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Arthur Goodwin was one of the founders of Seattle's Pike Place Market and the presiding executive of Seattle public market system during the first half of the twentieth century. He also served as a consultant to large public markets within the United States and Canada.

Arthur Goodwin was born in New York City on June 4, 1887. He came to Seattle in February, 1907, and became a bookkeeper at the Goodwin Real Estate Company, which had been established by his uncle, Frank Goodwin. In 1915 he became assistant manager of the Public Market and Department Store Company, of Seattle, later being promoted to manager. In 1912 he was secretary of the Seattle Real Estate Association, and a member of the Seattle Appraisal Board. In 1925, with a few associates, Goodwin bought out his Uncle Frank's interest in the Pike Place Market; they paid approximately three quarters of a million dollars for the holdings of the Public Market and Department Stores Company, the Economy and the Municipal market properties, which were combined to form the Pike Place Public Markets, Inc.

In 1929 he published the book Markets, Public and Private: Their Establishment and Administration. Companies founded or co-founded by Goodwin included the Fulton Petroleum Company, incorporated in Delaware in 1928, operating in the Pondera petroleum area of Montana; the Rotary Bread Stores Company, incorporated 1918; and the Carbon Dioxide and Chemical Company (later known as Carbon Dioxice), incorporated in Delaware in 1929, which operated in connection with the Fulton Fuel Gas Company, at Grand Junction County, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Farnham Dome and Wellington, Utah. Goodwin became president of this company. He served as chairman of the advisory board of the Portland Public Market, Portland, Oregon.

Goodwin's civic activities included membership in numerous fraternal orders. He was also a member of the Washington National Guard and received his honorable discharge in November 1918. Goodwin belonged to the Press Club, the Repertory Playhouse (later the Seattle Repertory Theater), of which he served as a co-founder and president; the Japan Society, of which he was a charter member; and the Washington Athletic and Broadmoor Golf clubs, all of Seattle.

In Seattle on October 24, 1911, Goodwin married Caroline Frances Boulton; their daughter, Ann Elizabeth Goodwin was born Jul 28, 1919. Arthur Goodwin left Seattle in 1941, when he sold his remaining market stock and moved to Salt Lake City. He died in the mid-1950s.