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HistoryLink’s tour explores the nine acres that comprise Pike Place Market with an eye on its architecture. As you wind through the Market’s organically grown labyrinths, note the “humble and anonymous” buildings and the human sense of scale that incubated a diverse and robust Market community.
Although growth slowed by the 1930s, the Market’s importance as a gathering place remained paramount to Seattle’s citizens, and in the 1960s, when the Market was threatened with demolition, they created a “Keep the Market” campaign to save it.
A rare example of urban renewal combining new construction and historic preservation, the Market was designated a National Historic District in 1971. The tour begins at the nexus of Pike Street and Pike Place, just west of the Market Information booth.