Labor in Pike Place Market
Pike Place Market is full of life and culture and is one of the oldest operating farmers markets in the United States. Right now, in spring and summer, the daffodils are in full bloom over the awnings of the buildings on Pike Place and people are lined up on the sidewalk outside of Piroshky Piroshky waiting their turn for the highly coveted pastries. In fall and winter, cafés are filled with people wanting a hot drink, and holiday decorations start go up, the Market twinkling with lights at night. Things weren’t always like this though. These shops and traditions have a rich history behind them and the vendors who worked there long ago have impacted the Market in ways that have helped shape how it is today.
Before Pike Place Market was founded, there was an three-square area called The Lots, on Sixth Avenue and King Street, where local farmers were selling their produce. The farmers often didn’t have time to sell directly to the public, so they would sell to a middle man working on commission and then receive a percentage of their final sales. However, there was ongoing talk about farmers not receiving payment. In early August 1907, after farmers and consumers became particularly extroverted about their opinions of the corruption of the farmers, Thomas P. Revelle, who was a Seattle city councilman, took it upon himself to turn the road Pike Place into a public market. On August 17, 1907, the City Council President, Charles Hiram Burnett Jr., who was filling in for the elected mayor, cut the ribbon and declared the day Public Market Day (Shorett, Alice. 2007. 16–17). On that first day, only about ten farmers showed up with their wagons. Despite the rumors about the lack of assemblage, thousands of customers showed up and before noon, all the produce had been sold (Pikeplacemarket.org. 2017). After this, the Market grew increasingly popular, with seventy farmers selling at there at the end of the week. However, complaints about the Market’s exposure and how it needed to be covered were flowing in (Shorett, Alice. 2007. 22–23).
Frank Goodwin founded the Goodwin Real Estate Company with two of his brothers, John and Erwin. The three brothers bought “the Leland Hotel at the western end of Pike Street, the undeveloped land along the bluff west of Pike Place, and other land between First and Second Avenues, north of Pike” (Shorett, Alice. 2007 23). Frank was at the Market on opening day. He saw the large group of people standing in the rain and knew they would appreciate shelter. Frank drafted a sketch of a shed that would stretch north on their newly acquired land from the Leland Hotel along the bluff. He conferred with his brothers where they decided to split the area into seventy-six stalls that could be rented for four to twenty-five dollars every month and that the farmers who didn’t work through an intermediary and sold their produce directly to the public would be given first priority for stalls. On November 30th of that same year, the building was complete, but changes kept on coming.
In 1911, the market stalls got bigger and a rent of twenty cents a day for a stall was put in place. However, the farmers had their complaints. They thought the twenty cents a day fee was too expensive, so it was cut to ten cents. The famers who travelled to Seattle on steamers wanted a conveyor belt connecting the waterfront to the Market so they wouldn’t have to lug their produce up the bluff to the Market. Both the island farmers and the farmers who came to Seattle by wagon complained about the overcrowding and said more stalls needed to be added. The city did nothing to add more stalls, so the farmers petitioned for funds to dig a tunnel under Pike Place to allow for the addition of four hundred more stalls. This idea was rejected and Frank came up with an idea of his own that would comply with the needs and wants of the farmers. In 1914, a 240-foot long building was added to the face of the bluff, allowing for more space for vendors on the main floor of the Market; thirteen stalls and tables were installed in the lower mezzanine; on the lower market floor, a printing plant, public toilet, creamery, and butcher shop were built. Then, in 1916, the Goodwins leased a building on the corner of First Avenue and Pike Street and redesigned it to fit sixty-five more stores and stalls (Shorett, Alice. 2007. 25, 28–33).
By the early 1920’s, the Market was in flower. People of all ethnic backgrounds and cultures were getting along and working together to sell their produce. There was just one problem. The farmers who worked at the Market came from the valley and from the islands. Steamers didn’t usually arrive until 10am or after, which made it hard for the island farmers to compete for customers early in the morning when hotels and restaurants would purchase their daily produce. Even when the island farmers would stay overnight in hotels by the Market to get an early start, the valley farmers would still beat them to their stalls. Some of them would be there at 4am while most were there by 7am. All this competition eventually led to cultivation; the farmers started collaborating to sell their produce in patterns and this quickly turned to routine (Shorett, Alice. 2007. 40–41). When war broke out in Europe in 1914, nothing changed in the Market. There were no problems between shops and vendors of different ethnicities; “Great Britain might proclaim Egypt its protectorate to the disadvantage of Turkey an the Central Powers, but the Ovaita Fish company saw no need to take reprisals against the Egyptian Hama Cone people” (Shorett, Alice. 2007. 40). A reporter for the Seattle Star remarked, “World wars may and do rage but man must eat. Wars can and do swing like the pendulum of doom, but the Sunday roast is not to be neglected” (Shorett, Alice. 2007. 40). When the United States entered the war three years later, change in the Market was brought about. More women started to work in the Market and do their own shopping. When the war ended, a strike was called, leaving the the Market deserted for five days, which was the longest time it had ever been inactive (Shorett, Alice. 2007. 41–47).
Pike Place and Western Avenue were important roads connecting the waterfront to upper downtown. All the vendors’ carts and stalls made it nearly impossible for cars to pass through. In an attempt to provide a solution for this, the City Council suggested moving the farmers’ stalls to an underground market at Westlake. Many farmers were against the relocation of the Market and in 1921, a farmer named Willard Soames created the Associated Farmers of the Pike Place Market, which won the opposition to relocation by one vote on the City Council (Crowley, Walt. 1999).
When word of the Pearl Harbor bombing in got around in 1941, resentment towards the Japanese-Americans only increased. The Japanese immigrants had been unfairly treated since the early years of the Market. There were many movements to try to expel them from the market (Crowley, Walt. 1999). Some people wanted to segregate the Japanese immigrants from the Americans so people who want to buy from the Japanese and those who want to buy from the Americans could do so easily (Seattle Municipal Archives. 1922). Others accused the Japanese immigrants of cheating the process of getting stall locations because they supposedly had “dummy tenants or sub-tenants under fictitious leases each of whom draws locations at the regular drawings” (Seattle Municipal Archives. 1922). The Japanese farmers were then given odd-numbered stalls, which forced them to stay in the dreaded back of the Market (Seattle Municipal Archives. 2017). When the Pearl Harbor bombing occurred, the Japanese-Americans sold their produce in almost four fifths of the stalls, so when they were forced to evacuate and move to interment camps inland, a huge amount of the Market’s vendors were taken away. It was very difficult for the farmers to find people to take over their leases and many of them had give their
property away for free or abandon it. The number of farmer-seller licenses from the Market was at 515 in 1939 and decreased to 196 in 1943. When the Japanese-Americans were released from the camps, more than one-third of them never went back to Seattle (Shorett, Alice. 2007. 103). Although many stalls in the Market stood empty, people claimed they were not affected because white customers like to buy from white vendors (Crowley, Walt. 1999).
The actions and choices of the early farmers significantly shaped the physical and community aspects of the Market, but today, any resentment towards non-whites in the Market is long gone, and Pike Place is now the lively market it strived to be in the beginning. Pike Place Market is full of memories and stories, from those from the beginning of the Market and its steady progress, to those being created at this moment. The Market brings together people cultures from all over the world to create an exciting adventure for tourists and locals alike. Without its long history of events, who knows if Pike Place Market and its stalls would be what it is today.
Bibliography:
Crowley, Walt. 1999. “Pike Place Market (Seattle) — Thumbnail History.” Accessed May 19, 2017. http://www.historylink.org/File/1602.
Pikeplacemarket.org. 2017. “A Quick History of the Pike Place Market.” Accessed May 13, 2017. http://www.pikeplacemarket.org/sites/default/files/paperclip/attachments/452/original/Quick_History.pdf?1406921455.
Seattle Municipal Archives. 1922. “Accusation of Japanese Farmers at Pike Place Market.” Accessed May 19, 2017. https://www.seattle.gov/Images/CityArchive/Exhibits/PikePlace/StallDiscrimination4_CF85879.jpg
Seattle Municipal Archives. 1910. “Farmers’ Tables.” Accessed June 13, 2017. https://www.seattle.gov/Images/CityArchive/Exhibits/PikePlace/37716.jpg
Seattle Municipal Archives. 1942. “Japanese Internment.” Accessed May 19, 2017. http://clerk.seattle.gov/~photos/31/400/31900.gif
Seattle Municipal Archives. 1920. “Pike Place, Looking North.” Accessed June 10, 2o17. http://clerk.seattle.gov/~photos/35/400/35921.gif
Seattle Municipal Archives. 2017. “Pike Place Market Centennial.” Accessed May 15, 2017. https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/online-exhibits/pike-place-market-centennial.
Seattle Municipal Archives. 1907. “Pike Place Market. Corner of Pike Street and Pike Place looking north on Pike Place.” Accessed May 19, 2017. http://clerk.seattle.gov/~photos/33/400/33280.jpg
Shorett, Alice. 2007. “Soul of the City: The Pike Place Market.” Seattle, WA: The Market Foundation.
