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Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 7, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 10, 2023

A controversial streetcar line — ‘Tramzilla’ vs. First Avenue?

By Jean Sherrard

Sometimes, as with this week’s “Then” photo, an image is worth at least a hundred words of caution, beginning with “been there, done that.”

Today the city is pondering a proposed $300+ million streetcar line to fill the center lanes of First Avenue. Catchily branded by its supporters as the “Culture Connector,” it would unite two long-dangling streetcar lines between Westlake and Pioneer Square.

Part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan, the new line aims to be “a catalyst for economic vitality,” revitalizing arts and entertainment and improving access to museums, concert venues, galleries and businesses.

Unanswered questions linger, however. Several arise from our striking 1919 “Then” photo. Streetcars crowd First Avenue’s center lanes where they cross Pike Street while early automobiles jam into single lanes north and south.

As we pore over the old image, we hand today’s community talking stick to business owners such as Jim Harvey, proprietor of Pike Place Flowers in the Market, whose small shop delivers bouquets around the city. For Harvey, downtown congestion already is a huge concern. First Avenue reduced by half, he posits, inevitably would crowd other streets. “Delivery will become a traffic nightmare.”

The proposed 1.3-mile line also would eliminate most left-hand turns from First Avenue and remove 194 of 230 street parking spaces. What’s more, 29 commercial vehicle load zones would disappear.

That would leave Rob Thomas, vice president of the Showbox, Seattle’s iconic, oft-rescued concert venue, in a quandary. “Producing 180 shows per year, each with its own tour bus and trucks full of equipment, seems impossible without streetside parking,” he says. “This could put us out of business.”

A mile south in Pioneer Square, Phil Bevis of Arundel Books worries over the upheaval of a $300 million project so soon after completion of nearby waterfront redevelopment. “Three more years of construction,” he sighs. “We call it Tramzilla.”

Our bustling 1919 photo offers a deep lesson to longtime downtown developer Howard Anderson. “First Avenue has always been one of our most lively downtown streets then and now,” he says. “It’s a historic street, filled with thriving businesses and friendly locals, that connects two historic districts.”

Yet in 1941, the city’s last “antiquated” orange streetcar had been replaced with diesel buses and electric trackless trolleys. More than 230 miles of steel tracks were torn out and scrapped. Roads throughout the city were repaved for rubber-tired vehicles.

Anderson’s point is, simply, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. He nominates an alternative “culture connector,” comparatively inexpensive and more quickly achieved: “No streetcars needed. Just add buses.”

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 30, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 3, 2023

Cautionary shadow lingers from deadly West Seattle slide in 1921

By Clay Eals

While it happened 102 years ago, this is a cautionary tale for the ages.

My mother grew up not far from what she and others called Fairmount Gulch, the steep-sided canyon whose narrow and secluded road slices its lush woods, connecting West Seattle’s blufftop Hiawatha Park with Harbor Avenue and the Elliott Bay shore far below.

“Gulch” might imply foreboding territory. That impression could have originated, in part, from a lethal stroke of nature about a year before my mom was born.

On Sunday, Dec. 11, 1921, what the Seattle Star immediately called “the greatest rainstorm ever recorded in Seattle” wreaked regional havoc, nowhere more dramatically than in the gulch.

Riding the Route #1 Alki streetcar, Northern Pacific brakeman Samuel C. Andrews was headed to his home partway up the gulch at 1910 Fairmount Avenue. Before leaving work, at 6:15 p.m. he had telephoned his wife, Mary, who said she was cooking hot biscuits for supper and urged him to hurry home.

Shortly after 6:30 p.m., as Andrews stepped off at nearby Novelty Flour Mill (today’s Salty’s on Alki restaurant), the hillside to his west shattered him. The Andrews’ rental home and retaining wall had just been crushed by a maelstrom of mud falling from land next to view homes 120 feet above on dead-end Brook Avenue. Their house in turn had smashed a neighbor’s home, wrecking both structures. Killed were Mary Andrews and her stepsons John, 7, and Tom, 5.

The unrelenting storm triggered a second slide at 9:30 the next morning, injuring and temporarily burying nine city rescuers and two journalists. A third slide at 1:30 p.m. brought down another house. Rains receded, but harrowing memories lingered.

Nathan May, a Stanford Law School student, grew up along Fairmount Avenue, which he labels a “special corner” of the city. He takes personally what he calls “the profound human tragedy” at the center of the slides and seeks opportunities to make those who walk or drive Fairmount aware of “what happened here.” The legal scholar also sees a deeper, darker context:

“We have this enormous privilege of living in a region of unparalleled natural beauty, but there’s a flip side, which is that some of the factors that lead to that beauty — the hilliness, the precipitation, the unique weather factors — can also lead to tragedies like the one in 1921.

“It seems important that we pay heed to that risk and to the very real possibility that we’ll continue to see things like this in the years ahead.”

Of course, in 1921 no one had heard of climate change.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Midori Okazaki at the Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives, Heather of the Seattle Room of Seattle Public Library, Wendy Malloy at the Museum of History & Industry and especially Nathan May for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Jean Sherrard’s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

You also will find an additional video and, in chronological order, 18 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 23, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 26, 2023

Sam can no longer play it again at torched University Theater 

By Jean Sherrard

Recently, sad news came from Nick Collecchi, a buddy who had toiled for decades in Seattle-area movie houses. After projecting movies at the University Theater, 5510 University Way N.E., he managed the Seven Gables, Landmark Theatres and Sundance Cinemas until the pandemic ended those reels.

He asked me about the site of his first gig: “Did you hear the University Theater burned down?”

This undistinguished box was where I first encountered silver-screen classics — directors from Frank Capra to Alfred Hitchcock, actors from Humphrey Bogart to Bette Davis. Another Seattle movie house bit the dust.

It also was “the oldest surviving movie theater in northeast Seattle,” says cinema historian David Jeffers. Erected by U-District booster and developer Charles Cowen in 1915, the vaudeville/silent movie house was an attractive addition to the neighborhood. Its name, Cowen Park Theater, reminded locals of Cowen’s generous, 8-acre donation to the city west of Ravenna Park.

The 250-seat gem drew enthusiastic crowds, including 10-year-old Ronald Phillips, future Seattle Symphony principal clarinetist (and cigar aficionado), who earned four bits a night playing reeds in the house band.

The venue, however, had a limited run. In the early 1920s, it was repurposed as the Cowen Park Garage, then as a real-estate office and home-improvement store.

Rarig Motion Pictures, a producer of educational and promotional films, took up residence in the 1950s, converting the erstwhile auditorium into a sound stage.

In 1971, William DeNault, a former revival-house owner from Berkeley, Calif., leased the building from owner Andy Shiga. DeNault, a skilled carpenter, began restoration from the ground up. Removal of flat flooring revealed the raked concrete slope of the original theater, buried for 50 years. “We just put down tarpaper,” son Bryan recalls, “and dropped the flat floor right onto the sloping cement.”

The theater’s rebirth cheered film enthusiasts citywide. For another two decades, Sam played it again.

In 1999, the Paradox Theater, an all-ages haven for punk rock, occupied the joint until Jet City Improv took over in 2003, painting the building canary yellow. Its exuberant theatrical offerings reprised the location’s vaudeville origins until March 2020.

Abandoned since COVID, the theater was torched four months ago, on July 24.

“After it burned,” Jet City artistic director Mario Orallo says, “I felt a deep-rooted grief at the loss of a wonderful place to perform, but also a sense of reverence for the thousands of people over the decades who shared the vibe of art and community. For me, it will always be a sacred space.”

WEB EXTRAS

In the late breaking additions category, historian Pete Blecha shares a couple of rare delights. One, from a newspaper clipping, reveals the names of early Cowen Park Theater managers and their clever ploy to increase attendance.

The second is a remarkable, time-worn poster from the theater’s heyday:

Canadian-American actress Billie Burke is better known to modern audiences for her role as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz. Twenty years earlier, she was a romantic lead.

In addition, a detailed comment from theater historian David Jeffers, who’s inestimable aid is always keenly appreciated:

“More sadness. I have a good deal of personal history with this theater, mostly from the mid-1970’s through the 80’s when I lived in the neighborhood. Many, many midnight movies were seen here. I watched numerous films for the first time in this theater. There are fond memories of waiting in line with friends, most of the time slightly intoxicated, late at night in the cold and rain to see shows for a dollar. One of the local FM album rock stations (KISW?) sponsored Friday and Saturday night “99¢” movies. In those days, college towns across the country had a play list of old and new films they’d offer on a repertory schedule. A few examples I saw at University Cinema were: Little Big Man (1970), 200 Motels (1971), A Clockwork Orange (1971), North by Northwest (1959) and countless others. For a couple of years, I also did my laundry next door.

“5510 14th Avenue Northeast (later re-named University Way NE) first appears in the 1915 Polk’s Seattle City Directory as the New Home Theatre. Polk’s shows a name change to Cowen Park Theatre from 1916 to 1917. Christopher Skullerud’s unpublished Seattle theater catalogue also supports these dates. Tax records show a build date of 1920, which suggests either the latter date is incorrect, or prior to 1920 there was another structure at the same location showing motion pictures to the public. I am inclined to believe 1915 is the correct date of the surviving structure. 1920 may have been the date of a significant building remodel. Considering the highly combustable nature of cellulose nitrate film stock and the frequency of fires it caused, it’s possible the theater closed after a booth fire and never reopened. After 1917 this movie theater disappears from directory listings. I recall reading it existed as an auto repair shop for many years. An entry in the 1925 Sanborn Fire Atlas for Seattle lists this building as roofing material storage. Many years later, following renovation and remodel, this address re-appears in 1971 as University Cinema, through the late 1980’s, followed by a decade of abandonment. In 1998 the building was purchased and renovated. From 2000 to 2003 it was opened as The Paradox, an all ages music venue. The lease was assumed by Wing-It Productions in 2003 and the theater was reopened as Jet City Improv, with occasional movie screenings. All this would seem to indicate this structure is the oldest surviving movie theater in northeast Seattle. Despite those facts, 5510 University Way NE has virtually no architectural significance itself. My recollections are that of a large, moldy, dump of a place with broken seats and filthy carpeting. Its primary importance is longevity and the fond memories of innumerable college kids. The building had been scheduled for demolition prior to the fire, to be developed as yet another ugly block of cheaply made, overpriced tiny apartments.”

Also,  Nick Collecchi shares photos of the recent demolition of the Guild 45th, another lost movie house he served as manager.  (thanks for the correct attribution, Gavin MacDougall)

 

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 16, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 19, 2023

 101-year-old’s inspiring blog on aging becomes a pair of books

By Clay Eals

In her youthful eyes, smile and bearing, we can see it all — joy, hope and, reinforced by a sturdy tree, boldness and fortitude.

That fits this December 1940 day. The 18-year-old poses in uniform outside the Swedish Hospital nurses’ home on First Hill, following a “capping” recognition ceremony in the second of her four years of study at Swedish’s School of Nursing.

She’s Doris Schölin Carnevali, a Seattle native and local legend, less for an oft-honored nursing and educational career at Swedish and the University of Washington and more for what she embraced six years ago after turning 95 and continued through this year at 101. This accomplishment is an extraordinary blog of 200-plus entries, attracting 1,000 subscribers, with the rhyming title of “Engaging with Aging.”

Her blog, suggested by a UW dean and set up by a granddaughter, covers all manner of physical and emotional aspects of getting older. With a first-person voice, it’s less a compendium of explicit advice than a set of lessons by example, from adjusting to changed abilities to accepting offered assistance.

Mixing anecdotes and philosophy, the longtime West Seattleite imparts wisdom and humor from which we all can benefit, if (as the saying goes) we are lucky to live so long.

A sample: “No way did I think that becoming aged would require almost constant creativity in order to remain happy and satisfied, but it has! Now this creativity has little to do with the way I would have defined it in the past: artistic, inventive, theoretical. No, instead it’s been mundane, pragmatic, primitive, tiny, adaptive.”

Thus, in her kitchen: “The round knob on the oven … was too stiff for me to turn. A quarter-inch-wide small rubber band over its circumference gives me the traction I need. I can still bake!”

This fall, Carnevali’s blog posts were transformed into two colorfully illustrated, spiral-bound volumes by two Whidbey Island friends: Army Col. Grethe Cammermeyer, a longtime nurse (best known for her successful challenge of the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” homosexual policy), and illustrator-designer Stef Christensen.

Today, Carnevali is in assisted living, unable to travel. But several fans recently visited the site of her 1940 photo at the ever-changing First Hill campus of Swedish — an institution that, at 115, is not much older than Carnevali herself.

“What Doris has contributed,” Cammermeyer says, “is how a healthy, elderly person can manage the changes of aging, and do it with vim, vigor and enthusiasm. There is so much that is so positive and inspiring. I’m only 81. She’s telling us how.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Emily at the Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives, Heather of the Seattle Room of Seattle Public Library, Natalie Kozimor of Swedish Hospital and especially to Janet Primomo, Basia Belza, Sarah McKiddy, Grethe Cammermeyer and Stef Christensen for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Jean Sherrard’s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

You also will find an additional video, 3 web links and, in chronological order, 29 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Web links related to Doris and her blog:

• Doris’ 2019 paper, “Engaging with Aging: A Framework for Managing Daily Living,” co-authors Janet Primomo and Basia Belza, published in the Journal of Gerontological Nursing
• A celebration of Doris’ 100th birthday, a 2022 Kudoboard
• A June 5, 2019, KING-TV story
• A winter 2021 story from 3rd  Act magazine

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 2, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 5, 2023

For forty years near Walla Walla, a winery schools itself in success 

By Jean Sherrard

When Baker and Jean Ferguson acquired Walla Walla’s historic Lowden Schoolhouse in 1977 and registered a name for their nascent winery — L’Ecole No. 41 — they eyed it as a retirement project. They began by adding a penthouse atop the two-story structure.

“It’s a great place to live,” Baker said in a 1979 interview with the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. “Magnificent view. A very high proportion of the history of the Walla Walla area took place right underneath these windows.”

He was not exaggerating.

Less than two decades after the Lewis & Clark expedition’s 1805 passage nearby, French-Canadian fur trappers established one of the Northwest’s earliest settlements and intermarried with native tribes at this spot 13 miles west of Walla Walla. Originally called “le village des Canadiens,” it soon became Frenchtown. Christian missionaries arrived, heightening cultural tensions while thousands of westward-bound Oregon Trail emigrants streamed through.

Following the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, newcomers — at first mostly white men — flowed into the valley, establishing farms and residences. In 1855, a four-day battle raged across Frenchtown after a bitterly contested treaty restricted tribes to a 510,000-acre reservation, ceding 6.4 million acres to settlers.

Meanwhile, in 1869 in nearby Walla Walla, Baker Ferguson’s great-grandfather, Dorsey Syng Baker, founded Baker Boyer Bank, the state’s oldest financial institution.

By 1870, Frenchtown had its own one-room school. In 1915, the town renamed itself Lowden, constructing the larger schoolhouse in our paired photos. In 1974, with only eight students remaining, the school was shuttered. Still, history forged a path there.

Neither Baker Ferguson, who had just retired as president of Baker Boyer Bank, nor his wife, Jean, had prior experience in winemaking. But both were quick studies. With a chemistry background, Jean assumed the role of winemaker, with Baker as general factotum.

Their dedication paid off when, in 1983, L’Ecole No. 41 became the third winery (after Leonette Cellars and Woodward Canyon) to open in the Walla Walla Valley. First-year production yielded a modest 500 cases. It was, Baker said, “a mom-and-pop operation. … At best, we earn maybe 35 cents an hour.”

In 1986, the Fergusons’ 1983 merlot received the sole gold medal awarded by the Pacific Northwest Enological Society. Decades of national and international acclaim followed.

Celebrating its 40^th anniversary, the winery is still a family affair. Under daughter Megan and son-in-law Marty Clubb, who took the helm in 1989, L’Ecole No. 41 produces 50,000-plus cases a year, with worldwide distribution. Their children, Riley and Rebecca, foresee a robust path for generations to come.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 26, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 29, 2023

Ghost stories arise from horrific Georgetown steam plant casualty

By Jean Sherrard

You might say they see dead people.

As Cari Simson and Elke Hautala researched the Seattle Electric Company’s Georgetown steam plant, erected in 1906, they found grim accounts of a horrific accident.

One of the first West Coast reinforced concrete structures, the steam plant originally powered the Interurban Railway between Seattle and Tacoma and supplied direct current for Seattle streetcars and alternating current for Georgetown.

In April 1908, a defective steam pipe burst in the boiler room, hurling two Georges — George Tucker, chief engineer, and George Love, oiler — 25 feet to the concrete floor below. Despite their gruesome injuries, observers reported that Tucker coolly directed workers coming to their aid with “wonderful nerve.”

The men were taken to nearby Seattle General Hospital, where Tucker, 32, lingered for 10 days before succumbing to his burns. Love was sent home three months later, finally able to walk again.

Here, Hautala and Simson introduce spine-tingling elements to the narrative.

Since Tucker’s demise, they assert, tales of paranormal activity have proliferated. Pallets of tools and equipment have moved inexplicably. Plant visitors have been startled by footsteps on vacant stairs and machines springing to life on their own. Talk about Halloween-ish things going bump in the night!

Simson, an event producer and environmental consultant, has a hair-raising but benign explanation.

“We believe that George Tucker’s ghost is benevolent,” she says. “He may be stuck with unfinished business, trying to make sure his men complete their work safely.”

Puckishly, Hautala, visual anthropologist, filmmaker and performer, adds, “Call us ghost-curious.”

Skeptics might note that this knowing credulity serves a purpose. “Covering these hidden histories and coming up with ways to share them with the public is part of what inspires us,” Hautala says.

“We think of these as echoes of history,” Simson says, “here to remind us of something important.”

Their spirited partnership began during the pandemic, when they researched a lost cemetery at the nearby Duwamish River. From 1876 to 1912, impoverished and dispossessed locals were buried in the Duwamish Poor Farm Cemetery, most in graves unmarked. In 1912, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, before dredging and straightening the river, disinterred this Potter’s Field.

“There were 3,260 people buried there, of whom 855 had names associated with them on headboards,” Hautala says. “All of them were cremated and essentially erased to history.”

Dedicated to unearthing and documenting these forgotten lives, neither researcher is shy about their goal.

“We aim to create a visceral thrill and engagement surrounding history,” says Simson.

“The haunted, spooky and paranormal,” Hautala adds, “provide the perfect framework.”

WEB EXTRAS

To view our narrated 360 degree video, click here.

A few photos from this year’s Georgetown Haunted History Tour below:

 

A SAD UPDATE:

Charlotte Bushue, featured in this installment of “Now & Then,” died of a sudden illness Friday night, Oct. 20, 2023, at Swedish Cherry Hill. Charlotte’s son and daughter asked that this be known. Charlotte became an instant friend to me. Jean Sherrard and I hope this installment serves as a fitting tribute to her. — Clay Eals

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 19, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 22, 2023

Lofty Mount Rainier beckons
to young woman in 1926, and her daughter today

By Clay Eals

Invariably, it looms large. Some days it sparkles, taking our breath anew, though we’ve seen it countless times. Other days it faintly hovers in the haze. Still other days, it’s invisible, but we know it’s there.

Of course, I’m speaking of Mount Rainier. From one generation to the next, it’s the rock of our Northwest identity.

I renewed my awe for this perennial presence at a talk by historian Dan Kerlee last May at the Mirabella Seattle retirement community. Also attending was resident and Seattle native Charlotte Dean Bushue.

Afterward, I learned that Charlotte, 88, had brought along a battered box of 42 professional photos taken at and near Rainier’s Paradise trail base in 1926. Several of the 8-by-10s depicted Charlotte’s then-23-year-old mother, Jean Frazier, working as a guide that summer.

The box by her side, Charlotte reflected on her mom, who graduated college with honors and held several jobs: “She was a smart lady, and she liked to do unique things.” During the Depression, Frazier worked at a Seattle bank, “sitting at a table at the entrance to the bank with a pile of cash, reassuring the public that their money was safe. Can you imagine doing that now?”

Frazier also adopted a homemaking trajectory. She married in 1929, gave birth to Charlotte in 1935 and another daughter in 1938. The three followed Frazier’s husband through stateside military service during World War II. Frazier embraced entertaining guests, playing bridge and hiking the Silverton/Big Four region of the Washington Cascades. “She was tough, just her personality. With what we went through as a family during the war, I think it was tough for her not to have a profession.”

The keepsake box symbolizes a formative season that Frazier apparently treasured but didn’t chronicle or discuss with her children. But the photos themselves — showing a vibrant young woman alone and with peers crossing meadows and cavorting on shorter nearby peaks, with lofty Rainier as a backdrop — tell a vivid tale.

Today, active like her mom, Charlotte golfs and organizes walks at Mirabella. In August, I drove her to Paradise, where she readily repeated her mom’s 97-year-old pose. She beamed with satisfaction: “That she had that experience makes me happy.”

The twin gazes of mother and daughter, backed by gleaming grandeur, reflect the warmth of youthful dreams. And Charlotte’s tenderness beckons most anyone’s Rainier yearnings, certainly my own.

As a child, I often was driven by my mom across the Mercer Island floating bridge. On a clear day, she would point south and proclaim, “Get out your ice-cream spoons. The mountain’s out!”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Dan Kerlee, Brooke Childrey and especially Charlotte Dean Bushue for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

To see information on the Mount Rainier guide service, automobile rates and hotel rates in 1920, see this National Parks History page.

Below are two additional videos of:

• Charlotte Bushue reflecting June 2, 2023, on her mother, Jean Frazier.
• Dan Kerlee‘s presentation on the history of Mount Rainier on May 24, 2023, at Mirabella Seattle retirement community.

You also will find 40 additional photos, and, in chronological order, 3 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 5, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 8, 2023

The charming, barnstorming Babe Ruth captivates Seattle in 1924

By Clay Eals

With major-league baseball’s post-season swinging into high gear, “Now & Then” eagerly commemorates the first sighting of the Babe in our woods — George Herman “Babe” Ruth, that is.

Given today’s seemingly endless playoffs, this year’s champion team may not emerge before Nov. 4. But in the simpler schedule of 1924, the sole post-season play was the World Series, which that year ended Oct. 10. Immediately afterward, star ballplayers barnstormed, playing coast-to-coast exhibition contests, mostly west of the Mississippi — land of no big-league ballclubs.

Thus, 99 years ago, Seattle caught its first in-person glimpse of the megawatt New York Yankees outfielder known as the Bambino.

At age 29, Babe Ruth already had patented the persona of a slugger, having hit 284 of what became 714 career regular-season home runs. His 1924 batting average (.378) topped the American League. Sportswriters’ synonyms for him soared. (Sample: the “Supreme Socker.”) And his on-field performance reinforced a joyful, larger-than-life charisma. People of all ages, especially kids, revered the man.

Sponsored by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Ruth visited Seattle with teammate Bob Meusel.

In front of 9,000 fans in an Oct. 19 game enlisting local amateurs at Rainier Valley’s Dugdale Park, Ruth played errorless first base and, befitting his roots, pitched one inning.

In nine at-bats, he belted three homers and a double. His first four-bagger, the P-I’s Royal Brougham reported tongue-in-cheek, “hit Mount Rainier on the first bounce!”

During a late inning, Brougham wrote, a “curly-headed tot” ran out to Ruth, who bent over, shook the boy’s hand, patted his head and “sent him away happy.” Seventy-one years later, Dr. Bill Hutchinson told the P-I the boy was his 5-year-old brother Fred, who later gained fame as a big-league pitcher and manager and cancer-center namesake.

Ruth, here for two days, also hit balls pre-game to 1,000-plus kids in centerfield, visited hospitalized children, spoke at a banquet, “directed” conjoined twins who played “The Strike-Out Blues” on saxophone, and tossed autographed balls to fans from the P-I building at Sixth and Pine.

He even spoke against a statewide initiative to abolish private schools, saying that if not for a Baltimore industrial reform school, he “probably never would have been heard of.” The measure was defeated.

Before leaving Seattle, Ruth penned for a Western Union messenger a homily both touching and timeless:

“You can knock a home run always doing your work properly and travel the bases until you reach home plate. Success. Don’t alibi if you miss one. Play the game fair. Be there in the pinches, and in your business life you can be the ‘King of Swat’.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Dave Eskenazi, Mike Burns, and, at the Museum of History & Industry, Devorah Romanek, Julianne Kidder and Allie Delyanis for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, besides a video of Mike Burns reflecting on his grandfather Bobby Burns, are 17 additional photos, and, in chronological order, 47 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Also check out these links:

• The Babe and others at MOHAI.
• The Babe in Dunsmuir, California.
• The Babe in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
• The 1924 championship Seattle Indians.
• Ballpark namesake Dan Dugdale.
• Seattle legend Roscoe “Torchy” Torrance.

In addition, here is a special letter from 1944 from Babe Ruth to P-I sports editor Royal Brougham, courtesy of Cathi Soriano:

NEWS CLIPS

The following clips are related to Babe Ruth’s two-day visited to Seattle in 1924.

NEWS CLIPS

The following clips are related to Bobby Burns and to the Seattle town teams he played for (Stacy Shown Jewelers and City Sash & Door). Burns was selected to bat fifth behind Babe Ruth in the Oct. 19, 1924, exhibition game.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 28, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 1, 2023

Amphitheater has hosted stirring sounds and stories since 1915

By Jean Sherrard

If the Volunteer Park amphitheater could talk, oh, the tales it might tell. Its successive bandshells have born witness to countless civic, religious, musical and theatrical events spanning more than a century.

The site’s first bandshell, designed in 1915 by eminent architect Carl F. Gould, proved an instant draw. The generous lawns north of the park’s reservoir handily accommodated large crowds.

An inaugural sunset concert on June 20, 1915, featured hugely popular T.H. “Dad” Wagner’s 40-piece marching band. Thousands clapped to waltzes, operatic excerpts and selections from the farce “High Jinks,” as well as a medley of Sousa-esque marches.

Besides summer concerts, the amphitheater has hosted a wide array of civic and religious events.

The local Moose Lodge #211 promoted White House-inspired egg-rolling contests in the early 1920s. Local children were exhorted to “bring their own spoons” until soggy April grass dampened enthusiasm.

Easter sunrise services, undaunted by inclement weather, ran from 1926 through the late 1960s, often commencing with a lone bugler before dawn. Faithful crowds once reached 50,000, reported The Seattle Times.

In September 1927, more than 30,000 grade-schoolers gathered on the greenswards to welcome “their greatest modern day hero” Charles Lindbergh after his trans-Atlantic flight to Paris. The Times also boasted about his monoplane’s locally grown spruce struts.

Our main “Then” photo, from June 12, 1932, features a Flag Day commemoration of George Washington’s bicentennial. Prize-winning essays about the first president’s “Youth and Manhood” (with cherry tree, we presume) were read by Queen Anne and Garfield high-school students.

From 1945 to 1961, the amphitheater annually observed “I Am an American Day,” honoring new citizens. (In 1962, the ceremony moved to the Seattle World Fair’s Flag Pavilion.)

By the late 1960s, countercultural summer “Be-Ins” entered the park’s mix. Column founder Paul Dorpat might occasionally be found cavorting with favorite local band Formerly Lamarr Harrington.

In 1974, the site celebrated the first Seattle Pride Week festivities, which continue at the amphitheater today.

Carl Gould’s by-then-crumbling bandshell was torn down in 1947 and replaced by a makeshift wooden stage until the early 1970s, when landscape architect Richard Haag erected a roofless brick structure in its place.

In our “Now” photo, its stunning $2.7 million replacement, designed by architect Owen Richards — noted for Seattle Center’s Chihuly Garden and Glass and the SIFF Film Center — opened in July 2022.

“We tried to find an appropriate scale which was of a piece in the landscape,” Richards says, “while providing a welcoming performance space.”

The new structure’s graceful, sweeping roof, reverberant acoustics and spacious stage surely will tell stories for generations to come.

WEB EXTRAS

To view our “live” 360-degree video of this column, click right here.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 21, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 24, 2023

Dedication drives longtime Filipino champion Dorothy Cordova

By Clay Eals

With salmon leaping eagerly into a giant can (“From the sea to you!”), this week’s “Then” portrait depicts a festive float. Surrounding it are local Filipinos, 59 men and 8 women, heartily gathering downtown to take part in Seattle’s Labor Day procession of Sept. 5, 1938.

No less hearty, the present-day repeat of our “Now” photo speaks to a national organization documenting a community’s legacy and guided by a local Filipina dynamo, Dorothy Laigo Cordova.

In the 1938 shot, many don formal dress, and some hoist cans of salmon, celebratory symbols of the 1933 formation of the Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union, Local 7.

The first Filipino-led union in the United States, it spoke for thousands of often unrecognized immigrants who traveled summertimes to the then-Alaska Territory for arduous fish-cannery work. They called themselves “Alaskeros” (ala-SKERR-ohs).

The float also reflected political tensions. Although many CWFLU members were categorized as “nationals,” not U.S. citizens, and could not vote, they joined other unions in urging defeat of “strike control” Initiative 130, on the statewide ballot that fall.

The initiative was led by business interests who sought to “stamp out racketeering and violence in Washington” and promised “peace, pay checks [and] prosperity.” But union sympathizers held sway. The measure failed, 295,431 to 268,848.

Revealing just one swath of local Filipino history, the float image holds prominence among countless photos, posters, oral histories and documents stored and displayed at the headquarters of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS, pronounced “fonz”). The combination library and organizing center spans several rooms on the first floor of Immaculate Conception Church in the Central District.

Dorothy Cordova launched it in 1982 with her husband, the journalist, college spokesman and renowned civil-rights leader Fred Cordova, as an outgrowth of their late-1950s Filipino Youth Activities organization and early-1970s Demonstration Project for Asian Americans. Today, FANHS boasts chapters in 41 cities.

Fred died in 2014. Remarkably, Dorothy, 90, a Seattle native and longtime sociologist, teacher, researcher and activist (not to mention mother of eight), still runs FANHS. Unpaid, she commutes from Montlake to the office five days a week.

Dorothy’s decades of accomplishments and awards are formidable. This year alone, she received a legacy award in May from the Association of King County Historical Organizations, and at a banquet Thursday, Sept. 28, Historic Seattle will honor her as a “preservation champion.”

Why keep at it? “Curiosity!” she spouts. “Actually, it’s a mission: ‘Did you know anything about us? We were nobody.’ We try to set the record straight.”

And there’s always more: “You just have to keep plugging away.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Ben Laigo and especially Dorothy Cordova for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, besides an additional video of Dorothy receiving a legacy award from the Association of King County Historical Organizations, are 4 additional photos, and, in chronological order, 70 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

October is Filipino American History Month. Activities and events can be found here. Info on the FANHS online auction Oct. 14-15, 2023, can be found here.