Pike Place Market is a public market in Seattle, Washington, United States. It opened on August 17, 1907, and is one of the oldest 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 and the 33rd most visited tourist attraction in the world, with more than 10 million annual visitors.
The Market is built on the edge of a steep hill and consists of several lower levels 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 daily, by the Market’s mission and founding goal: allowing consumers to “Meet the Producer.” Bed Bug Exterminator Seattle
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 no longer are, such as the Livingston Baker apartments. The Market is run by the quasi-government Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA).
Founding
As consumers and farmers grew increasingly vocal in their unhappiness over the situation, Thomas P. Revelle, a Seattle city councilman, lawyer, and newspaper editor, took advantage of the precedent of an 1896 Seattle city ordinance that allowed the city to designate tracts of land as public markets. The area of Western Avenue above the Elliott Bay tide flats and the area size of the commission food houses had just been turned into a wooden planked road called Pike Place, off of Pike Street and First Avenue. Through a city council ordinance vote on August 5, 1907, he had part of Pike Place designated temporarily as a public market for the “sales of the garden, farm, and other food products from wagons…”.
Attractions
One of the Market’s major attractions is Pike Place Fish Market, where employees throw three-foot salmon and other fish at each other rather than passing them by hand. When a customer orders a fish, an employee at the Fish Market’s ice-covered fish table picks up the fish and hurls it over the countertop, where another employee catches it and preps it for sale.
Address: 85 Pike St, Seattle, WA
Check out other attractions like Seattle Aquarium
