The Pike Place Market is a National Historic District. In the Market, you will find fishmongers, day-stall tenants, leaseholders, restauranteurs, farmers, and over four hundred permanent residents. On an international scale, the Market is known as a tourist destination. As the longest continually operating market in the United States, established in 1907, it attracts over eight million visitors a year. Nationally, the Pike Place Fish Market (where they throw the fish) and MTV’s Real World have highlighted the Market’s role in defining the Northwest: hard working and entertaining. It is a valued part of Seattle life with fresh goods, seasonal produce, and artists and craftspeople offering hand made goods.
~ SOME FACTS ABOUT THE PIKE PLACE MARKET~
- The Market opened on August 17, 1907, the few farmers set up on Pike Place had thousands of customers.
- The price of onions was one of the reasons for the Market's inception.
- The Market is the first national historic district to have commercial and residential use.
- The craftspeople and artisans attend a roll call every morning hence they may not be at the same table every day.
- Rachel the Pig is a piggy bank for the Market Foundation & other pigs were part of past fundraising efforts.
- $35 bought a tile in the Market in 1985, also part of fundraising efforts, today they are occasionally for sale.
- over 400 people live in the Pike Place Market, many of them seniors.
- The Market has a clinic, senior center, childcare, food bank & assisted housing.
- The Market employs a Master Gardener for biannual plantings on the rooftops.
- Post Alley is named for the original posts that supported the buildings, not anything a horse was hitched to.