Meet the Producer!!
The famous words inscribed at the entrance of the Pike Place Market.
These words are the key to the origins of the Pike Place Market, one of the oldest continuing farmer’s markets in the United States.
Before the Market came into being over one hundred years ago, farmers would sell their produce to middlemen for pennies on the dollar. Hardly did the farmers make any profit. The profit was made by the brokers who passed on the high prices to the citizens.
Oil sketch, farmer creating floral bouquet. There are dozens of floral farmers at the Market, one of the best places to get fresh bouquets.
At the turn of the 20th century, the cost of food was artificially high as brokers that took advantage of the growing city population. Consumers and farmers became increasingly vocal over the situation which eventually prompted the City Council of the day to take advantage of a prior ordinance that allowed the city to designate tracts of land as public markets. Seattle City Council member, Thomas Revelle, led this effort to support the farmers with this ordinance, and on August 17, 1907, the Pike Place Market was born. And "Meet the Producer" the famous words at the entrance of the Market, became the new way of doing business. The rest as they say is history.
The early days.
Drawing made in January 2020 pre COVID capturing the street activity on First and Pike across the street from the Pike Place Market.
The Pike Place Market is known as the "soul of the city" of Seattle, said Mark Tobey. The mid century painter Tobey, who spent many years in Seattle after gaining critically acclaimed recognition in New York City, is a member of “The Northwest School” of painters also known as “The Big Four” —Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and Tobey—who were creating works in Seattle in the mid 20th Century.
Mark Tobey (right) spent a lot of time at the Pike Place Market sketching.
“Pike Street Market,” 1942. Mark Tobey.
Once the Market established a setting for the farmer to sell direct to the public (Meet the Producer,) the Pike Place Market was the place to get produce from its inception in 1907 through the 1930s. Over the decades, the Pike Place Market alternatively thrived and experienced decline, decay, and serious threats of extinction.
Drawing, 2020, Pike Place Fish, located at the entrance of the Pike Place Market, underneath the famous clock.
Julia Child liked to visit the Pike Place Market on her visits to Seattle.
Drawing, Produce high stall, Corner Market, First and Pike, Pike Place Market. 2020.
Since 1907, Market has faced three significant threats. World War II began it’s first decline as many of the farmers who sold at the market were of Japanese decent, and quite sadly and unjustly, were interred during the war, their farmland confiscated.
Added to the loss of a majority of farmers who sold directly to the public at the market, agriculture in general, once designed for local economies, began to be shipped outside of state lines at an increased capacity. Selling direct to the customer was not lucrative or competitive in the marketplace with the advent of the “Supermarket.” At the same time, the National Highway System of interstate freeways put into motion by President Eisenhower in 1956 that modernized mass transit of the roads. Road and air transportation made it possible to distribute fresh produce far and wide. Mass transportation and the Supermarket became active competitors to “Meet the Producer.”
The once vibrant setting fell into abandon and decay. By 1949 only 53 market stalls remained, down nearly 90 percent from a decade earlier. (Source: Seattle Times.)
The Pike Place Market, in the 1950s and 60s now sitting amidst brothels and peep show palaces was threatened to be turned into a parking lot. Joni Mitchell’s lyrics “They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot” was almost the fate of this beloved marketplace.
Enter: “The Friends of the Market.” 1968.
Where some saw blight and an ideal location of a parking lot, others saw culture, history, vibrancy.
Mark Tobey, a champion of the Pike Place Market, wrote referring to the Pike Place Market, "What do we want? A world of impersonal modernism, a world of automobiles? I've studied and painted the Paris stalls, the markets of London, Mexico and China, and none is as interesting as ours."
One of those people who saw promise was Victor Steinbrueck, architect, Professor at the University of Washington, and newly minted President of the “Friends of the Market” initiative to Save the Market.
Save the Market! 1971.
Victor Steinbrueck is wildly credited with saving the Pike Place Market from the threat of the wrecking ball and developers. Steinbrueck was active in historic preservation in Seattle and led the fight to preserve the market beginning in the 1960s.Because of Steinbrueck's advocacy, the Market was designated with historic status in 1971.
Victor Steinbrueck.
Book of sketches by Steinbrueck of the Pike Place Market. Originally published in 1968 and re-released in 1993 on the 25th anniversary of the passage of the “Save-the-Market initiative.
An advocate of open space in the city, Steinbrueck co-designed the open space park at the north end of the market completed in 1984, called "Market Park."
Upon his passing in 1985, the park was renamed in Steinbrueck's honor.
View from Victor Steinbrueck Park, located at the north end of the Pike Place Market. Two totem poles located in the park, (the northern most one seen here) were commissioned by Victor Steinbrueck and designed by Marvin Oliver, a well-known and respected artist of the Quinault tribe.
Pasqualina Verdi featured on this poster is one of the Farmers who signed the 1971 initiative to Save-the-Market. This is a poster in my collection that I saved from 1991.
This is Tina Ordonio, whose smiling face was always greeting people at the front of the market where her flower stand was located. I took this photo of Tina in 1985. Tina is also one of the Farmers who signed the 1971 initiative to Save-the-Market.
A column in the Pike Place Market (kitty corner from Chukar Cherries.) In 1993, I hand painted the calligraphy on the column listing the names of those individuals recognized in 1993 for 25 years as a Pike Place Market Farmer. My initials are in the lower right hand corner. Note the names Tina Ordonio and Pasqualina Verdi written on the column.
Column, Pike Place Market. Drawing, 2020.
The iconic “Read All About It” that closed on December 2019. This newsstand sold newspapers and magazines from around the world. Tourists could pick up their postcards here too. Here is a good read on its history.
One of the last bouquets before flower vending was temporarily suspended at the Pike Place Market due to COVID. I purchased this bouquet of tulips and they lasted for a long time, growing quite large.
“A Point” sculpted by Michael Oren, 1992. Honoring a sacred gathering place, Pike Place Market, Western Avenue, where Native Americans believed two worlds — the spiritual and physical — collide. This is also the approximate area of Western Avenue where Princess Angeline, daughter of Chief Sealth (after whom the City of Seattle is named) lived. It is also where the farmers first brought their carts laden with fresh produce before the first market buildings were constructed above on First Avenue and Pike Street.
For as many individual items of fresh produce and flowers, there are as many unique memories that have shaped the Market over the decades to this day. It is a special and unique environment full of theatre and drama as well as the best fresh produce and unique hand made crafts from hundreds of merchants generating commerce daily. The Pike Place Market is about life. For over a century, the Pike Place Market has etched in its named tiles, in its wooden high stalls, in its distinctive turn of the century architecture, in its endless lore, a vibrant and quite authentic history unlike any setting in the city of Seattle.
Mary Lamery is a lifelong resident of Seattle, Washington, USA and native of the Pacific Northwest.
Lamery paints regional landscape in a manner that leans towards 19th century French Impressionism. Her landscapes invite the viewer to add to the backstory of the composition through personal identification with the paintings and story telling of the experience.
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