There was a time, a little over 50 years ago, that the Pike Place Market almost fell to the wrecking ball of developers. Out-of-towners had their own ideas about the land underneath the Market and saw a hotel and parking lot take its place.
The timeframe was the late 1960s. The Pike Place Market was showing signs of years of neglect. The Market had several challenges in the decades since WWII leading to its downfall as a mercantile destination for city dwellers. The introduction of the interstate freeway system in the 1950s made it possible to distribute fresh produce far and wide. Selling direct to the customer was not lucrative or competitive in the marketplace with the advent of the “Supermarket.” Also, a significant number of farmers stopped selling at the Market after the end of WWII, namely the Japanese farmers who made up the largest population of farmers and were sadly and unjustly removed from their homes and farms and placed into internment camps during the war. Sadly, after the war ended, their farmland confiscated, the Japanese farmers lost much of what they had and subsequently did not return to the business of farming and consequently did not return to the Market.
The once vibrant Pike Place Market fell into abandon and decay. By 1949 only 53 market stalls remained, down nearly 90 percent from a decade earlier. (Source: Seattle Times.)
The lackluster draw at the market nearly got it raised. Thank goodness it didn't happen.
Fast forward to Now.
The Market not only exists, it persists! And today, the Pike Place Market is celebrating its 117th anniversary on August 17, 2024. The fact that the Market is here today is due to a group called "The Friends of the Market," a volunteer civic organization formed in 1963 under the wing of Allied Arts of Seattle and "dedicated to saving and renewing the historical Pike Place Market and district through a program of community planning."
In 1968, "Friends of the Market" led a city-wide initiative at the ballot box to save the Market from the developer's dreaded wrecking ball. As President of "Friends of the Market," Victor Steinbrueck, architect and active in historic preservation in Seattle back in the day, is wildly credited with saving the Pike Place Market from demolition. Because of Steinbrueck's leadership and advocacy, the initiative passed by popular vote in the City of Seattle and the Pike Place Market was designated with historic status in 1971.
"The Pike Place Market deserves to live on, as a link with Seattle's past, a meaningful and much-loved part of its present, and a place of unlimited possibilities for its future."
--Victor Steinbrueck, Architect and member, Friends of the Market.
Seattle's Parks and Boulevards - An Olmsted Brothers Legacy
At the turn of the 20th century, Seattle, founded in 1885, was a city that was going on 15 years old. Young Seattle was growing at a fast clip, showing no signs of slowing down. Early Seattle leaders had the foresight to conserve land for the purpose of current as well as future generations to enjoy. Fortunately, these leaders decided to create a parks system in Seattle. They hired notable landscape architects, the Olmsted Brothers, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and John Charles Olmsted to develop the master plans for Seattle’s nascent parks system.
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The Inspiring, Incredible, Off-the-Charts Fabulous!
1962 Seattle World's Fair
Watercolor: Space Needle, Coliseum, Science Pavilion. 2021.
1962 Seattle World's Fair
2022 will mark the 60th anniversary of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. This spectacular event attracted over 10 million visitors during the six months it was open from April 21-October 21, 1962. The World’s Fair provided Seattle with an iconic landmark, the Space Needle. It gave the world a vision of the future. In its wake, it left the City of Seattle with major infrastructure serving as a cultural nexus to this day. I find the fair incredibly inspirational for the times in which we now live.
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Watercolor. World Trade Center. 2001. ML.
The Architect of the World Trade Center - Minoru Yamasaki
I was absolutely bowled over to learn that the person who designed the World Trade Center was the same architect of three well-known buildings in my hometown of Seattle.
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Yoshino Cherry Trees, Quadrangle, University of Washington. April 2021.
Cherry Trees along the Quadrangle
The season of the cherry blossoms is brief. Only about four weeks. But they are magical days. Whatever is the secret or magical power of these trees to lull so many people to frolic in their presence, I don't know. But there is something magnetic about the trees, and probably the Quad too.
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Work in Progress. Oil sketch, Volunteer Park. View from south lily pad pond looking north. “Black Sun” is on the right. Oil on Canvas, 8x10.” 2021. I have the painting sitting in an antique frame for now.
A Sense of Place
I made a few sketches of an area of the park in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum where there are two ponds of lily pads. Towering above in the center, the monumental "Black Sun" black granite sculpture created in 1969 by Japanese/American sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
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Lily pad pond, Volunteer Park, Seattle. Oil on Canvas, 24x24.” 2017. This is one of two lily pad ponds, original structures of the park design, that grace the park.
Sublime. Landscape Impressions of Capitol Hill.
Capitol Hill has been the backdrop of my life where I have lived since 1984. Often in parts of this old neighborhood of Seattle, I can easily slip into a daydream where I might be seeing the neighborhood through the eyes of its early citizens because of the history and timelessness of the landscape. Other times, I am taken back to solitary, exploratory walks of my youth. In this exercise of daydreaming, I am reminded of Marcel Proust's novel, "À la recherché du temps perdu" ("In Remembrance of Things Past") where the concept of time dissolves, and where the reconstruction of the past is relative to the present "now."
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