The Pike Place Market, today,  is a 7 acre historic district protected by a variety of documents written in the 1970's. There are over 400 residents that live in the Market, merchants, farmers, performers...It started in 1907 as an expirement by the City of Seattle. At the time, Pike Place was a street just above a beach below, with a cliff dropping down to the water’s edge. Much of Seattle has been rebuilt to support the city’s growth, the waterfront has been filled in, the hills and cliffs surrounding downtown taken down, and the Market itself has gone through transformations many times. In the early part of the 1900’s, there were a few men's hotels, theaters, and some larger where houses in the district, not much else.  At the turn of that century, farmers were having a horrible time making a living wage. They would come in to the city, after traveling long hours to get here, only to have their goods purchased by the where houses for half of what they were quoted before leaving. It was the onion farmers who received the most attention in the Seattle Times and other publications. You could say that the Public Market was started because of the price of onions.

The day that the Market opened, August 17^th, 1907 only 8 farmers showed up to sell, fearing they would loose their contracts with the where houses, and over 2000 people came. There is an account of one farmer placing a tin can out to collect coins and then hiding behind his horse and cart to stay out of the way of the stampede of customers. The second farmer to arrive was a Japanese man who was so overtaken by customers; they climbed on top of his cart and started throwing vegetables into the crowd. Throwing things at the Market is nothing new. The next day, 40 farmers showed up. By the 1920’s and into the 1930’s, even through The Great Depression, over 3000 farmers showed up daily to sell. Other competing Markets sprung up and you can see their names on the faces of buildings today, Corner Market, Sanitary Market, Triangle Market, etc. These were all Markets competing with each other. Seattle's Public Market received it's first private investments by a couple of smart brothers who made it rich during the Gold rush. They made it rich, not on gold but on building the rail lines that brought the gold miners up to their fields, So these two brothers, the Goodwin brothers, already had a eye for how to get rich off of civic investments. They served as landlords and built Seattle’s Public Market built into the cliff side along Pike Place. It is hollow underneath, because the Pacific Northwest Rail Line goes underneath.

There were 26,000 light bulbs originally in the ceilings. There are ornate details carved in to the tops of every beam, archways that lead you to different parts of the Market. The entire Market was designed to look like a theater. And it was an actor from New York who designed it.