Pike Place Market interior
— — the long arcade the city has shopped in since 1907.
Not only on a wall.
“The Main Arcade runs along Pike Place, low-ceilinged and lit by overhead bulbs, the air a wash of fish ice and stargazer lilies. Farmers along the high stalls, day-stall artisans below, the brass nose of Rachel the Pig shined down to copper by ten million hands. Pike Place Fish Market sends a salmon over the counter and the crowd lifts a phone. Behind the produce, narrow stairs drop into the Down Under and the curio shops that fill the lower floors. The market has run on this block since August of 1907.
Pike Place Market interior, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Pike Place Market opened on August 17, 1907 on a wood-plank street above Elliott Bay in downtown Seattle, established by the city council in response to public anger over the price of onions and other produce. It is one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers' markets in the United States. The historic district covers about nine acres along Pike Place, First Avenue, Western Avenue, and Virginia Street, and includes the Main Arcade, the North Arcade, the Sanitary Market, the Corner Market, the Stewart House, and the Soames-Dunn building. It houses about 225 permanent commercial businesses, 80 working craftspeople, and several hundred day-stall farmers and artists, drawing roughly ten million visitors a year.
The Main Arcade and most permanent stalls are open seven days a week, generally 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with restaurants and bars keeping later hours. The market sits one block west of First Avenue and is reached on foot from the waterfront by the Pike Hill Climb stairs, or from the downtown core by Pike Street. There is no admission charge. Pay-to-park garages on Western Avenue and across First Avenue serve the district. Pike Place Fish Market, the produce farmers, and the day-stall artists rotate by day; the original Starbucks at 1912 Pike Place occupies a 1907 storefront across the street from the main shed.
The market survived the threat of demolition in 1971 through a public preservation campaign led by Seattle architect Victor Steinbrueck, who organised opposition to a federal urban-renewal proposal that would have replaced the historic buildings with a hotel, an office tower, and a parking garage. Seattle voters passed Initiative 1, the Keep the Market measure, in November 1971, creating the Pike Place Market Historical District and the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority that still operates the buildings. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places the same year. The bronze pig Rachel, by sculptor Georgia Gerber, has stood under the clock since 1986 and serves as the market's piggy bank for its social-service programs.