Seattle's Pike Place Market

From Farm to Market. The market is a fragile kaleidoscope of merchants, mostly foreign born and fiercely independent.
Elizabeth Tanner, Pike Place Market Initiative, 1971.

THE NATION'S LONGEST RUNNING MARKET

The Market represents an essential human need to engage in face-to-face transactions.

There are historic markets such as Cleveland’s West Side Market, Philadelphia’s Reading Market, as well as newly developed market halls in Milwaukee, Little Rock, and Portland, Maine.

One of the most famous is Seattle’s Pike Place market,

Seattle's Pike Place Market was born from some visionary leadership in city government at the turn of the century and farmers' resistance to the unfair practices by middlemen and shortly afterwards hungry developers whose primary interest was capitalizing on the land.

Although there were over 3000 farms in the farmlands surrounding Seattle, city residents had poor access to fresh produce. Food prices were beyond the average person because buying and selling of produce was controlled by middlemen found in Commission Houses along what was known as Produce Row. These middlemen controlled prices on both ends. Consequently, it was common for produce to be thrown in Seattle's Elliott Bay or to be left rotting in a fertile valley.

A farmers market where the buyer could meet the producer-farmer was a vision of a city councilman, Thomas P. Revelle.

The councilman revived a city ordinance passed in 1893, similar to that of other cities at the time.

In July 1907, the ordinance was finally put into effect and on a rainy city on August 16, 1907 Pike Place Market opened for business.

The Selling of the Market, Produced by Friends of the Market

Less than a dozen farmers showed up, but their produce was grabbed by socialites and workers. In the following weeks, hundreds of wagons lined up along Seattle's Pike Street.

By 1908 tented awnings were in place. Wagons and a few cars competed for diminishing parking space on Pike Street. The shopping experience was perpetually muddy and chaotic.

The facade of the market was born when Frank Goodwin, a self-taught architect, sketched plans for a building on the back of an envelope. His initial plan called for 76 stalls.  Goodwin, had an eye for real estate investment. He  also had around $50,000 in gold to spend on the project from a claim he had worked in Alaska.

Three and a half months after the market's opening a building was completed and ready to house fall produce.

Goodwin's plans expanded to include an area stretching from the Leland Hotel, which he owned, to the north, along the west bank of the bluff looking down over the Seattle waterfront. By the market's third anniversary a double row of stalls was in place and stalls were narrowed to accommodate more farmers.

The Market became the heart of Seattle. It quickly grew and along with this growth competition among the farmers. Stalls and parking spaces for wagons and the few cars on the road were scarce.

Farmers from nearby islands paid two bits to spend the night to compete with farmers from the valley. Elaborate displays were created as part of their competition by farmers' with origins from Scandinavia, Japan, and Italy.

By 1913 Pike Place Market had a look preserved for the most part in 2014. Underlying that, there was a fundamental conflict over preserving the market and development practices that continues today.

The public market preserves generations of skills and talent.

By the 1920s, pressure from developers led to the city council passing a resolution barring farmers’ stalls in the street. It was proposed that the farmers move from the Market. (this was not the only time the suggestion was made) to another location where they would be housed in a underground market.

The farmers organized and circulated petitions to preserve the original farmers market.

In 1921, a lease was arranged with the Goodwins who had began construction in the market on what became known as the Municipal Building. This was the last major construction in the market for the next five decades.

In 1926, Arthur Goodwin, a nephew of Frank Goodwin, began to rent stalls in a prime location to vendors who were middlemen. He argued that they would benefit the market because they offered year around visibility.

Local farmers believed this violated the meaning of a public market and threatened to put up tents at Fourth and Stewart and sell from there as a last resort.

Led by Willard Soames, farmers banded together to fight for their rights yet again. Their lawyer, George F. Vanderveer, referring to the disputed frontage consisting of 120-feet of stall space on Pike Place, declared a both a fraud on the public and a violation of farmer’ rights stating that the stalls on city property were actually being leased to middlemen, not producers.

The farmers stayed in the market, but there were bad feelings and distrust because of the history of threats against the original purpose of the market. The power of well-funded and self-interested development was real and insidious.

What must have been a deep inner moment of realization for both sides occurred when Arthur Goodwin, the nephew of the man who had designed the physical structure of the Market said during a hearing, “we (the Goodwins) made the market.” An audience of farmers with roots in the original movement against middlemen responded, “the farmers made it.”

The struggle to preserve the market both its facades and its values would prove to be a matter of vigilance shared across the country.