Pike Place Market:

As is common with Seattle neighborhoods and districts,^[3] 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.^[2] Despite coming from the City Clerk's office, this definition has no special official status.^[3]

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.^[5]

In a middle ground between those two definitions, the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods' official 7-acre (28,000 m²) "Pike Place Market Historical District"^[6] 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.^[7]

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 acreage.^[8][9] 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, Railroad Avenue (now now Western Avenue) was built on pilings through filled mudflats. Alaskan Way was built farther out as the fill was extended. Piers with warehouses for convenient stevedoring were extended northwest as filling was completed by 1905.^[10]

 

Flying fish at the Pike Place Fish Market.

 

Herbal apothecary Tenzing Momo.

One of the Market's major attractions is Pike Place Fish Market, where employees throw three-foot salmon and other fish to 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.

According to the employees, this tradition started when the fishmongers got tired of having to walk out to the Market's fish table to retrieve a salmon each time someone ordered one. Eventually, the owner realized it was easier to station an employee at the table, to throw the fish over the counter. 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 and was also in the opening credits of MTV's The Real World: Seattle. This attraction has also appeared on numerous prime-time installments of NFL games when the Seahawks host games at nearby Qwest Field.

Starbucks Coffee was founded near Pike Place Market, at 2000 Western Avenue,^[88] in 1971 by three partners: Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel and Gordon Bowker. They were inspired by Alfred Peet of Peet's Coffee to open the store and sell high-quality coffee beans.^[89] The first store relocated to Pike Place Market in 1977, where it is still in operation.^[88] The sign outside this branch, unlike others, features the original logo - a bare-breasted siren that was modeled after a 15th century Norse woodcut.^[90][91] It also features a pig statue called "Pork'n Beans," purchased in the 2001 Pigs on Parade fundraiser.^[92] Starbucks now owns the Seattle's Best Coffee (SBC) brand, which traces its history back to Stewart Brothers' Coffee, which arrived in the Market several months before Starbucks was founded.^[93]

After more than 30 years in the Market, the herbal Apothecary Tenzing Momo has become an institution both for obtaining herbs and advice on their use. Founded in 1977, the name (which is Tibetan) means "divine dumpling".^[94][95][96] Nearby, Market Spice (founded 1911) sells slightly less exotic herbal substances.^[97][98]

The Market Heritage Center at 1531 Western Avenue is a small museum about the history of the Market.^[99]

Rachel and Pigs on Parade

Rachel provided the theme for the Pigs on Parade fundraiser that was first held in 2001 and was one of several events in various cities modeled on a similar 1998 event in Zurich; the Zurich event centered on cows and was the first of what have come to be known as CowParades. A similar Pigs On Parade fundraiser was held in 2007 on the occasion of the Market centennial, which happened to coincide with the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Pig.

Pioneer Square:

Pioneer Square is the neighborhood where Seattle, Washington, USA was founded in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point. The early structures in the neighborhood were mostly wooden, and nearly all burned in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. By the end of 1890, dozens of brick and stone buildings had been erected in their stead; to this day, the architectural character of the neighborhood derives from these late 19th century buildings, mostly examples of Richardsonian Romanesque.

The neighborhood takes its name from a small triangular plaza near the corner of First Avenue and Yesler Way, originally known as Pioneer Place. The Pioneer Square-Skid Road Historic District, a historic district including that plaza and several surrounding blocks, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Like virtually all Seattle neighborhoods, the Pioneer Square neighborhood lacks definitive borders. It is bounded roughly by Alaskan Way S. on the west, beyond which are the docks of Elliott Bay; by S. King Street on the south, beyond which is SoDo; by 5th Avenue S. on the east, beyond which is the International District; and it extends between one and two blocks north of Yesler Way, beyond which is the rest of Downtown. Because Yesler Way marks the boundary between two different plats, the street grid north of Yesler does not line up with the neighborhood's other streets (nor with the compass), so the northern "border" of the district zigzags along numerous streets.

In some places, the Pioneer Square-Skid Road Historic District extends beyond these borders. It includes Union Station east of 4th Avenue S., and several city blocks south of S. King Street.^[5]

History

The settlement's importance was guaranteed in 1852, when Henry Yesler chose the site for his lumber mill, which was located on Elliott Bay at the foot of what is now Yesler Way, right on the border between the land claimed (and soon thereafter platted) by David Swinson "Doc" Maynard (to the south) and that platted by Arthur Denny and Carson Boren.

Much of the neighborhood is on landfill: in pioneer times, the area roughly between First and Second Avenue, bounded on the south by Jackson Street, and extending north almost to Yesler Way (about two-and-a-half city blocks) was a low-lying offshore island. The mainland shore roughly followed what is now Yesler Way to about Fourth Avenue, then ran southeast, at an angle of about 45 degrees to the current shoreline. Slightly inland were steep bluffs, which were largely smoothed away by regrading in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Yesler Way, originally Mill Street, is the main east-west street through the Pioneer Square neighborhood. Immediately south of the square itself, it was the dividing line between Maynard's original claim (to the south) and Boren's (to the north). It became "the Deadline", the northern border of the "restricted district," originally Maynardtown, later "Down in the Sawdust", the Lava Beds, the Tenderloin, White Chapel, or "Wrappyville" (after a particularly corrupt police chief), where low entertainment and vice were long tolerated. One of the earliest names, and one that stuck well into second half of the 20th century, was "Skid Row".^[6]

Late 19th century

Just before the fire, cable car service was instituted from Pioneer Square along Yesler Way to Lake Washington and the Leschi neighborhood.

Pioneer Square Pergola, 1914
Photograph courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives

20th century

During the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897 and 1898, Seattle was a center for travel to Alaska. Thousands of so-called "sourdoughs" passed through Seattle making the city's merchants prosperous. A year later, in 1899, a group of businessmen stole a Tlingit totem pole and placed it in Pioneer Place Park. When an arsonist destroyed the pole in 1938, the city sent the pieces back to the Tlingit tribe who carved a new one and gave it to Seattle (after finally getting paid for the one that was originally stolen). In addition to the totem pole, a wrought-iron Victorian pergola and a bust of Chief Seattle were added to the park in 1909.

The year 1914 saw the completion of the Smith Tower, which at the time was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. However, by that time, the heart of Downtown Seattle had moved north. The building of Second Avenue Extension in 1928-29^[7] reconfigured the eastern portion of the neighborhood, by extending a piece of the north-of-Yesler street grid south past Yesler and "slicing into buildings in its path".^[7] The cable car line serving the area was shut down on August 10, 1940.

In the 1960s, Pioneer Square became a target of urban renewal. One proposal was to replace the buildings with parking garages to serve Downtown Seattle. In 1962, the historic Seattle Hotel was replaced with one such parking garage, commonly referred to as the "Sinking Ship" garage because of its appearance when viewed from 1st and Yesler; it stands to this day. Another proposal was to build a ring road which would have required destroying many of Pioneer Square's buildings. Many buildings were saved by the "benign neglect" of landowner Sam Israel.^[8] Although he rarely sold any of his buildings, he sold the Union Trust Building to architect Ralph Anderson, whose rehabilitation of that building set the pattern for the neighborhood's rehabilitation.^[9] In 1970, preservationists such as Bill Speidel, Victor Steinbrueck, and others succeeded in listing the neighborhood as historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Later that year, Pioneer Square became a city preservation district.

1980s

Streetcar service returned to Pioneer Square on May 29, 1982, with the opening of the Waterfront Streetcar.

21st century

Today, Pioneer Square is home to art galleries, internet companies, cafés, sports bars, nightclubs, bookstores, and a unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, the other unit of which is located in Skagway, Alaska. It is often described as the center of Seattle's nightlife.

Crisis

In early 2001, Pioneer Square suffered three crises. First, on January 15, an eighteen-wheeler semi-truck crashed into the pergola, shattering it into thousands of pieces; it has since been restored. Next, on February 27, violence erupted in the neighborhood's Fat Tuesday festivities during which a young man, Kris Kime, was fatally beaten. Finally, the next day (February 28), a major earthquake damaged some of the buildings. Had most of them not undergone seismic retrofitting, the damage would likely have been much worse.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia