Of all the many things that Seattle’s Pike Place Market could and should be celebrated for, one of its most endearing and important aspects, according to local historian and author Alice Shorett, is the people who have rallied around it and kept it alive for a century.
The market, which turned 100 Aug. 17, has been an incarnation of the American Dream, a tourist attraction, a platform for small business, entertainers and much more in its history.
“Anyone from Seattle or the surrounding area has had some sort of experience at the market that they remember,” Shorett said.
What began in 1907 as a one-day, low-key gathering of farmers vending fresh produce grew into a phenomenon that’s now cemented in place and open daily. And while that 100-year journey has had its share of turbulence, market supporters have remained vigilant.
It’s the story of those supporters which Shorett and co-author Murray Morgan have documented in “The Pike Place Market: People, Politics, and Produce” released on the market’s 75th birthday in 1982. Now to mark the centennial, Shorett — also co-author of “Walks on Bainbridge” — has revisited and revamped the text, adding two new chapters, illustrations and changing the name to “Soul of the City: The Pike Place Public Market.”
She’ll be speaking on the book accompanied by a slide show with illustrations from the book at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 23 at Eagle Harbor Book Company — 157 Winslow Way on Bainbridge. Like admission to the market, the event is free.
“It’s a lesson in civic activism and how people can make a change,” Shorett said, speaking of the market’s significance to her. “There has been threat after threat and time after time, people have rallied around the market and saved it.”
Shorett, who grew up on a 5-acre farm in Puyallup, began studying Pike Place 35 years ago when she became involved joining on her first ever civic campaign, one to save the market in 1971. Shortly thereafter she was commissioned by the city of Seattle to write the market’s history for the National Register of Historic Places.
That assignment, deriving history from scrapbooks, interviews and real estate records spawned the genesis for her and Murray’s 1982 book, and now “Soul of the City.”
“I decided I wanted to follow up,” she said. “So for another eight years, along with my full time job, I was interviewing people and writing their stories.”
Each era of the market is represented and told through the story of a particular figure of that time.
The cast is colorful. Ranging from dreamers like the reformist politician Thomas Revelle to eccentric achievers like the Goodwins and tough-nut farmers like Willard Soames, the book segues from the old days into the present, accounting the leaders who mobilized people in preserving the market as a place for people and the “Soul of the City.”
