Last month I finished an article describing the handful of Seattle’s drive-in markets. They may have been Seattle’s first buildings designed to engage automobiles — other than garages, the first car architecture. Here’s how I described them:
Part super service station and part public market, drive-in markets were the first building type to interface with off-street parking in the way of a strip mall. They also resembled strip malls because of their lack of chain identity, and due to the number of independent vendors that leased space. But they were public markets, so sellers each represented one of the business types we are used to seeing at the Pike Place Market: meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables, seafood, groceries, baked goods and other food items. They were all in an open space with vendors shoulder to shoulder.
I hoped to get my hands on clear photos of the buildings themselves. And my hopes were fulfilled! Click through each of these images to find the full-sized scan that I purchased from the Washington State Archives.
Car architecture: Uptown’s Motor-In Market
500 Queen Anne Avenue North, the corner at Republican. Currently site of Lower Queen Anne Dicks. In 1930 the building was constructed for the Motor-In Market. By 1958 one wing housed the Dime-a-Matic Laundromat.
Roosevelt Safeway (formerly Pay’n’Takit)
Safeway in drive-in market at Roosevelt Way and NE 69th in 1937.
Interbay’s Cove Mid-City Market
This building remains in an altered state, at the corner of Elliott and Galer, where Elliot turns into 15th Ave W. It is currently the Builders Hardware Supply. In 1931 the structure was built for the Cove Mid-City Market.
Montlake Drive-In Market
Montlake Drive-In Market, opened in 1931. From property file 871210-0035, address 2200 24th Ave East, Washington State Archives Puget Sound Regional Branch.
Morgan Street Drive-In Market
The Morgan Street Drive-In Market opened at Morgan Junction (Fauntleroy, Morgan and California) in 1934. The tax assessor’s photo dates from 1937. This Tradewell at Morgan Junction (Fauntleroy, Morgan and California) opened in December 1955.
Each of these markets is fully described in my Seattle drive-in markets article.
I need to again thank Professor Richard Longstreth for his fantastic book “The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941“.
More groceries
I gave a talk on the Morgan Street Drive-In Market on March 20, 2016 at the High Point library for the Southwest Historical Society. You can watch it here.
I’ve been writing a surprising amount over the last couple of years about Seattle’s early 1900s groceries. Here’s a list of links:
- 50s Futurism Forgotten – The Burien Tradewell Story
- Seattle’s Drive-In Markets
- Seattle’s earliest car architecture in pictures – Drive-in markets
- Ice cream, beer, and the Montlake Drive-in Public Market (on CHS blog)
- Broadway Market v1.0 (on CHS blog)
- Blueprints of Broadway Market
- Groceteria
- (Witness Weeps) – The Tragedy of Alvin Monson
- Augustine & Kyer
- Charles Louch Farm
- Piggly Wiggly Seattle
- Anderson, United and Mutual Markets
- Eba’s Cut Rate Markets
- Main Arcade Eba’s Store No 1
- Corner Market Eba’s Store No 2
- Wallingford Eba’s Store No 7
- Buy your rubber at City Market (on CHS blog)
- Capitol Hill – fancy groceries since 1923 (on CHS blog)
- A Broadway clock that tells history not time – Queen City Grocery and IGA (on CHS blog)
- Piggly Wiggly on Broadway (on CHS blog)
- A shop on 11th Ave – Salle Brothers and Arai Grocery (on CHS blog)