Seattle's Pike Market 100th Anniversary

The Market marks 100 years
Pike Place Market, a Seattle icon and the nation's oldest continuously operating farmers market, celebrated its

centennial on August 17, 2007 marking its 100th anniversary this summer, the country's oldest, continuously operating farmers market and now a draw for more than 10 million visitors every year.
Market officials had events planned all summer long, beginning with Pigs on

Parade on the first weekend in June and ending with an official birthday party and fireworks Aug. 17, the anniversary of the market's opening.
Centennial highlights
June 2: Pigs on Parade kickoff. 100 decorated fiberglass pigs are paraded downtown to the market. More information: www.pigsonparade.org
June 2-3: Pike Place Market Centennial Street Festival, with music, crafts, chef demonstrations and a wine and beer garden.
June 14: Friends of the Market lecture series. "The Market in Seattle's Life," by Roger Sale, author of "Seattle Past to Present, Seattle Central Public Library (Microsoft Auditorium), 6 p.m., free.
July 22: Pike Place Market Centennial Berry Bash.
Aug. 10-16: Centennial Week Celebration.
Aug. 17: Pike Place Market's 100th Birthday Party. Activities all day, evening concerts and fireworks.
Aug. 17, 1907 -- The Pike Place Public Market opens with six to 12 wagons.
Nov. 30, 1907 -- Realtor Frank Goodwin puts first buildings up, with 76 produce stalls.

1910 -- City of Seattle contributes $10,000 to add stalls.
1920 -- Mrs. Belmont Tiffany (of the Tiffany jewelers of New York) compares Pike Place Market to Paris' Les Halles.
1921 -- Farmers retain control of Market by a one-vote margin on City Council.
1922 -- Market completes present-day configuration of buildings.
1922 -- Library branch established at Market.
1925 -- Market has 500 stalls and 25,000 shoppers weekdays, 50,000 on Saturdays.
1926 -- City leaders reject proposal to replace Market with a gigantic new concrete one.
1926 -- Arthur Goodwin buys Market buildings from his Uncle Frank.
1927 -- Clock and Public Market sign installed.
1929 -- Farmers protest plan to reserve some stalls for permanent, year-'round vendors, but ultimately lose.
1930 -- Peter DeLaurenti marries Mamie-Marie Mustelo, later buying out her mother's grocery and creating one of the Market's best-known specialty-food stores.
1931 -- Market becomes important source of cheap food during the Depression.
1935 -- Dance Hall operates in Economy Market Building.
1938 -- Artist Mark Tobey begins to sketch and paint Market scenes.
1939 -- Stalls peak at 515 leases.
1941 -- Joe Desimone takes over ownership from the Goodwins.
1941 -- Sanitary Market building burns soon after attack on Pearl Harbor Hawaii. Some suspect the Japanese. The cause was not determined.
1942 -- 110,000 Japanese-Americans interned on West Coast, stall leases plunge to 196. Market begins to empty and decay.
1942 -- Nellie Curtis opens famed brothel in former LaSalle Hotel, south end of Market.
1946 -- In postwar era, truck farming eclipsed by modern farming, and supermarkets take business away from Pike Place Market. Joe Desimone dies. (His heirs sell to city in 1974.)
1949 -- Stall leases dip to 53. Increasing use of cars reduces mass-transit access to Market.
1950 -- Engineer Harlan Edwards, husband of Councilwoman Myrtle Edwards, proposes Market be replaced with 1,500-car parking garage to serve downtown.
1953 -- Alaskan Way Viaduct built. Market district grows seedy.
1962 -- Seattle World's Fair.
1963 -- Proposal to replace Market with 3,000-car garage, hotel.
1968 -- Proposal to replace Market with 4,000-car garage.
1969 -- Market enthusiasts collect 53,000 signatures to save it.
1971 -- An initiative to create a Market historic district wins 60 percent of vote. First Starbucks opens.
1973 -- City creates Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority.
1974 -- U.S. Sen. Warren G. Magnuson begins injection of what will be $60 million in federal funds; private investors put in $75 million.
1977 -- Market Senior Center begins in ex-biker tavern called the Motherlode.
1978 -- Victor Steinbrueck Park, honoring key player in Market salvation, completed on site of former armory.
1980 -- The Market Authority completes acquisition of 80 percent of the Market's land.
1983 -- Market enters real-estate and management agreements with New York-based Urban Group to raise capital for rehabilitation.
1985 -- Campaign begins to replace wooden floors with tiles, each named for a contributor; raises $1.2 million.
1986 -- Rachel, the bronze pig, installed at Market; raises $9,000 a year.
1989 -- Market parking garage completed.
1991 -- The Urban Group's attempt to foreclose on the Market gets final defeat in the courts.
1995 -- Public votes to keep Pine Street open to traffic.
2001 -- Inspired by Rachel, city begins "Pigs on Parade" contest; raises $500,000.
2007 -- Centennial. The Market covers 9 acres with 56 food vendors, 98 other merchants, 50 restaurants, 20 offices or service outlets and 450 residents. It attracts 10 million visitors a year.

click on thumbnails

SEATTLE (AP) - Decades before the original Starbucks, salmon-tossing fishmongers and Rachel the life-sized piggy bank made the Pike Place Market an international tourist attraction, there were eight wagons filled with produce and consumers hungry to avoid the rising price of onions.

When the Seattle landmark opened in 1907, middlemen had driven the price of a pound of onions from 10 cents a dollar. Consumers wanted to buy directly from the farmer, connect with their neighbors and socialize. A century later, it draws both locals out for a week's worth of fresh produce, and tourists from around the world.

"The market defines Seattle," said Seattle City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck, whose father, Victor Steinbrueck, is credited with saving Pike Place Market in the 1970s. "It embodies the best of Seattle - our people and our diversity."

Locals, tourists and descendants of the market founders gathered to celebrate the market's endurance. Events included a reenactment of the first day of market sales, a giant birthday cake and a championship salmon toss.

"It has always been a place where people go on Saturday to do their shopping," said Alice Shorett, author of two books about the history of the market. "It's also a place where you are entertained and can go to be social."

The market's place in Seattle has varied over the 100 years of its existence, ebbing with the development of downtown Seattle and growing with support from the city and citizen groups.

After the market's beginnings in 1907, it grew to house 515 stalls in 1939. The signature clock and Public Market sign were installed in 1927.

But World War II and the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans hurt the market's growth. Because Japanese-Americans represented about two-thirds of the vendors in the market, the number of stalls dropped to 196 by 1942. The number of stalls continued to slip to 53 by 1949. In 1950 came the first of many proposals to turn the market into parking for downtown office workers.

Parking proposals persisted into the 1960s. A ballot initiative to create a downtown historical district encompassing the market passed in 1971, the same year the first Starbucks coffee store opened.

The future of the market was not secure yet. In 1983 the market entered a real estate and management agreement with New York-based Urban Group to raise money to revitalize the market. But because of changes in tax laws The Urban Group lost money on the deal and threatened to foreclose and radically redevelop the market.

By 1991, local lawmakers raised $1.5 million in federal money and $750,000 from locals to buy off The Urban Group.

Since, the market has continued to raise money for renovations through various campaigns. In 1986 the market installed Rachel, a life-sized bronze piggy bank, which raises $9,000 a year.

The fishmongers that throw fish behind Rachel, who were featured on an episode of Frasier, and the first Starbucks coffee store, have come represent Seattle to visitors.

Ralph Goodwin, a great-nephew of Frank Goodwin, the first manager of the market, said being at the market made him feel connected to his family history.

"It gives you goose bumps walking around thinking that you're part of the family that did it," Goodwin said.

Vendors at the market said the 100 year anniversary is a reaffirmation of the values that Pike Place stands for.

"It's a joy to work here because we know that we're selling produce that's 10 times fresher than big-box stores," said Mark Eskenazi-Suemanzo who has worked for 10 years at one of the market's oldest produce vendors, Sosios.

The market could undergo even more change in upcoming years, Steinbrueck and Shorett said. With developers building hundreds of new condominiums and hotel rooms downtown including a Four Seasons hotel, the market could return to its roots as downtown's food source, Shorett said.

"It's is important for people to not take it for granted," Shorett said. "The market has somehow survived and it needs to have people caring about it and watching out for it."

Pike Place Market is a public market overlooking the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle, Washington. The Market, which opened August 17, 1907, is the oldest continually-operated public farmer's market in the country. It is a place of business for many small farmers, craftspeople and merchants. It is also Seattle's most popular tourist destination. Located in Downtown, it occupies over 9 acres 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 from the Market on a daily basis, in accordance with the Market's mission and founding goal: allowing consumers to "Meet the Producer."