THEN: This row of homes, right to left, from 2104 to 2110 7th Ave. West were built in 1905-6, and so they are, by some calibrations, antiques. They are well cared for Queen Anne Hill pioneers. Public School teacher Lou R. Key lived for time at 2104 7th Ave. West, the second house from the right, if I have figured it correctly.  For notes on these homes – and on Ms. Key too – see the bottom of this feature. (Courtesy, Lawton Gowey)

NOW: Only the small home directly on the northeast corner of 7th Ave. West and Crockett Street has grown with impressive changes.

For those who pay attention to credits and have been following this feature for a few years, Lawton Gowey is a familiar name.  This is another of the probably hundreds of historical subjects that Lawton has shared with Pacific readers because he shared them with me.

Here we look northeast through the Queen Anne intersection of Crockett Street, and 7^th Ave W.  The photo was recorded sometime before 1912, when these streets were paved, and after 1905-6 the years the houses were built facing Seventh.  Archivist Phil Stairs at the Puget Sound Regional Archive checked their “tax cards” for remodels and concluded,  “You could say that there was an enterprising asbestos salesman in the neighborhood in 1957.”  That year two of the four were wrapped in that baleful blanket.

By then Lawton Gowey was in his third year as both organist and director of the senior choir at Bethany Presbyterian Church on the top of the hill.  Lawton live all his life on Queen Anne, and he knew its history, especially that side of it having to do with, “From here to there – land transportation.”  That’s the title Lawton used for a lecture on Seattle’s trollies he gave in 1962 at the Museum of History and Industry.

Lawton Gowey’s Water Dept Card (one of them – copied 1983)

Actually, this accountant for the Seattle Water Department also knew a lot about ships, churches, J.S. Bach, and English history, but it was trolleys that he chased as a boy with his father and a camera.

I met Lawton in 1981, but our friendship was a regrettably brief one. On a late Sunday morning in the winter of 1983 while preparing for church the 61-year-old organist’s heart stopped.  He left Jean, his wife, daughters Linda and Marcia, his father Clarence, scores of rail fans and his collection of trolley photos and ephemera, which Jean directed to the University of Washington Library’s Special Collections.

A Seattle Times adver for the nearby Queen Anne Addition, Jan. 10, 1904

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?

Surely Jean – but merely what we can find in the time allowed by our shared rush to also assemble and massage our First Hill lectures.  And so a few – only – more pixs of Queen Anne Hill – most of them in the vicinity of the feature above, and also three or four links to former related features, which Ron Edge will gather and apply.  However, we will begin not with the links, but with Lawton’s own “now” for the above look north on 7th Ave. West.  He dates it March 8, 1981.  Then two more Gowey repeats from the same corner – one looking more directly north down Seventh and other other east on Crockett.  We will then show a detail of the immediate neighborhood from the 1912 Baist Map followed by the FOUR CLIPS.  Each of the pictures following the 1912 BAIST MAP, if clicked will take the reader into a many faceted exploration of a related subject.  All, again, have something to do with Queen Anne Hill (and Magnolia too).

Lawton Gowey’s 1981 repeat of the feature subject on 7th West.

Looking north on 7th West from near Crockett, ca. 1911.

Lawton Gowey’s repeat Feb. 7, 1981

610 West Crockett looking east from 7th Ave West, ca. 1911

Lawton Gowey’s repeat from Feb. 7, 1981

CROCKETT Street runs along the bottom of this detail from the 1912 Baist Real Estate Map. The corner homes featured at the top are at its northeast corner with 7th Ave. W. and in Block 1, left-of-center at the bottom of the map. (Click Twice to Enlarge)

 FOUR QUEEN ANNE NEIGHBORHOOD LINKS FOLLOW

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SEATTLE CHILDREN’S HOME

(First appeared in Pacific April 15, 1984)  

            Seattle’s oldest charity is now one hundred (1984). On April 3, 1884, fifteen of the city’s “leading ladies” – Sarah Yesler, Babette Gatzert, Mercie Boone, and Mary Leary included – gathered in the large living room of the Leary mansion at Second and Madison. There they pledged themselves to “the systematic benevolent work of aiding and assisting the poor and destitute regardless of creed, nationality, or color.” Incorporating as the Ladies Relief Society, these women activists gave birth to “one of Seattle’s biggest families,” nurtured now for a century in the Seattle Children’s Home.

            From the beginning the “quality of their mercy” focused on “orphans and friendless children,” those little Nels and Oliver Twists who had seemingly stepped out of Charles Dicken’s novels and onto the back streets of Seattle. 1884 was a depression year, and Seattle, then recently the largest town in the territory, had its depressing and even desperate parts. The women’s charity was needed.

            Within a month, the group’s membership grew to more than 100. The women divided the city into districts and themselves into visiting committees responsible for searching out the “needs of the poor within their districts’ boundaries.” What they uncovered were new accounts of that old story of the runaway father and the distraught mother.

The Society’s first home in what is now the Seattle Center, near the southwest corner of Harrison St. and 4th Ave. West.

            The Society needed a home, and in August of 1886 the first Seattle Children’s Home was opened to 30 children. The home’s site, donated by Louisa and David Denny, was at what is now [1984] another children’s gamboling ground, Seattle Center’s Fun Forest.

            Pictured above is the charity’s second home and its first at the present location on Queen Anne Hill. “Here,” the Town Crier reported in 1912, “45 children, either orphans or fatherless are cared for  . . . under the gentle guidance of Mrs. Anna Dow Urie and two assistants . . . 700 loaves of bread a month and a jolly old janitor who never lets the furnace die down.”

            This was a kind of family, and the religious Mrs. Urie never had any doubt as to its head. She said, “I have never taught creeds in the home, but all these children have been told of God, and His love, and that He will be a father to them when earthly fathers forsake, as they so often do.”

            Now in its fourth home and 100 years since its founding, this “family” enters its second century with the support of Society volunteers, donations, and the United Way. A professional staff of childcare specialists now adds its earthly skills to Mrs. Urie’s heavenly variety of “kindly custodial care to orphans and friendless children.”

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SEVENTH CHURCH of CHRIST SCIENTIST: Secreted and Saved Landmark

On the late morning of Tuesday, May 22nd last (2007), the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation held a press conference intended to turn the fate of one of Seattle’s most exquisite landmarks away from its planned destruction and towards something else – something “adaptive” like another church, a community center or even a home – a big home.

The Trust not only included the Seventh Church of Christ Scientist on its 2007 list of the Washington State’s “most endangered historic properties.”   It then also used the front steps of this Queen Anne landmark as the place to circle the wagons for statewide preservation.  It was an especially strong sign by the Trust and for its extended family of historians, architects, citizens – including sensitive neighbors of the church – of how cherished is the Seventh Church.

Seattle architect and painter Harlan Thomas (1870 – 1953) created the unique sanctuary for the then energetic congregation of Christ Scientists on Seattle’ Queen Ann Hill in 1926.  It was the year he was also made head of the Architecture Department at the University of Washington, a position he held until 1940.

Although a local architectural marvel this sanctuary is not well know because of its almost secreted location.  The address is 2555 8th Ave. W. — at the Avenue’s northwest corner with West Halladay Street.  Except to live near it or to visit someone living near it there are few extraordinary reasons to visit this peaceful neighborhood, except to enjoy this fine melding of architectural features from the Byzantine, Mission, Spanish Colonial and other traditions.

Since the Trust created it in 1992 the “Endangered List” has not been an immoderate tool in the service of state heritage.  Less than 100 sites have made this register, which is really the Trust’s emergency broadside for historic preservation.  [This campaign from 2007 was successful.  The sanctuary was saved.

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RETAINING WALLS - QUEEN ANNE BOULEVARD - Architect W.R.B. WILLCOX (1913)

The following seven records of architect Willcox's imaginative Queen Anne Boulevard retaining walls were photographed by Frank Shaw in 1976,

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ANOTHER and TEMPORARILY UNIDENTIFIED Queen Anne "Now and Then" by LAWTON GOWEY

A fine example of “War Brick” that wonder-siding sold door-to-door in the early 1940s and later too.

PICTURE/CLIPPINGS from LAWTON GOWEY’S QUEEN ANNE ARCHIVE

The QUEEN ANNE COUNTERBALANCE

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RESEARCH NOTES for the FEATURE at the Top.

Most of these notes on the first four homes on the east side of 7th Ave. West north of Crockett Street were got from the Washington State Archive’s tax cards and key-word searches of The Seattle Times.  Please forgive the typos.  They are the sins of speed typing.  Only one persons listed came forward with a picture – the public school teacher Lou R. Key.  And she is shown with some uncertainty.  The portraits as well as the group shot all come from the Seattle School District’s Archives – thanks to Archivists Aaren L. Purcell.  That is Lou R. Key posing with her in the Campfire group shot, and surely one or more of those in the three remaining single shots are also of Ms. Key.  But not all three.   Nos. 2 & 4 appear in the same informal group photo of teachers.

Public school teacher Lou R. Key with her Campfire group. (Courtesy, Seattle School District Archive)

Again, teachers No. 2 and 4 are from the same group photograph, but does either of them look more like Lou R. Key in photo No. 1, far-left, than the other?  To my eye No’s 2 and 3 look alike.

614 W. CROCKETT

The house on the east 1/2 of lot 20 (614 W. Crockett) was built in 1914

as a one story house with 3 rooms in the attic.  The first owner noted

is the Seattle Federal Saving and Loan Co., 11/10/1938.  It was

subsequently purchased by Eunice C. Smith in 1941, George & Loa Gratias

in 1952, John H. Wadeson in April 1961 and the Ruth D. Coone (?) in June

1961.  It missed having asbestos siding put on.

2102 7^TH AVE. WEST

On the W 1/2 of lot 20 is the house at 2102 7th Ave. W.  It was built in

1905 and apparently remodeled in 1919.  It is a one story house with a

garage in the basement.  The original siding was cedar but that was

crossed out and “Metal 8″ was added, possibly in 1957.  The first owner

noted was Elsie M. Schroeder as of 6/27/1922.  Aurilla Doerner et al

bought the property in 1972.

* ST Dec. 19-1909 John Davis listing for Rent, Unfurnished houses”: 2102 7^th Ave. W., 4-rm mod cost.16.00 (dollars a month I assume)

* ST July 30, 1978 Wallace & Wheeler, Inc. listing  QUEEN ANNE 2102 7^TH AVE. W. $46,500 AN ENCHANTING SMALL HOME, WITH PUGET SOUND view FOR THE SINGLE OR COUPLE WHO WANT a nice neighborhood – in the city, charming living room with fireplace, small dining, I bedroom, basement, garage.  See  today with Marybelle Eggertsen or call 524-6210 or 325-9862 (eves)

* 1938 Polk: A.A.Schroeder  (a.a.schroeder shows up as a realtor in 4-7-29)

2104 7^th ave. W

Lot 19, 2104 7th Ave. W., was a two story house built in 1905.  The

first owner noted is Jessie Schwartz who bought it on 8/12/1936.  Harold

F. Anderson bought the property in 1972.  This house also had asbestos

siding put on in 1957.

2104 7^th ave. W

* ST 5-7-1906 MB. CRANE & CO. List rentals with us we advertise – we rent. HOUSES $22.00 – 2104 7^th Ave. W.   6-room modern house; com. Fix

* ST 7-6-06  CRANE & Co.  2104 7^th Ave W. 6-room modern hose; very fine view; on car line

* ST 4-15-56  Rites for Miss Key ex-teacher.  Christian Science funeral service for Miss Lou R. Key, a retire Seattle elementary school teach will be held at 2 in Johnson and Hamilton chapel. Cremation will follow.  Miss Key died Friday at her home, 2104 Seventh Ave. S. She retired about five years ago after teaching in Seattle schools about 40 years.  She taught many years at John Muir School and later at Leschi.  Born in Missouri grad of Cottey Junior College Nevada, Mo.  Member of 4^th Church of Christ, Scientist.  Survivors include three sisters and a brother in the East.

* ST Jan 29, 1920  Lou R. Key mistaken for a man when Key is a candidate for a Times contest to send 6 teachers to Europe battlefields and 4 other teachers to Yellowstone park.  Of the 191 candidates only 18 are men, Times makes the point “ONLY 18 MEN ON LIST OF HONOR – Women Instructors Not only One who Hope to Visit Battlefields of Europe.  Votes are Pouring in . . . Eighteen forlorn gentlemen hemmed in by prejudice and necessity of hearing out their ‘ladies first’ principles, yet wanting to go to Europe as guests of The Times.  That is the status of mere man in the teachers’ selection balloting being conducted by The Seattle Times.

* ST Feb. 28, 1926 Benefit for Orthopedic Hosp. March 15. North Queen Anne Guild to give Bridge and Mah Jong Tea at Olympia.  Spanish Ballroom Among reservations are Mrs. Lou R. Key. (The school teacher Lou Key is mistaken for a man.)

* Lou R. Key listed at Muir school in 1921 and at Leschi school in 1942 & 1944 last times listing before funeral notice.

* Polke 1938 directory: 2104 7^th Ave. W.  Richard C. Outsen   ST 10-3-1951 Jesdame Richard C. Outsend listed as member of Dandleers Dancing Club executive committee, beginning its seventh year and will hold its first of six dances sat eve at 8:30 in Women’s Century club.

2108 7^th Ave. W.

The house on lot 18, 2108 7th Ave. W. was built in 1906.  The first

owner shown is H. I. Pappe who bought it on 8/19/1926.  It was a two

story building.  It was purchased in 1941 by Frank M. Heyland.  Asbestos

siding was added to the house in 1957.

* Only one listing that on Sept 22, 1946 Frank L. McGuire, Inc. Open for Inspection: 2 to 3 pm 2108 7^th Ave. W. $7,000 Queen Anne 3-B R. Home. Full basement garage hdw floors, tiled kitchen, close to school, bus, shopping district. Call Mr. Neal Mitchell SE 1100

* 1938 Polk: Andrew Fyfe, landscape gardener.   ST 2-7-1950 obit.   65 years old died in home at 2138 4^th ave w after a short illness. Born in Dundee Scotland, live in Seattle for 31 years. He was a landscape gardener. Survived by wife Elizabeth daughter Betty and Mrs Lillian Hansen, Son Andrew Fyfe Jr. and two grand children all of Seattle.

2110 7^th Ave. W.   

For the house on lot 17, 2110 7th Ave. W., it was built in 1905 as a one

family dwelling, one story with attic (two rooms in attic).  There is a

note that a permit was taken out for a new garage.  The only owner shown

is G. S. Hamman who bought the property 10/24/1958.  Unfortunately the

name from c. 1937 was erased.

* ST 10-22-21   Having to do with S.Times sport contest in Upper Woodland Park but with contestant from Q. Anne Hill connected with Coe School -  Stuart Curtis 13 years old 2110 7^th Ave. W. / David Curtis 11 years old 2110 7^th Ave W.   1921 POLK has a Gold N. Curtis living at 2110 7^th Ave.W. and listed as a “driver”   In Stimes for June 12, 1936 under Marriage licenses Gold M. Curtis, Legal , Wenatchee, and Almoa Porter, Legal, Wenatchee are listed.  Don’t know what the “legal” means.  It is commonplace in these listings but not in the majority of them.

* ST 8-16-73 Obit for Harry T. Sappenfield – 63 at 2110 7^th Ave. ww2 vet. & retired longshoreman Local 19.  Viola wife. Bleitz funeral home

* 1938 Polk Vacant

THEN: Built in 1888-89 at the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue and Pine Street, the then named Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church marked the southeast corner of Denny Hill. Eventually the lower land to the east of the church (here behind it) would be filled, in part, with hill dirt scraped and eroded from North Seattle lots to the north and west of this corner. (Courtesy, Denny Park Lutheran Church)

NOW: Looking northeast from 4th and Pine may we imagine the somewhat Gothic qualities of Westlake Center’s front door a fitting repeat for the Lutheran church that 125 years earlier first distinguished this corner with its grand steeple?

On April 28 Denny Park Lutheran Church  celebrated its 125^th Anniversary.  Thru the years the parish has changed its name and affiliations a few times while building four sanctuaries on four different corners. All were sited near the business district – at the expanding northern end of it.

As an example, this, the first of the congregation’s homes, was built quickly at the northeast corner of Pine and 4^th on a lot that cost $2,000 in 1888 and was sold for $19,000 a dozen years later.  The congregation then soon moved seven blocks north to Fifth and Wall and built again on a cheaper lot.  These adept economics were typical of many congregations sitting with their churches on Seattle lots made increasingly valuable during those most booming years of the city’s growth.

Looking south over Third Avenue from Denny Hill ca. 1885. The first Lutheran parish in Seattle, the Swedish Lutheran Church, rests bottom-left near the northeast corner of Third Avenue and Pike Street. Note the territorial university on Denny Knoll and behind it and to the left the first part of Providence Hospital at the southeast corner of 5th and Spring.  On the horizon some of the first growth forest still holds on Beacon Hill. [Near the bottom of this week's offering in the fourth subject up from the bottom, the same small frame church is seen ca. 1909 in a photo taken from an upper floor or roof of the Washington Hotel.  The white church has dimmed considerably.  The Swedes have long since moved on.]

The Lutheran’s second sanctuary also on the doomed Denny Hill.

Leaving this southeast slope of Denny Hill in 1904, the new parish – with less tower but more pews – was still located on the doomed Denny Hill. Then five years later the second sanctuary was razed with the hill and these Lutherans were forced to build sanctuary number three.   Erected at Boren and Virginia, it was the congregation’s home from 1912 to 1939 when they moved again, this time to Eighth and John.  The parish then changed its name to Denny Park Lutheran Church identifying with the “green pastures” of its neighbor, the city’s oldest public park.

News of Norwegian Lutheran’s 50th Anniversary printed on the religion page for the Nov. 26, 1938 Seattle Times.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?    Mostly photos Jean, although we will start with another feature, one that looks east on Pine Street from near 2nd Avenue in the early 1890s.  It includes our Lutherans at the northeast corner of 4th and Pine, the Methodist Protestants at the southeast corner of 3rd and Pine.  The feature first appeared in Pacific on March 2, 1986, and is almost entirely about the Methodists – bless them.

Looking east on Pine, ca. 1892, from near Second Avenue.

METHODIST PROTESTANTS at 3^rd and PINE, ca. 1892

(First appeared in Pacific, March 2, 1986)

            The first two churches in Seattle were both Methodist.  One was Methodist Episcopalian and the other Methodist Protestant. Long before any Methodists settled in Seattle, their denomination split over how much power to give bishops.

            In 1865, when the Methodist Protestants of Seattle built their church, the primary difference between it and the earlier Methodist Episcopal sanctuary was not doctrine but color. The first church was white and the new MP sanctuary was painted brown. From then on they were known simply as the white and brown churches.

            Here the “Brown Church” has lightened up, with the third “permanent” home for the congregation. The original brown colored church at the northwest corner of Second Avenue and Madison Street was replaced in 1883 with an enlarged sanctuary. Its new stone veneer skin, however, did not save it from the “Great Fire” of 1889. This is the parish that the congregation, after worshiping for a year in tents, built in 1890 at the southeast corner of Pine Street and Third Avenue.

            Clark Davis became pastor in 1885. He bought the lot and built this church for about $40,000. Next door he raised a comfortable parsonage for himself, his wife Cleo and their two sons. The Gothic Revival sanctuary could seat 1,000 and often did. Clark was ambitious and in 1896, after resigning his pastorate, he went for and won the jobs of registrar at the University of Washington and secretary to its Board of Regents.

Regrade work on Pine Street looking northeast into the front “hump” of Denny Hill with the hotel still on top. Note the tower for the fire station far right.

            The Pine Street Regrade (1903-06) lowered this comer 10 feet and converted the church basement into its first floor. With regrades on Third Avenue and Denny Hill coming at them, the parishioners sold their comer for $100,000 and moved in 1906 to a new stone church on Capitol Hill. As soon as the Methodists moved out, the Third Avenue Theater moved in.

Dated 1904, the stereo looks south on Third Avenue from the Washington Hotel (built as the Denny Hotel). Note the fire station at the northeast corner of Pine and Third across Pine from the Methodists.  Note also the one-block long counterbalance trolley either climbing the hill from Pine to the hotel’s front portico or the opposite.

Pine Street Regrade looking west from 4th Avenue ca. 1906.  Fire Station No. 2 is on the left. The Lutherans are behind the photographer off-frame to the right. The north facade of the Methodist-Protestant church stands on the left.

A detail from the 1890s Sanborn real estate map includes the Norwegian Danish parish, the Methodists, the Fire Station No. 2 and next to the station the Pine Street School, one of the earliest of the community’s school structures and pictured below.

The Pine Street School, aka North School, on the north side of Pine between Third and Fourth Avenues.

With the steeple of the new Norwegian Danish Lutheran sanctuary on the left, and construction still in progress on the Methodist Protestant Church, on the right, this F. Jay Haynes photo looks southeast from Denny Hill to First Hill. Note the greenbelt of the university campus at the scene’s center. The green reaches north as far as Union Street, the border there of the original campus.

The Lutherans here hold the bottom-center of another recording of First Hill, or part of it, from Denny Hill. The barren or exposed patch is at one of hill’s steepest points, the intersection of University Street and 9th Avenue.  Today Horizon House sits to the left of  that patch and above it.

Looking northwest from First Hill back towards Denny Hill with the Washington Hotel (first named the Denny Hotel) on top and a hazy Magnolia peninsula above it. Such a pan is, of course, well appointed with landmarks, and these include the Norwegian Danish Lutherans at 4th and Pine, although sans steeple. The spire has been removed.  The Methodist Protestants are more easily found – the Gothic south facade is fairly obvious below the hotel and to the left.  To find the Lutherans go to the right about 1/5th the width of the pan – or the one block between Third and Fourth Aves. on Pine St.  Near the bottom of this feature is a triad of looks north on 4th from Pike that also shows the top-less Lutherans – a detail of them – as the temporary home for an undertaker.  (A Reminder: DOUBLE-CLICK this pan for the full enlargement – at least it takes two clicks on my MAC to see it all.)

Looking northeast at Denny Hill from First Hill.   The Norwegian Danish Lutherans at the northeast corner of 4th and Pine appear here, from the rear, on the left.  These Lutherans are sometimes mistaken for Baptists – the Swedish Baptists – that are nearby at the northeast corner of Olive and 5th Ave., and with their own slender steeple.  They – or it – appear here on the far right.  North on 4th or up the hill from the Lutherans much of the hill is yet to be developed with the row houses that are included in the next photo below.

These row houses on the west side of Fourth Ave., south of Stewart Street nearly match another row built earlier on 2nd Avenue also south of Stewart. Like the hotel they were short-lived, razed with the hill. (Courtesy Louise Lovely)

A few years before the Lutherans, looking south on 4th Ave. from between Stewart and Virginia Streets ca. 1886.    This steep ascent is still evident in the two subjects that follow, which look thru the same blocks in the opposite direction, north from Pike Street, and about 20 years later.

Looking north up both the new Westlake Ave, at the center, and the old 4th Ave. still climbing Denny Hill on the left. The cross-street is Pike. Here, as in the recording that follows, the front of the Norwegian-Danish Lutheran parish can be seen to the left of the flatiron Plaza Hotel on the left. [We have visited this intersection, and Westlake too, many times and readers may wish to do a key word search for either or both.]

Click TWICE to ENLARGE or wait for the increased sizes of the next two subjects. The old spire-less Lutherans to the rear of the Plaza Hotel, and across Pine Street, are briefly home here for brothers Joseph P. and Ambrose A. Collins’ Undertaking Parlor. You can read some of their signs painted to the side of the still not so old church.

The COLLINS BROS sign is seen, in part, right of center. Further up and north on 4th Ave, a three story apartment building – or rooming house – with open balconies facing 4th Ave. sits at the northeast corner of 4th Ave. and Steward Street. This structure appears as well in the subject printed first below this one.

The shadow of Denny Hotel (aka Washington Hotel) darkens the bottom-left corner of this A. Curtis shot that looks east from Denny Hill to Capitol Hill. The structure noted in the 4th Ave. subject printed above this scene, appears here center-bottom at the northeast corner of 4th and Stewart. Five blocks to the west on Stewart, the bright white west facade of the Swedish Lutheran Church (Gethsemane Lutheran) shines from the southeast corner of 9th and Stewart. The climb east from 8th Ave. (home for Greyhound)  is considerably steeper than it is now.  Stewart was regraded through this block and its neighboring blocks too. At the bottom-right corner, Olive Way originates at 4th Ave. The steepel-less first home of St. Marks Episcopal is squeezed onto this flatiron block with the parsonage to this side of it. The slender steeple of the Swedish Baptist Church ascends above the Episcopalians. It sits at the northeast corner of Olive and 5th and so will be cut-through/eliminated with the creation Westlake Ave. in 1906.   Work on the Seattle High School (Broadway Hi.) is reaching its top stories in 1900-1901, on the right horizon.

To earlier views looking east from the top of Denny Hill – included for comparisons to Curtis’ ca. 1901 subject above it. Note that the Swedish Baptists at 5th and Olive appear in both, as does Seattle Electric on the south side of Olive and as far as Pine Street. They ran the trollies.

The razing of the Methodist Protestant church ca. 1909. The congregation has moved to its new home on Capitol Hill’s 16th Ave. This church at the southeast corner of Pine and 3rd was last used by the 3rd Ave. Theatre, which was forced from its stage(s) at the northeast corner of Madison and Third with the 1906-7 regrade of Third Ave. Although the same regrade reached this intersection it did not destroy the church. Instead a new main floor at the old basement level was added, and that change is witnessed here by the brighter coloring of the hall’s west and south facades at the sidewalk/street level. The brightness is dappled by what are certainly also colorful advertising broadsides.  Above the church/theatre the top floors are being added to architect Van Siclen’s Seaboard Building at the northeast corner of Pike and 4th Ave. St. James Cathedral, still with its dome, is on the horizon. St. James was dedicated in 1907.  The King County Courthouse is also on the horizon, but far right at 7th and Terrace.

The flatiron Plaza Hotel is left-of-center, and to this side of it at the northeast corner of 4th and Pine is the new masonry structure that replaced the Lutheran’s church and the Collins brothers’ funeral home. This dates from ca. 1909 near the end of the Denny Regrade, or that part of it that smoothed the old hill neighborhood as far east as Fifth Avenue.

The same intersection of Pine and 4th – right-of-center – as that shown at street-level in the subject above this one. This was photographed from an upper floor (or roof) of the New Washington Hotel at 2nd and Stewart.

A parade heads south on 4th in the block between Olive Way and Pine Street on May 30, 1953. The Lutheran corner is – or was – on the far right. Behind it the Hotel Ritz was home for the Carpenters Union. Beyond that the Mayflower Hotel and the Times Square Building sit respectively on the south and north sides of Olive Way and still do. Note the once popular Great Northern goat sign down the way. Closer at mid-block is the once popular Ben Paris.

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A few more photos will be added tomorrow after breakfast.  For now it is “climb the stairway to nighty-bears.”

THEN: Three Echo Lake proprietors are signed in this ca. 1938 tax photo. On the right is Scotty’s hanging invitation to his Paradise. Eddie Erickson’s sign to his Echo Lake Camp appears, in part, far left. Between them is Aurora’s enduring landmark, Melby’s Echo Lake Tavern. (Courtesy Washington State Archive, Puget Sound Region.)

NOW: At 19508 Aurora Ave., Melby’s Tavern survives as Woody’s. It has kept the distinguished roofline but neither the many-paned windows nor any reminder of the lake.

If for your next road trip north to Everett across our rolling “North Plateau” you should choose Aurora – and we recommend it – keep an eye out for this by now cherished landmark.  You will find it a few blocks south of the county line.  If you pay attention, the two-story flatiron Echo Lake Tavern, will seem to be pointing it’s narrowest end at you just above and west of its namesake lake.   

The Tavern on Jan 7, 1970 and another tax photo courtesy of the Washington State Archive.

A Seattle Times clip on Echo Lake opportunities from May 31, 1905

In the summer of 1905 construction on the Seattle-Everett approached what artful promoters called the Echo Lake Garden Tracks.  For “$500 dollars, $50 dollars down and $10 a month” five acres parcels were plugged as “suitable for chicken duck and goose ranches.” Herman Butzke opened the Echo Lake Bathing Beach instead.  Butzke had been admired as a singing bartender at Seattle’s famed “Billy the Mug” saloon. He was also a picture-framer, and finally before opening his resort, a plumber at the nearby Firlands Sanatorium.  His first customers at the lake were nurses who paid a nickel to use his shelters for changing.

Herman Butzke’s Oct. 3, 1930 obit in the Seattle Times.

Click the Firland text below TWICE to enlarge.

The Firland feature first appeared in Pacific on Nov. 18, 1990.

This landmark tavern came later.  After a new route for Aurora was graded here in the mid 1920s, Echo Lake resident Theodore Millan built the two-story roadhouse in 1928 on its triangular lot squeezed between the new Aurora and the old Echo Lake Pl. N.  Here the latter leads to the canoes, tents and new beds of Scotty’s short-lived Paradise.  With the uncorking of prohibition in late 1933, Millan rented his flatiron to Carl and Jane Melby, for their Tavern.

Vicki Stiles, the helpful and scholarly Executive Director of the Shoreline Historical Museum (nearby at 18501 Linden Ave. N.), had heard rumors that the florist Carl Melby had more than liked his booze during prohibition as well. The sleuthing Stiles discovered that Melby had been arrested at least three times transporting mostly illegal Canadian liquor.  (We follow below with several Seattle Times clips on Melby’s career.) One night at Sunset beach near Anacortes he was chased into the Strait of Juan de Fuca up to his neck, collared and pulled ashore.  In 1942 the then 56-year-old tavern owner was finally felled and also near Anacortes.  While fishing off Sinclair Island, he was leveled by a heart attack. Considering Carl’s inclinations his death may have been mellowed by liquor – legal bonded liquor.

Seattle Times, Dec. 27, 1924 – “illegal search”?

Seattle Times, Jan 15, 1928

Seattle Times, Jan. 29, 1928.

Seattle Times March 1, 1928

Seattle Times, May 14, 1928

Seattle Times, March-13-1932

Seattle Times, March 21, 1932

Carl Melby hooks his mortality. Seattle Times Dec. 8, 1942

Twenty-one years before his death notice Carl gets his first “personal notice” in The Seattle Times for April 7, 1921.

Three years after his passing Melby’s popularity endures with his namesake tavern, which is busted for selling beer to minors. Seattle Times Oct. 8, 1945

Four members of the Aurora Commercial Club posing – twice.  No date.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?   Yes, and starting with more Aurora by returning with the “Edge Patch” below to the extended feature we ran here on March 16 last, which was, I think, shortly before we started having consistent inconsistency from both our blog’s server and it program.   So touch Signal Gas immediately below and repeat a variety of what are mostly early speedway views on Aurora.

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A Seattle Everett Interurban trestle at the north end of Echo Lake (Courtesy, Washington State Museum, Tacoma)

The “repeat” used in the 1985 Pacific.  Genevieve McCoy reflecting on her studies at the U.W.. This crude copy was pulled from the Times clipping.

ECHO LAKE

(First appears in Pacific, July 7, 1985)

            Almost half a century ago, it took a little over an hour to go from Seattle to Everett on the Interurban. The electric cars reached 60 mph on the straight stretches – an adventure still remembered by many. The Interurban stopped at North Park, Pershing, Foy, Richmond Highlands, A1derwood, Ronald – names still familiar. It also delivered passengers to several lakeside stations as well – including Martha, Silver, Ballinger, Bitter and Echo lakes. The name “Bitter” was misleading, however, because that lake was the spot for the decidedly sweet excitement of P1ayland, for many years the region’s largest amusement park. But few remember Echo Lake as it appears in this week’s historical setting.

Bitter Lake station beside Playland

The Giant Whirl at Playland

Playland’s miniature train with the Giant Whirl beyond

            Construction began on the Interurban in 1902, in Ballard. By 1905 it reached 14 miles out to Lake Ballinger, just beyond Echo Lake. The line prospered, at first not so much from paying customers as by hauling lumber and its byproducts and accessories. It’s a fair speculation that Fred Sander, the Interurban’s builder, hired Asahel Curtis to photograph this morning view of the new-looking pile trestle that spanned the swampy northeast comer of Echo Lake.

The Interurban at Alderwood Manor.

            Sander soon sold out the streetcar company to Stone and Webster. By 1910 they completed the line to Everett and replaced Sander’s little passenger cars (like the one posing in the photo) with 10 long and plush air-conditioned common carriers. In 1912 the company also buried its Echo Lake wood trestle beneath a landfill.

            The next year, 1913, Herman Butzke, his wife and daughter, Florence, moved into a two-room cabin they built at the southwest comer -  or opposite shore from the Curtis photo – of Echo Lake. They were the third family to move to the lake, and Florence Butzke Erickson still lives there. [In 1985]

The Everett Interurban about to take on a bundle of newspapers at the Seattle terminal for both buses and trolleys. (Courtesy Warren Wing)

            During the summer of 1917, nurses and doctors from the new and nearby Firland Sanatorium periodically escaped from their care for tubercular patients to swim in the clear waters of Echo Lake. With their help, Butzke built a few lakeside dressing rooms, and thereby began the half-century of the Echo Lake Bathing Beach. (It closed in 1966 for the construction of condos.)

            The Seattle-Everett Interurban did not last so long, but When it did quit, it was one of the last of the nation’s rapid-transit systems to surrender to the new taste in transport: the car. The modern pathway for the auto was the Pacific Coast Highway – or, in town, Aurora Avenue. It, like the Interurban, also passed by Echo Lake, and in the late 1920s when it was being built, property lots about the lake were being pushed as the “highlight of Plateau Norte, the most beautiful and attractive homesite addition ever offered … A heavily traveled highway such as the new Seattle-Everett 100-foot boulevard is like a gold-bearing stream.”

The Everett Interurban crossing the Pacific Coast Highway aka Aurora Ave near N. 157th Street (unless I am fooled.) Courtesy Warren Wing

An alternative: the bus to Everett.

            Within 30 years, this gold-bearing stream would be stripped of its glitter and give way to the freeway. Now [1985] Interstate 5 is in its third decade and looking, perhaps, for the relief of rapid transit. Much of the old Everett Interurban right-of-way is still intact: a grassy strip of power poles and little parks. It seems to be waiting for the Interurban.

A Standard Oil station near Echo Lake – another tax photo from the late 1930s. (Courtesy, Washington State Archive.)

Somewhere on the road to Everett from Seattle in 1913.

THEN: The work of filling the tidelands south of King Street began in 1853 with the chips from Yesler’s sawmill. Here in the neighborhood of 9th Ave. S. (Airport Way) and Holgate Street, the tideland reclaiming and street regrading continue 70 years later in 1923. (Courtesy, Municipal Archive)

NOW: Jean Sherrard stands snug to the freeway overpass on Holgate Street, named for the Seattle pioneer John C. Holgate who might have appreciated such a convenient ascent to his claim on Beacon Hill.

The “revelator” here is the hole on the right.  From the guardrail on Holgate Street we get a somewhat rare look down into the old tideflats, or nearly so.  A lot has already been dumped in that hole, but far from enough to yet fill it.  In Jean’s “now” it is as high as Holgate and sturdy enough to support trucks.  Buildings now stand on concrete foundations and not on driven pilings like those supporting, at the 1923 scene’s center, the 45 steam-heated rooms of the Holgate Hotel, and the Alaska Stables, far right.

Asahel Curtis (the more famous Edward’s younger brother) dated this negative May 22, 1923. It is one of Curtis’ many recordings of what was named the “Ninth Avenue Regrade.”  (We will attach more of them below.) Ninth is now long since renamed Airport Way, and here at the end of Holgate, it can just be made out running north and south – left to right. On the far side of Ninth are joined-twin factories that were built like wharves early in the 20^th Century above the highest tides that then still reached Beacon Hill behind them.  In Jean’s repeat the

surviving “inland piers” are partially outlined in white.  As the Seattle Times advertisement printed above reports, its Feb. 12, 1905 edition – and many more – were printed from plates using Great Western Smelting and Refining Co.’s metal.  The Seattle branch of Great Western was housed here, one door south of the Salvation Army’s Industrial Department, in these wharf-like sheds.

Above: Looking east across 9th Ave. S. with the north facade of the Great Western factory on the right.  The photo is date 1923.   A year later the Salvation Army’s Industrial Dept. has moved to 914 Virginia Street and 406 12th Ave. S..  Possibly the reclamation work on 9th Ave. S. had something to do with the moves.

Below: Like the subject above, this was also recorded on May 22, 1923 and includes on the right the south facade of the Great Western factory.  The largest structure on the left – on the west side of 9th Ave. S. south of Holgate Street – is the Holgate Hotel.  The two story darker box to the south of the Holgate is the Bon Apartment House.

This Curtis was taken from the trestle that reached 9th Ave. S. from the Great Western factory and looks north with the Salvation Army on the right.  it is not dated although surely sometime in 1923. I suspect that the reclamation is already underway here and that the tidelands showing are getting an early flooding of salt water enriched with mud blasted further north from the sides of Beacon Hill.

Above: Entrance to the Bon Apartments, on the right.  The sign above the Bon’s open front door reads, “The Bon Apartments, 1915 Holgate, furnished, housekeeping and sleeping rooms.  $1.25 a night and up.  Free gas and lights.”

Airport Way’s first incarnation was in the early 1890s as a 24-foot wide plank trestle called Grant Street.  Approaching the business district at its north end Grant was given the grander name, “Seattle Boulevard.”  For the most part, it ran a few feet off shore from the often-sodden Beach Road that was first surveyed in 1862 at the base of Beacon Hill.  (In the winter travelers took to the hill.) The trestle was soon joined in 1892 by the Grant Street Electric Railway that reached its power plant in Georgetown and beyond that South Park too.

Already in 1919, the Alaskan Stables, far right, began running in The Times classifieds under “Livestock” its horses, harnesses and saddles for sale.  By then the sounds of trolleys, trucks, and motorcars were readily heard on Seattle Boulevard.  Here the great sliding door into the stables is closed above the hole that was once no doubt covered with the stable’s own timber trestle.

WEB EXTRAS

As you know, Paul, the blog has been plagued with server problems which recently seemed to grow exponentially. We have, however, made alternate plans which we hope to put in place over the next week. There may be some downtime, but it should be temporary and certainly shouldn’t be any worse that the interruptions we’ve already encountered. So onwards and upwards! Anything to add, Paul?

Yes Jean.  First and directly below Ron Edge (of the sometimes Edge Clippings Service on this blog) has put up three links to other features from this tidelands neighborhood, or nearby it.  They may be familiar for two have appeared here recently.  But, again, we treat these now-then repeats as themselves repeatable -  like musical themes used in different contexts.   Following these pictures-as-buttons I’ll put up a few more Asahel Curtis photos take for this project of raising the tidelands to the level of the streets, here on 9th Ave. S. (aka Airport Way) and connecting streets like Holgate.

And then I’ll reread the text at the top and revisit my notes to see if there may be something in the latter that will add to the former.

[CLICK the PICTURES Below]

FOLLOWS more photos by Asahel Curtis – or his studio – of the public works on 9th Ave. S. in 1923.

Another look north on 9th Ave.S. on May 22, 1923. The trolley line on the right and the “wagon road” on the left, between them a pipeline that is most likely installed to help in this tidelands reclamation – giving 9th Ave. S. a platform of high and dry dirt rather than a trestle over tides.  The Great Western factory at the Beacon Hill foot of Holgate Street is right-of-center.

ABOVE AND BELOW:  Two by Curtis looking north on July 19, 1923 from, the captions explain, from the southeast corner of Henry’s Cook House.

Dated Nov. 27, 1923, and so later than the rest, the fill seems to be here mostly in place both west and east of the trolley tracks now bedded in dirt. The pipes on the left may have done the work – in part. Both the Great Western factory and the Holgate Hotel appear about two block north on 9th. As the caption indicates, this view looks north from Walker Street, or near it.

The neighborhood around 9th Ave. S. and Holgate Street, to the east of 9th, from the 1912 Baist Real Estate Map.  This is a fine confession of the errant grandeur of real estate maps.  Holgate in 1912, of course, did not climb Beacon Hill as shown here.  It still doesn’t, but requires a curve.

Holgate and the tidelands to the west of 9th, again or still in 1912.

 A FEW THOUGHTS WHILE RE-READING MY NOTES for the FEATURE ABOVE

John C. Holgate

* John Holgate made the first potential settler’s footprint on future Seattle soil in 1850 when he visited that summer and built a lean-two somewhere near the future Pioneer Square – or Place.   He explored the surrounds until October and then returned to Portland and beyond to promote Puget Sound to his family and look for a wife.  When he returned the land he had chosen beside the Duwamish River and near its mouth had been taken in the interim and so Holgate substituted a claim on top of Beacon Hill and in line with his future namesake street.   Holgate’s younger brother Milton also settled in Seattle, tragically.  The teenager was one of two settlers who lost their lives during the Battle of Seattle on Jan 26, 1856.

* The Holgate Hotel, listed at 1901 9th Ave. S., was managed by John and Minnie Wildzumas, who lived in the  hotel.  In a 1917 classified ad is described as a workingman’s hotel with steam heated rooms, and restaurant “in connection.”  The fees for this “modern” hotel were then $1.50 and up.   The Holgate endured.  A May 19,1960 classified lists it as “close to Boeing (with) reasonable, single, housekeeping rooms and parking.”  The Holgate was put up for Public Auction on Dec. 1, 1968, listing “furnishings of 45 room hotel: Curved glass china cabinets, bookcase-secretary, bentwood chairs, brass beds, commodes, dressers, chests, gas and electric ranges, refrigerators, miscellaneous tables, chairs, wardrobes etc.  Preview Sat. 11am to 4pm.  United Auction Service, Bud Chapman., Auctioneer.”

* Great Western Smelting and Refining Co. came to Seattle in 1903, but not directly to this factory on 9th Ave. S., although nearby.  The first factory was at First S. and Connecticut until a roof fire uprooted them.  An adver. for March 3, 1912 puts them at 1924 9th Ae. S.,     The 1924 Polk Directory listing for Great Western makes note that the city directory was printed on metal GW metal.  By 1928 the business has changed its name to Federate Metals Corp and continue to note that the printing of that year’s business directory was done with plates furnished by Federate.

THEN: Aiming north into Capitol Hill from the north end of First Hill, an as yet anonymous photographer made a rare record of the then new Seattle High School’s south façade. (Courtesy: Ron Edge)

NOW: In the about 110 years between them, nothing, it seems, from the old survives unless it is hidden behind the new. Both views look north on Harvard Ave. from the block between Union and Pike Streets.

What, we wonder, motivated this photographer to move off the sidewalk and use these mid-block weeds in her or his composition.  Was it, perhaps, to keep the brand new stone apartment on the left in the picture? The address is 1425 Harvard and the apartment is fittingly named the Boston Block.  It opened its flats to renters in the summer of 1903.  The location was certainly convenient but the monthly fee of $37.50 was not especially cheap for even the five room flats it was renting.

However, the primary subject here is probably the “vaguely Romanesque” but also new Seattle High School on the nearby horizon.  It opened in 1902.  On the evidence of a short stack of snapshots of which this is one, the likely year for this recording is 1903 or ’04.  With the photographer’s back near Union Street, the prospect looks two blocks north to the school’s south façade on the north side of Pine Street.

That, of course, puts Pike Street at the bottom of the hill, less than a block away in the draw between First Hill – with the photographer – and Capitol Hill with the school. Soon motorcars and their servers would crowd the sides of Pike with show rooms and parts stores for Seattle’s first “auto row.” The domestic clutter here of what appear to be single family residences would for the greater part be either replaced with business blocks, converted into boarding houses or succeeded by substantial apartment houses like the one on the left.

Lincoln, Seattle’s second high school, opened in Wallingford in 1911 the year Seattle High Changed its name to Broadway and first opened night classes.  This Broadway diversity was extended with skills schools like Edison Tech and “self-help” courses during the 1930s.  In 1946 Broadway was given over entirely to adult education including classes for veterans returning from World War Two.

After pioneer architect William E. Boone’s grand stone pile was sold in 1966 to Seattle Community College, Dr. Ed Erickson, the school’s president, publically hoped that “nostalgia and emotions will not get in the way” of College plans to raze what some of the high school’s activist alums still lovingly called the Pine Street Prison.  Alums and architects on both sides were enlisted for the battle that followed to preserve or pull down Broadway Hi. Second only then to the fight to save the Pike Place Market, the Broadway effort managed to keep only the school’s auditorium.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?

Because of the lingering ghost or ghosts in our blog machine we will keep it short Jean.  When these spirits are exorcized – or these problems answered – we can return to offering good-’n-big additions to our features.  We love this recycling of years of features written and old photos collected and interpreted.  But for now we will wait, except we will also not wait.  That is, I’ll attach a few other photographs of the new High School, understanding that at least a few of our readers will have discovered the temporary trick for reaching the latest offerings on this blog, which is to go fir to its archive, aka its past pages.   There the ghost is temporarily restrained.

The Nelson - of Fredericks and Nelson - home behind Broadway High. Can you refine its place? It has not survived.

On the evidence of those construction sheds this is from late in the school's construction.

School is open and so is Warren Art Company across Broadway. Classes in the arts were nurtured by Seattle's then progressive public schools.

An early look east from the roof to the neighborhood and the playfield part of - then - Lincoln Park.

At the top of the Montagne Sainte Geneviève in the 5th arrondissement, the Pantheon rises to 82 meters. Built between 1764 and 1790 by the architect Soufflot, at the request of King Louis XV, this religious building dedicated to Sainte Genevieve was immediately transformed into a temple dedicated to the Great Men during the Revolution (1789).

In the eighteenth century, Soufflot reimagined architectural style, combining the height and the light of a Gothic cathedral with the structure of a Greek cross, with supporting columns similar to ancient temples. He freed the space from its massive foundations.

It is also the first to use the principle of the “reinforced stone”, connecting the blocks of stone to metal fittings. For the past fifteen years the Pantheon has shown deterioration due to lack of impermeability  of its cover. Metal elements have rusted in stone and made it burst.

The company LEFEVRE was selected to perform this historical project, one of the largest in Europe. The project will focus on the stabilization of the dome and drum.

A gigantic scaffold (unsupported by the structure of the Pantheon) is now being installed. Micropiles 17 meters deep in the four corners of the building will be used to support the massive scaffold weighing 315 tons and standing 37 meters in height. In one corner a huge crane 96 meters high will be installed with the capacity to support 4 tons.
As the official photographer of this extraordinary project, might I suggest that you follow its progress on this blog and on my website.

La restauration historique du Panthéon

Au sommet de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève dans le 5éme arrondissement, le Panthéon culmine à 82 mètres. Construit entre 1764 et 1790, par l’architecte Soufflot, sur la demande du roi  Louis XV, l’édifice religieux dédié à Sainte Geneviève est aussitôt transformé en temple consacré aux Grands Hommes à la Révolution.

Au XVIIIème siècle, Soufflot  renouvelle le style architectural, alliant la hauteur et la lumière des cathédrales  gothiques a une structure en forme de croix grecque, avec des colonnes portantes semblables aux temples antiques. Il libère ainsi l’espace  de ses fondations massives.

Il est aussi le premier à utiliser le principe de la pierre armée. Il relie  les blocs de pierre à des armatures métalliques.

Depuis une quinzaine d’années le Panthéon montre des désordres dus au manque d’étanchéité de sa couverture. Les éléments métalliques ont rouillé dans la pierre et provoque son éclatement.

L’entreprise LEFEVRE a été choisie pour réaliser ce chantier historique, l’un des plus grands d’Europe. Le chantier portera sur la stabilisation du dôme et de son tambour.

Un gigantesque échafaudage autoportant, c’est-à-dire ne prenant pas appui sur la structure du Panthéon a commencé par être installé.

Des micropieux profonds de 17 mètres  installés aux quatre coins de l’édifice  serviront de support à l’échafaudage de 315 tonnes  et 37 mètres de hauteur. A l’un des quatre coins sera installée une immense grue de 96 mètres  pouvant supporter 4 tonnes.

Je suis la photographe de cette opération, je vous propose d’en suivre les étapes sur ce blog et sur mon site.

THEN: For reasons not revealed, in the late winter of 1901 a photographer turned her or his camera on the soon to be cleared clutter at the northeast corner of Second Avenue and University Street. (Courtesy: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections)

NOW: In the late 1990s, The Seattle Symphony filled the corner and the entire block with Benaroya Hall.

The satisfactions of street photography include cluttered cityscapes like this one at the northeast corner of University Street and Second Avenue.  The principal tenant was a lawyer named Joseph Jones, who also hustled here, “nice dry wood to burn.” The mostly hidden banner sign reads, we think, “Joe’s Wood Yard.”  Even without a caption this subject is easily located with the grand contribution of Plymouth Congregational Church, the upstanding brick pile one block east on University at Third Avenue, far right.

Also on Third and made of brick, the backside of the Ethelton Hotel, far left, suggests a tenement except that the weekly rates of “$9 and up” were not cheap for the time. And we know the time within a few days.

The clue comes bottom-center with the 3^rd Avenue Theatre’s sidewalk poster for the play “A Woman’s Power.”  It opened at “Seattle’s only popular prices theatre” on Sunday March 10, 1901. This scene was recorded surely only a few days earlier.  The repertoire players, led by Jessie Shirley, are trumpeted again far left with the larger and no doubt colorful billboard behind the horse.  And The Seattle Times theatre reviewer was pleased.  Shirley’s performance is described as “highly infectious to her audience.” The play is complimented for the “purity and excellence of the moral it teaches,” lessons we would more readily expect from the Congregationalists up the hill.

A few days later on the Times theatre page, Plymouth Church, with the Ladies Musical Club, did some of their own promoting of a strong woman, this time with a celebrated musical virtuosity.  On Monday Evening, March 25, the “world-renowned pianist Teresa Correna” performed on a Steinway in its sanctuary.  Tickets were one dollar.  Meanwhile – and repeatedly – in a small movie theatre directly across 2^nd Ave. from Jones’s wood yard, one could buy for one dime the cheap thrill of a “ride through the Great Northern Railroad’s Cascade Tunnel.”

After a good deal of delving with maps, directories, and photographs, we learn this northeast corner’s pioneer oddity.  Beyond woodpiles it was never developed until 1903 when the brick and stone Walker Building was raised and stayed until the late 1980s.  And Joe Jones was not the first fire wood salesman at the corner. In the 1892 Corbett Director John King is listed doing the same.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?

Blog Troubles & Shamless Commerce  April 4, 2013

http://pauldorpat.com/shameless-commerce/blog-troubles-shameless-commerce/

 Northern Life Tower  Feb. 16, 2013

http://pauldorpat.com/seattle-now-and-then/seattle-now-then-the-northern-life-aka-seattle-tower/

 Northold Inn  Nov. 3, 2012

http://pauldorpat.com/seattle-now-and-then/seattle-now-then-the-hollywood-tavern-on-university/

THEN: Some of the 1946 cast for Calico Cargo face-off at the Seattle Repertory Playhouse on University Way at N.E. 41st Street. (Courtesy, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division, Neg. No. UW 30033)

NOW: Kurt E. Armbruster dedicated his new book “to the actors of Seattle, who against all odds have kept theater alive.” This caption for Jean’s “repeat,” is also Kurt’s. “Today, the theater continues the grand tradition as the Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse, presenting UW School of Drama plays – most recently, a superb and thought-provoking production of David Edgar’s Pentacost. Burton and Florence James would have been proud.”

Seattle is often admired for its live theatres and the many actors who walk their boards and perform for a city that is also known – we are not surprised – for its love of reading, besides listening.  Now one of our more prolific historians, Kurt Einar Armbruster, comes with “Playing for Change.”  Given its subject – and subtitle – “Burton and Florence James and the Seattle Repertory Playhouse,” we may expect that many of Pacific’s theatre-loving literati will be drawn to it.

In “Orphan Road: The Railroad Comes to Seattle,” (1999) this author untangled the complex early history of Puget Sound’s railroads.  In 2011 the University of Washington Press published “Before Seattle Rocked” Armbruster’s early history of Seattle’s musical culture.  And now comes his also dramatic history of our first “Rep” written this time with what was surely inspired speed.  “Playing for Change” is also self-published, a practice that it getting more-and-more popular, possible, and fast.

Pictured here are some of the cast of Calico Cargo, local actor-playwright Albert Ottenheimer’s musical telling of the then already famous Seattle story of the “Mercer Girls:” the New England women, some of them Civil War widows, who followed Asa Mercer, the University of Washington’s first president, to Seattle to teach and/or have their pick of a well-stocked selection of industrious and lonely bachelors who eagerly awaited them on Yesler’s Wharf.   That, it seems, is probably the scene depicted here.

Calico Cargo opened in September 1946, and played to great success, filling the 340-seat Repertory Playhouse at the southwest corner of 41^st Street Northeast and University Way for fifteen weeks.  George Frederick McKay, the University’s admired composer, was a contributor.  (A good selection of his compositions can be found on the Naxos label.)

The Jameses started the Rep in 1928.  Thru its long and vigorous life, it played both the classics and original plays, some local and some controversial.  For the more than 20 years of the James direction it inspired imagination and reflection in its players and patrons. But that story is told best by Armbruster in his radically affordable book.  “Playing for Change” can be had for small change – $13.99.  It is found at the University Book Store, Elliott Bay Books and on line.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?

Jean I’ll gather these “extras” as I may, but considering the recurring troubles we are having with this server or program or what? there is – it seems my now – a likelihood that the link will shut its door sometime before I can deliver.  This inspired a new attitude that resembles patience on our parts, and we hope on our dear readers too.  Someday we will have this sorted out or corrected.  Then we will return to our full schedule and perhaps more.

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This group portrait also appears, p.259, in the second of Richard C. Berner's three volumes on "Seattle in the 20th Century." It is titled "Seattle 1921-1940" and is one of our preoccupations. Ron Edge and I are working to illustrate it with the same "splendor" that we contributed to Berner's Vol.1, which can be searched thru this blog. We hope you will. Rich Berner's caption for this photograph, used courtesy of the Special Collections Division, U.W. Libraries, (Neg. No. 14054) reads, ""The Washington State Theatre also was a spinoff of the SRP, once funding was received form the Rockefeller Foundation. That State Department of Public Instruction sponsored this traveling theater group's statewide tour. "No More Frontiers" was written by Idaho's Talbot Jennings."

THE STATE’S FIRST THEATER

(First appeared in Pacific, Oct. 4, 1992)

The scene above of the players preparing to take their Washington State Theater to schools across the state is one of the handful of photographs that illustrated former university archivist Richard Berner’s most recent book.    “Seattle 1921 – 1940 From Boom To Bust” is volume two in Berner’s projected trilogy, “Seattle in the 20th Century.”  Northwest historian Murray Morgan says the 556-page book, “is the best-organized more thoroughly researched, most useful book yet written about the city.”

As for the theater: After teaching drama at Cornish School in the mid-1920s, Florence and Burton James established Seattle Repertory Playhouse in 1928, renting stages around town.  They moved out on their own in 1930.  The brick playhouse here in the background, was designed for them by local architect Arthur Loveless.

The James persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation and the state’s Department of Public Instruction to sponsor the country’s first state theater.  Scenery and costumes were moved about the state in this truck; the caravan of actors trailed in cars.

The theater’s first production, “No More Frontier,” was written by Idaho playwright Talbot Jennings.  In their first season, the touring company played – astonishingly – before 70,000 students.  After each show the players, in costume, took questions from the audience.  They were paid a livable $75 a month. (Actor Howard Duff is third from the right, top row.)

The James were also responsible for securing Works Progress Administration funding for a local “Negro Repertory Theatre,’ which, for some productions, employed as many as 50 African-American actors.

Also printed in Rich Berner's Volumn 2, "Seattle 1921 - 1940 From Boom to Bust," appearing on page 258, and captioned . . . "Negro Repertory Theatre was inspired by Florence Bean James as an offspring of the Seattle Repertory Theatre productions, beginning with presentation of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' in the 1931-32 season. The Jameses got WPA funding for the NRT in 1936. The scene above is from Paul Green's Pulitzer Prize winning play 'In Abraham's Bosom', 1937"

Two of the many opportunities for entertainment advertised in The Seattle Times for Jan. 1, 1937, with the cost of The Natural Man four times that of . . . The Blushing Bride.

Rich Berner at that time, serving with the Ski Patrol during WW2.

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The placid description below of Glenn Hughes and his Showboat Theatre should be supplemented/adjusted with a reading of Kurt Einar Armbruster’s, “Playing for Change.”

SHOWBOAT THEATRE

(First appeared in Pacific, May 4, 1986)

The old Showboat Theater on the University of Washington campus was recently called “a distant derivation of a derivation of a derivation of the riverboat.”  That description was offered by Ellen Miller-Wolfe, coordinator of the local Landmarks Preservation Board [in 1986]. It may be that lack of architectural purity which will eventually doom the sagging Showboat. It is scheduled to be demolished soon.

When or if it bows out, the Showboat will leave a legacy of fine theater and personal stories. (It is said to be haunted by the ghost of its founder Glenn Hughes, a man once known on the English-speaking stage west of Broadway as “Mr. Theater. “)

The theater’s opening night, Sept. 22, 1938, was a banner-draped, lantern-lighted, elegant black-tie setting for the old farce, “Charlie’s Aunt.” One of the showboat’s best remembered offerings was the 1949 production of “Mrs. Carlyle, ” written by Hughes and starring Lillian Gish, the silent screen star and stage actress.

 

Opening night with Lillian Gish on the right.

The theatrical variety and often professional quality performances that six nights a week moved upon the Showboat’s stage were a far cry from the fare of the old ”’mellerdrammers” that played the real showboats of the Mississippi River days. Chekhov, Thurber, Sophocles and, of course, Shakespeare all made it onto Seattle’s revolving proscenium stage. And some of its players were Frances Farmer, Robert Culp and Chet Huntley (who later switched careers to the theater of national news).

The original design for the Works Progress Administration-built “boat” came from another member of the UW’s drama faculty, John Ashby Conway, who envisioned it being occasionally tugged about Lakes Washington and Union for off-shore performances. Instead, for its nearly 50 years [by 1986] it has been in permanent port on Portage Bay, supported, for the sake of illusion, a short ways off shore on concrete piling.

 

The Showboat seen across Portage Bay on the right ca, 1946. The fated Fantome on the left. (We’ll attach some of the Fantome’s story later – once we find it.)

[In 1the mid-1980s the destruction of the then unused but not sinking showboat was forestalled for a time by a group called SOS (Save Our Showboat).  Many of its members once acted on its stage and have left their sentimental shadows there.  As I recall it was long after an SOS denouement that, as if in the night, the Showboat was razed to below its waterline.]

 

The Showboat mid-1980s.

 

PREVIEWING A PREVIEW (Appeared in The Seattle Times, April 14, 1940) Prof. Glenn Hughes, executive director of the U.of W. Division of Drama, Mrs. Hughes and four enthusiastic playgoers stop by the Showboat Theatre on their way to a dinner engagement, to discuss "What a Lie," next Showboat production. Pictures on the top deck of this picturesque playhouse are, standing, Dean Judson Falknor, head of the University Law School, accepting a wafer from the plate offered by Mrs. Hughes; Dr. Charles E. Martin, head of the political science department at the University, and Professor Hughes. Seated are Mrs. Falknor, left and Mrs. Martin.

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An earlier example of University drama, here in Meany Hall (the old one) in 1926. (Courtesy, The Seattle Times)

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TRYOUT THEATRE

There are 300 clips in the Seattle Times archives with reference to the TRYOUT THEATRE, another theatre group associated with the University of Washington but not necessarily on it.  A Dr. Savage in the school’s Department of English was one of the generous drivers of this nearly eight-year program to produce plays written for it – most of them from the region.  The last clip is a chatty letter from Savage’s wife to the Times during their visit to the theatre scene in New York City, and after the couple and their family have moved on to California for a new appointment with the Drama Department of U.C.L.A.   Printing such a chatty family letter as news would be unlikely these days.  It is an old flower that is now refreshing.

The Times Aug. 8, 1943 of Tryout's first play, "Blue Alert," a wartime drama written by Zoe Schiller, a former U.W. Student, with some editing help from Prof. Savage.

A fine review of Tryout's status with the production of its 40th play in the Spring of 1949. Mack Mathews, the author of the review, not the play, was an admired wit-polymath in the local culture-culture, but with a drinking problem. He wound up in the King County Jail at one point for an alcohol-inspired and botched robbery in a downtown hotel. This Times review dates from March 27, 1949.

The headline reads "Tryout Joins Forces" when in fact it folded by being enfolded within the routines and priorities of the U.W. Drama Department. After this Oct. 29, 1950 clip beside Oscar Peterson at the Civic Auditorium, there was very little news of Tryout. Two clips at best, including the one that follows reporting on the Savage family's trip to New York.

As the last paragraph of this Sept. 9, 1951 report indicates, while in New York George Savage visit an assortment of writers, actors and agents that had been involved in those apparently vibrant eight years of the Tryout Theatre in Seattle. We learn as well that the Savage's boys are having a swell time, we assume, that summer at the Little Meadows Camp for boys, we presume. Now 62 years later we may wonder what became of them, and with the web we might even find out, although not this evening.

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A REP REVIVED

The Rep behind a recent Folklife scene.

Folklife, Feb. 28, 2012

May 12, 2012

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A Vietnam era example of nearly spontaneous campus theatre - Guerilla Theatre.

Mrs. Hazel Huffman grabs a smoke before testifying before the house un-American Activities Committee in New York on Communist Party interests in the WPA Federal Theatre Project. The members of the committee were all ears as the smoking former Communist puffed thru her recollections of party propaganda. The AP Wirephoto dates from Aug. 19, 1938.

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RETURN to AUTHOR KURT E. ARMBRUSTER and his Penultimate Book

Left to right, Alice Stuart, Bill Sheldon and Dallas Williams at the Pamir Folksingers cabaret on “the Ave” in 1962. (Courtesy Alice Stuart)

Forty-nine years later Alice is still singing professionally, sometimes with the same Martin D-18 guitar she carried with her into the coffee houses of Seattle in the early 1960s. Beside her is Kurt Einar Armbruster holding a copy of his latest book, “Before Seattle Rocked.”

“BEFORE SEATTLE ROCKED”

(First appeared in Pacific, Dec. 10, 2011)

Jean and I recently met Alice Stuart and Kurt Einar Armbruster on the University District’s “Ave.” in front where the Pamir House – featuring “variety coffees” and folk singing – might have been had it not been replaced by a parking lot more than forty years ago.

Two lots north of 41st Street, Alice led us from the sidewalk thru the parked cars to the eloquent spot where she sang and played her resonant Martin D-18 guitar one year short of a half-century earlier.  It was near the beginning of a remarkable singing career for the then 20-year old folk artist from Lake Chelan and blessed with a beautiful voice.  She still uses it regularly.  (This past year Stuart was on stage “gigging” an average of nearly three times a week – often with her band named Alice Stuart & The Formerlys.)

Alice Stuart is one of the many Seattle musicians that author-musician Kurt E. Armbruster splendidly treats in his new book “Before Seattle Rocked.” The index of this University of Washington Press publication runs 25 pages and covers most imaginable music-related subjects in our community’s past from Bach thru Be-bop to the Wang Doodle Orchestra. This author has a gift for interviewing his subjects.  Stuart expressed amazement at his elegant edit of what she thought of as her “rambling on” about her long career.

Armbruster’s first book, “Whistle Down the Valley” (1991) was built on interviews with railroad workers in the Green River valley.  His second book “The Orphan Road” took a difficult subject, Washington’s first railroads, and unraveled its tangles with wisdom and good wit.   The “Orphan” is easily one of our classics.  Now with “Before Seattle Rocked” Armbruster’s place is insured among those who chose important regional subjects that waited years for their devoted revelators.

Armbruster is a “proud member of Seattle Musicians’ Association, AFM Local 76-493.”  Among other instruments, Kurt plays the bass for music of many kinds including rock and pop.  The book’s dedication reads, “To  Ed ‘Tuba Man’ McMichael (1955-2008), a working musician.”

Alice Stuart on stage at the 1969 Sky River Rock Festival & Lighter Than Air Fair near Tenino, Washington.

Montesano girls - Count the Stars and Stripes

UNINTENDED EFFECTS

You may have noticed that here – recently and often – you cannot notice.  The blog is up and down regularly as of late.  Now it is up for as long, I hope, as it takes to write that we are looking for alternatives to our present server.   In Paris, Berangere is too far away to fix it.   Wherever – now in Wallingford – I don’t know how.  And so Jean has had to stretch his work bench to handle these – to use now two rarely used categories from our “All Gategories” list for this blog -  “unintended effects” and this “shameless commerce.”   Last Sunday’s now-and-then got no “extras” to the title story about the regrade on Spring Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues because, again, we could not “write to” or add additional contributions to the blog.  This coming Saturday/Sunday we hope to elaborate on the Repertory Theatre feature that will be published in Pacific - we think – and I will then contribute as well a few of the missed “extras” to the Spring Street story.  Meanwhile we await our fates while trying to keep our faiths.  But then what became of these students (below) in the well-ordered typing and shorthand class at the Wilson Business College in Seattle, ca. 1900?

Human Hair - usually yours or a relative's - Art (not for sale - courtesy Granite Falls Historical Museum)

Pedestrians at First and Wall, March 7, 2013

THEN: Looking east up Spring Street from 5th Ave. during its ca. 1909 regrade. (Courtesy Lawton Gowey)

NOW: In 1922 the north side of this block on Spring was filled with the warm and complimenting bricks of the Women’s University Club, up at 6th Avenue, and the 11-story Spring Apartment Hotel at 5th. Through its now 90 years the hotel has also been named The Kennedy and most recently the Hotel Vintage.

In this disrupted street scene we get a fine lesson in how homes were propped while the ground below them was removed during street regrades – here on Spring Street east from Fifth Avenue.  Near the end of the grading these two supported residences will either be lowered with a jack – one spacer at a time – or given a new first floor with a new foundation.  (As it happened, they were lowered.)

St. Francis Hall, the institution up Spring St. at its northwest corner with Sixth Avenue, far right, was built in 1890-91 by Rev. F.X. Prefontaine.  Seattle’s first Catholic priest was known as much for his street savvy as for his pulpit homilies.  Prefontaine rented his new hall first to Jesuits for their original incarnation of Seattle Prep, but then also to many others, including the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Foresters, dance instructor Professor Ourat (from Florence) and the Andante Non Troppo Club also for dancing.  The hall was managed in the end by the Woodmen of the World and briefly named for them.  The name change was testimony to the admired priest’s flexible disposition.

I’ve chosen “about 1909” as the year for this subject largely from past assumptions joined with some of these half-lighted evidences.  For instance, by 1909 St. Francis Hall has passed from sight and citation – or nearly so.

With a little Ron Edge computer-aided sleuthing we were pleased to discover that in 1884 Matilda and Nelson Chilberg built the home standing here above the corner. Stocked by eight broad-shouldered brothers from Sweden – including Nelson – the industriously extended Chilberg family was famously diverse in its interests. For instance, Matilda and Nelson opened a grocery at the foot of Cherry Street, raised oats on the Swinomish Flats, ran a dairy in Chimacum (near Port Townsend) – selling the milk and cheese in the lumber camps – opened another grocery in Skagway while prospecting in Alaska.  In Seattle the couple opened three new additions to the city.

In 1908 with their daughter Mabel, a teacher at Seattle High School, these Chilbergs left their pioneer corner and moved further up the hill.  The prospect of this upheaval on Spring Street most likely spurred them.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, Paul?

Yes and No.  Jean asked this question – again – on the eve of one of this blog’s greater crashes.  I had gathered the parts for a lengthy answer, but then the blog went down and stayed so for a days.  Later – like now – when it would have been possible to return and assemble the “anything” I was busy with the next thing or “otherthing.”   Surely sometimes down the way the anythings I would have put up will appear in other contexts.