runs northwest from Pike Street to Virginia Street.

The Market is built on the edge of a steep hill. It has several lower levels below the main level, featuring a variety of unique shops. Antique dealers, comic book sellers, and small family-owned restaurants are joined by one of the few remaining head shops in Seattle. The upper street level features fishmongers, fresh produce stands, and craft stalls operating in the covered arcades. Local farmers sell year-round in the arcades from tables they rent on a daily basis.

1 Location
2 History
3 Major attractions
4 Notable buildings
5 Notable people
6 Gallery
7 References
8 See also
9 External links
10 Map It

[edit] Location

Pike Place Market, looking west on Pike Street from First Avenue

The market is surrounded by Belltown on the north and the central business district and the central waterfront on the east and south, respectively. Boundaries are diagonal to the compass since the street grid is roughly parallel to Elliott Bay.^[1] The boundaries enclosing 17 acres are nearly those approved by the Washington Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, created by the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act. The concentration of historic buildings effectively defines the neighborhood. Compromise with pressure by developers and the Seattle Establishment^[2] subsequently reduced the official Pike Place Market Historic District designation to the 9 acres, up from the 1.7 conceded by development interests.^[3]

The neighborhood elevation is several hundred feet and the slope steep, so views can be impressive, but for the block-shaped Alaskan Way Viaduct built in 1953. The heart of the neighborhood is the Pike Place Market and Victor Steinbrueck Park.

The original shore was mudflats below the bluffs west of Pike Place. In the later 19th century, Railroad Avenue was built on pilings through filled mudflats along what is now Western Avenue, with Alaskan Way built farther out as the fill was extended. Piers with warehouses for convenient stevedoring were extended northwest as filling was completed by 1905.^[4] The Pike Place Market is listed in the United States National Register of Historic Places.

[edit] History

Looking east from the Elliott Bay waterfront near Pike Street. The first Washington Hotel (1891-1906, center, background) sits atop the small, steep Denny Hill, regraded in 1906-1907. At the shore is Railroad Avenue on pilings, now Western Avenue. Alaskan Way apparently does not yet exist, so this is before the completion of filling in 1905.

Between 1906 and 1907 the price of onions rose from 10 cents per pound to $1.00 per pound. (By comparison, a pair of shoes cost $2). Seattle citizens, angry at price-gouging middlemen, pressured the city to establish a public market whereby customers could 'meet the producer' directly (this philosophy was more or less remained the same to this day). City councilman Thomas Revelle spearheaded the drive to start a Saturday morning market. And so on Saturday,August 17, 1907^[3] roughly ten farmers pulled up their wagons on a boardwalk adjacent to the Leland Hotel. After an enthusiastic response from local shoppers, the first building at the Market was opened in late 1907^[4]. Within a decade, the Corner Market, Economy Market, Sanitary Market, and North Arcade were subsequently built.

By the 1940s, more than two-thirds of the stalls in Pike Place Market were owned by Japanese-Americans. Following Executive Order 9066 in February of 1942, all Americans of Japanese ancestry in the "exclusion zone" of western Washington, western Oregon, California, and southern Arizona were interned in camps. Their property, including any stalls at Pike Place, was confiscated and sold.

In 1963, a proposal was floated to demolish Pike Place Market and replace it with Pike Plaza, which would include a hotel, an apartment building, four office buildings, a hockey arena, and a parking garage. This was supported by the mayor, many on the city council, and a number of market property owners. However, there was significant community opposition, including help from Betty Bowen and others from the board of Friends of the Market, and an initiative was passed on November 2, 1971 that created a historic preservation zone. The Pike Place Market Public Development Authority was created and the market buildings were brought into public ownership.

Victor Steinbrueck Park, just northwest of the market, was named in 1985 after the architect who was instrumental in the market's preservation.

[edit] Major attractions

The market is famous for stunning displays of fruits and vegetables

The first Starbucks store, founded nearby in 1971, moved to its present location at Pike Place Market in 1976

One of the Market's major attractions is Pike Place Fish Market, where employees throw fish to each other rather than passing them by hand. The "flying fish" have appeared in an episode of the television sitcom Frasier that was shot on location and have been featured on The Learning Channel.

Starbucks Coffee was founded near Pike Place Market in 1971. The first store relocated to Pike Place Market in 1976, where it is still in operation. The sign outside this branch, unlike others, features a bare-breasted siren. It also features a large pig statue covered in roasted coffee beans.

[edit] Notable buildings

The Pike Market neighborhood is largely defined by the concentration of historic buildings in the small area. Due to complexities and competing interests, only some if not few historic structures or places are officially designated. The Alaska Trade Building (1900–1924), 1915–1919 1st Avenue;^[5] the Late Victorian style Butterworth Building (1900-1924), 1921 1st Avenue, originally a mortuary;^[6] the Guiry and Schillestad Building (Young Hotel or Schillestad Buildings, 1900-1949), 2101-2111 1st Avenue;^[7] and the Renaissance style New Washington Hotel (Josephinum Hotel, (1900–1949), 1902 Second Avenue,^[8] are officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Pike Place Market is also a building, the arcade (1907) which is the original Main Market, and an Historic District. Extant buildings are the arcade, the Outlook Hotel and Triangle Market (1908), Sanitary Market (1910), extended arcade (1911), Corner Market building (1912), Fairley Building (1914), and Economy Market (c. 1914–17, nee Bartell Building, 1900). The Sanitary Market was so named for its innovation at the time, that no horses were allowed inside.^[9]

A postcard from the Moore Hotel and Theater, c. 1907.

The Moore Theater (1907), on the corner of 2nd Avenue at Virginia Street, is the oldest still-extant theater in Seattle. Innovative architecture, luxurious materials, and sumptuous decor characterized the Moore (including an apartheid balcony with separate entrances, though the balcony was well-appointed for its day). The staging area was the largest of any theater in Seattle, with an electrical system that was state-of-the-art for its time, and unusually numerous dresesing rooms. Seating 2436, the Moore was one the largest theatres in the U.S. at the time. Other innovations included a hotel, intended for the the 10th anniversary 1907 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (rescheduled for 1909). The Moore was a lavish social venue for the Robber Baron elite of Gilded Age and early 20th century Seattle. Excellent programming carried the Moore through the 1930s, but changes in entertainment gradually led to struggling to survive by the 1970s. The Moore Theatre and Hotel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.^[10] The Moore became the Moore-Egyptan (after the luxury motion picture theatre on The Ave in the University District, converted to a drugstore c. 1960). The Moore-Egyptan was rescued as a movie theatre with innovative programming, and became the original home for the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF, 1976). Dan Ireland and Darryl Macdonald were the leading talents in the success. Moore owners declined to renew the lease, and the SIFF moved to the Masonic Temple on Capitol Hill. The Moore has hosted touring musicians and theatrical productions since the 1980s, currently seating about 1,400.^[11]

The Seattle Aquarium (1977) is on the waterfront at Pier 59. The waterfront includes the turn of the century piers 59, 61, 62, and 63. The city purchased piers 59–61 in 1971 after the central waterfront had been abandoned by freight shipping for years, supplanted by container shipping. Historic Piers 60 and 61 were later removed for aquarium expansion. In 1979 an OMNIMAX theatre opened (now Seattle IMAXDome), at the time one of only about half a dozen in the world.^[12] The theater is an early tilted dome iteration of IMAX.

[edit] Notable people

In addition to Dan Ireland and Darryl Macdonald, who were instrumental in rescuing the Moore Theater and in establishing the SIFF, Victor Steinbrueck was the leading architect-activist in defining the Pike Market neighborhood, and artist Mark Tobey in visualizing and recording, in developing his "Northwest Mystic" style of the internationally-recognized Northwest School of art. Internationally recognized in the 1940s, Tobey explored the neighborhood with his art in the 1950s and early 1960s,^[13] as the area was being increasingly characterized by the Seattle Establishment as overdue for urban renewal, particularly replacement with a parking garage, high-rise housing and modern, upscale retail.^[14] People of city neighborhoods and citizen preservation activists struggled through the 1960s, culminating in 1971 with 2 to 1 passage of a citizen initiative for protection and citizen oversight of the core Pike Place Market that has since largely protected the neighborhood.^[15]

[edit] Gallery

Approaching the entrance as crowds of people form during a spring day	The Pike Place Market is always busy with foot traffic	Inside, showing sign above staircase	Inside the market
Lowell's Restaurant	Chili peppers offered for sale at the Pike Place Market	A greengrocer	A fishmonger
Pike Place Fish Market

[edit] References

^ (1) "Pike Market". Seattle City Clerk's Neighborhood Map Atlas. Office of the Seattle City Clerk (n.d., map .Jpg [sic] dated 2002-06-13). Retrieved on July 21, 2006.
Maps "NN-1030S", "NN-1040S".jpg 17 June 2002. [xor] Maps "NN-1120S", "NN-1130S", "NN-1140S".Jpg [sic] 13 June.
(2) "About the Seattle City Clerk's On-line Information Services". Information Services. Seattle City Clerk's Office (Revised 2006-04-30). Retrieved on May 21, 2006.
See heading, "Note about limitations of these data".
(3) Shenk, Carol; Pollack, Laurie; Dornfeld, Ernie; Frantilla, Anne; and Neman, Chris (2002-06-26, maps .jpg c. 2002-06-15). "About neighborhood maps". Seattle City Clerk's Office Neighborhood Map Atlas. Office of the Seattle City Clerk, Information Services. Retrieved on April 21, 2006.
Sources for this atlas and the neighborhood names used in it include a 1980 neighborhood map produced by the Department of Community Development (relocated to the Department of Neighborhoods] and other agencies [1]), Seattle Public Library indexes, a 1984-1986 Neighborhood Profiles feature series in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, numerous parks, land use and transportation planning studies, and records in the Seattle Municipal Archives [2].
Complete detail of sources (with links) for Shenk et al in Seattle neighborhoods#Informal districts and Bibliography.
^ Speidel (1967)
^ Crowley
^ Phelps, pp. 71-73
^ "Alaska Trade Building". WASHINGTON - King County. National Register of Historic Places (1971). Retrieved on July 21, 2006.
p. 1 of 5
^ "Butterworth Building". WASHINGTON - King County. National Register of Historic Places (1971). Retrieved on July 21, 2006.
p. 1 of 5
^ "Guiry and Schillestad Building". WASHINGTON - King County. National Register of Historic Places (1985). Retrieved on July 21, 2006.
p. 2 of 5
^ "New Washington Hotel". WASHINGTON - King County. National Register of Historic Places (1989 added). Retrieved on July 21, 2006.
p. 3 of 5
^ (1) Lange
(2) Crowley
^ "Index by State and Name". National Register of Historic Places: State and Resource Name. ParkNet, National Park Service. Retrieved on July 21, 2006.
^ Flom
^ McRoberts
^ (1) Lehmann
(2) Long
^ Crowley
^ (1) Lange
(2) Crowley
(3) Wilma