Victor Steinbrueck leads a protest rally in Seattle for Pike Place Market on March 12, 1969.

  • By Alan J. Stein
  • Posted 5/31/1999
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 1192
See Additional Media

On March 12, 1969, architect-preservationist Victor Steinbrueck (1911-1985) leads a rally at the Moore Theater to protest the urban renewal plan that would demolish the Pike Place Market.

Three hundred people attended the event as a prelude to a march planned on March 19, 1969, to City Hall where the Seattle City Council was to hold hearings on Scheme 23, which would replace the existing market with new buildings and a replacement for the old market. Of this development project, Steinbrueck said, "The Big Lie, the quarter truth, is that the market is being saved."

In an effort to rejuvenate downtown Seattle, community planners and real estate developers created the $10.6 million Pike Place Project, which would be financed by federal urban renewal programs. On August 11, 1969, the city council voted to proceed with the project. In response, to oppose the project the advocacy group Friends of the Market launched an initiative campaign resulting in the creation of a seven-acre historic district on May 15, 1971. The measure was approved by 60 percent of the voters.


Sources:

Walt Crowley, Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle; University of Washington Press, 1995), 267; Alice Shorett and Murray Morgan, The Pike Place Market: People, Politics and Produce (Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1982); Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 13, 1969, p. 11; Ibid., May 14, 1969, p. 13.


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You