(click to enlarge photos)


The “monster impromptu parade” began when the early shift in the shipyards was let go to celebrate. By ten a.m. thirty thousand shipyard workers, joined clerks, trolley conductors, teachers, doctors, bankers, and bakers in a parade that circled the business district accompanied by sirens, horns, the back-firing explosions of opened mufflers and a percussive orchestra of garbage cans “borrowed” from every alley.
It was an “ecstasy of joy,” an “orderly disorder,” “a spontaneous combustion of Seattle’s heart and soul.” And there were, The Times noted, “autos and trucks crowded with flag-waving pretty girls” like we see here crossing Madison Street southbound on Second Avenue.
This snapshot by grocer Max Loudon is but one of about two hundred captioned photographs included in the new illustrated version of Richard Berner’s local classic “Seattle 1900 – 1920 From Boomtown, Through Urban Turbulence, to Restoration.” The book appears now on dorpatsherrardlomont, the blog-webpage routinely noted at the end of this feature. Take a moment to examine this important part of the “Seattle Canon” and you may read it all.