Pike Place Market is a public market in Seattle, Washington, United States. It opened on August 17, 1907, and is one of the older continuously operated public farmers' markets in the United States. Overlooking the Elliott Bay waterfront on Puget Sound, it serves as a place of business for many small farmers, craftspeople and merchants. It is named for its central street, Pike Place, which runs northwest from Pike Street to Virginia Street on the western edge of Downtown Seattle. Pike Place Market is Seattle's most popular tourist destination, with more than 20 million annual visitors.
The Market is built on the edge of a steep hill and consists of several lower levels located below the main level. Each features a variety of unique shops such as antique dealers, comic book and collectible shops, small family-owned restaurants, and one of the oldest head shops in Seattle. The upper street level contains fishmongers, fresh produce stands and craft stalls operating in the covered arcades. Local farmers and craftspeople 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".
Pike Place Market is home to nearly 500 residents who live in eight different buildings throughout the Market. Most of these buildings have been low-income housing in the past; however, some of them no longer are, such as the Livingston Baker apartments. The Market is run by the quasi-governmental Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA).
The Market is located roughly in the northwest corner of Seattle's central business district. To its north is Belltown. To its southwest are the central waterfront and Elliott Bay. Boundaries are diagonal to the compass since the street grid is roughly parallel to the Elliott Bay shoreline.
As is common with Seattle neighborhoods and districts, different people and organizations draw different boundaries for the market. The City Clerk's Neighborhood Map Atlas gives one of the more expansive definitions, defining a "Pike-Market" neighborhood extending from Union Street northwest to Virginia Street and from the waterfront northeast to Second Avenue. Despite coming from the City Clerk's office, this definition has no special official status.
The smaller "Pike Place Public Market Historic District" listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places is bounded roughly by First Avenue, Virginia Street, Western Avenue, and a building wall about halfway between Union and Pike Streets, running parallel to those streets.
In a middle ground between those two definitions, the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods' official 7-acre (28,000 m2) "Pike Place Market Historical District" includes the federally recognized Pike Place Public Market Historic District plus a slightly smaller piece of land between Western Avenue and Washington State Route 99, on the side of the market toward Elliott Bay.
To some extent, these different definitions of the market district result from struggles between preservationists and developers. For example, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 created the Washington Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Victor Steinbrueck, at one point in the late 1960s, convinced the Advisory Council to recommend designating 17 acres (69,000 m2) as a historical district. Pressure by developers and the "Seattle establishment" soon got that reduced to a tenth of that area. The present-day historic district designations lie between these extremes.
Part of the market sits on what was originally mudflats below the bluffs west of Pike Place. In the late 19th century, West Street (now Western Avenue, angling away from Pike Place) was already a through street running more or less parallel to the shore. Railroad Avenue (now Alaskan Way) was built farther out on pilings; it was not filled in until the 1930s. Nearby piers with warehouses for convenient stevedoring had already been completed by 1905, two years before the market opened.
The market was created in 1907 when Seattle City Council member Thomas P. Revelle took advantage of an 1896 ordinance that allowed the city to designate tracts of land as public markets and designated a portion of the area of Western Avenue above the Elliott Bay tideflats off Pike Street and First Avenue. The market was opened August 17, 1907, by City Council President Charles Hiram Burnett Jr. The first building at the Market, the Main Arcade, opened November 30, 1907.
Demand for stalls grew and by 1911 the number of available stalls had doubled. The west side of the stall lines were soon covered in an overhead canopy and roofing, becoming known as the "dry row". In 1916 the market expanded into the Economy Market.
Throughout the early 1920s, the north side of the Corner Market became known as the Sanitary Market and the area developed into a social scene. A new ordinance forbidding farmers' stalls to be placed in the street resulted in proposals to move the market, but in 1921 the City Council voted to retain the existing location and work on expanding in place.In 1963, a proposal was floated to demolish Pike Place Market and replace it with Pike Plaza, which met community opposition, including help from Betty Bowen, Victor Steinbrueck, Ibsen Nelsen, and others from the board of Friends of the Market. An initiative was passed on November 2, 1971, that created a historic preservation zone and returned the Market to public hands.
In the 1980s, a nonprofit group, the Pike Place Market Foundation, was established by the PDA to raise funds and administer the Market's free clinic, senior center, low-income housing, and childcare center. The 1983 Hildt Amendment or Hildt Agreement (named after City Council member Michael Hildt) struck a balance between farmers and craftspeople in the daystalls which set a precedent for allocation of daystalls.
In 1998, the PDA decided to end the Hildt Agreement; a new agreement, the Licata-Hildt agreement, was adopted in February 1999.
In 2008, Seattle voters approved a six-year property-tax levy to fund critical repairs and improvements, which were completed in 2012.
The Pike Place Market is overseen by the Pike Place Preservation & Development Authority (PDA), a public development authority established under Washington State law. It is overseen by a 12-member volunteer council. Its members serve four-year terms. Four members are appointed by mayor, four by the current council, and four by the Pike Place Market Constituency. The Market PDA sets the policies by which the Pike Place Market is managed and hires an executive director to carry out those policies.
Established in 1973, the PDA manages 80% of the properties in the city-recognized Market Historical District. Its founding law—the Market Charter—requires it to preserve, rehabilitate and protect the Market's buildings; increase opportunities for farm and food retailing in the Market; incubate and support small and marginal businesses; and provide services for low-income people. PDA revenues derive from the Market's tenants through rent, utilities, and other property management activities.
The same 1973 charter that established the PDA also established the Pike Place Market Constituency. The Constituency elects one member to the PDA Council each year. Anyone 16 years of age or older who lives in Washington State can become a member of the Constituency by paying $1 yearly dues.