Built in the Haussmanian style in 1862, the café de la Paix was one of the trendiest places to be seen in the Second Empire, and it became even more successful when the Opéra Garnier opens its doors in 1875. The district is a favorite promenade place for Parisians.
With modern traffic, taking pictures in the middle of the Place de l’Opéra is a lot riskier than it was in the 19th century…
Since a few days the parisian rythm is disrupted by the strike and demonstrations. The protest against the reform of retirement in France has spread to social conflict, students have joined the movement. The oil depot are blocked, and oil begins to miss. By the force, the government tries to release barricades. The traffic has become difficult , and Parisians don’t get out, even Lady Gaga has cancelled her Paris tour…
Le café de la Paix, Place de l’Opéra
Construit dans un immeuble de style haussmanien en 1862, le café de la Paix est l’endroit à la mode du Second Empire, son succès devient phénoménal lorsque l’Opéra Garnier ouvre ses portes en 1875, le quartier représente alors la promenade la plus prisée des parisiens.
Reconduire des prises de vues au milieu de la place comme au XIXème siècle est un exercice difficile…
Cependant, depuis quelques jours le rythme parisien est perturbé par la grève et les manifestations. La contestation de la réforme de la retraite s’est généralisée en conflit social et les étudiants ont rejoint le mouvement. Les dépôts pétroliers sont bloqués et l’essence commence à manquer. Le gouvernement tente un coup de force en débloquant les barrages.
La circulation est freinée, les Français sortent moins et Lady Gaga vient d’annuler sa tournée à Paris…
Here’s a correction sent by Fleet encyclopedist Rex Lee Carlaw who has been studying the Puget Sound fleet since he was a child.
Dear Paul,
Thanks for “The Fleet.”
Note: KEHLOKEN, not Kehlokin
Tahlequah, not Tahlequa
(But I don’t know if it can be edited.)
KALAKALA ran Port Angeles – Victoria until 1959, and TILLIKUM came on line in 1959, so that dates this. It does have errors though. SAN MATEO is missing; she ran Edmonds-Kingston. KLAHANIE ran Edmonds-Kingston and Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth, not Mukilteo-Columbia Beach. KEHLOKEN ran Seattle-Winslow, not Edmonds-Kingston.
This was the year I started riding the Edmonds-Kingston route regularly (I was 7). My parents bought a beach house (now at the foot of Lindvog Rd.) on 01 July that summer.
Rex
This appeared here first last Setp 27 under "Mixed Addendum for the . . ."And to set the rudder straight or straighter here's another fleet montage shown earlier here - on Sept 27 under "Mixed Addendums . . . "
Two features or insertions ago under the title "Queen Anne Addendum #3 - Faux France . . . The Overland Westerners" we introduced a variety of state capitol buildings a century ago while touching on the dogged ride of four horsemen for three years and 20,000 miles. Now we will continue this story with some more portraits of the horsemen posing with capitols and - when they could rouse them - their governors. Arizona became the 48th contiguous state three months before the horsemen left Bainbridge Island for Olympia, their first stop. I think it unlikely that they carried a camera, and so were dependent upon photographers connected with the local press, contacts they tried to make all along their 20,000 mile way. About 30 photographs of state houses survive and but two of these have professional imprints. None of the recorded state houses are directly named. With two of them you may be able to figure out from evidence on or to the sides - those imprints. Of course, none of the governors are named either. (With a few hours - or less - on Goggle most of the state houses, at least, could be identified. Please go ahead.) We will also include a variety of ephemera produced for and during this strange adventure. (This collection came my way for copying many years ago through the help of Old Seattle Paperworks in the lower level of the Pike Place Market, and now the net furnishes a nifty way to share it. Thanks John.) CLICK TO ENLARGE
First page draft for a 1964 recounting of the story.
A Providence R.I. excerpt from a trek diary.How they survived - card sales and charity from some livery stables.
This letter from one governor to another was one of the tricks use by the quartet to smooth their often rough journey.Another first page for 1964 retelling of the horse-haul story.
Boston Diary Sept. 22, 1913. Rain, a busy governor, and more charity from the livery.
This portrait includes a clue to the state.This shares a clue too.That the four horsemen made it through their three year self and horse promotion was because of lucky health, occasional compassion on the road, and a confidence - unfounded as it turned out - regarding the consequences. The glory and rewards they expect to greet them at the 1915 worlds fair in San Francisco did not materialize. Heroic riders out of the once commonplace but in 1915 rapidly receding horse culture - and their droppings - were neither warmly greeted nor rewarded at the grand front door to the Panama Pacific International Exposition. There would be no horse show. A short summary of the trip and some of its hardships and touchstones can be had at http://www.thelongridersguild.com/Overland.htm
Where the Yakima River makes a loop north nearly reaching the Hanford Reservation before returning south to join the Columbia River, Horace Sykes took this soft focus look west to Rattlesnake Mountain. The ridge runs between 3400 and 3550 feet, or about 3000 feet above the Yakima River here on the outskirts of Richland. The coloring of all this reminds me of the table mats that Standard Oil, I think it was, gave away to "fill it up" customers in the late 40s and 50s. They were all picturesque scenes of Western America - as I remember them. My dad collected them, and so I always thought they were valuable. When I found a fist full of these in a Wallingford garage sale a few years back I felt i had found something precious although I knew that I had not. If Horace visit this place in the early 1940s he would not have known what was going on only a few miles to the north - the development of the first Atomic Bomb.
Catching the Studebaker billboard on the side of the commercial structure snuggled to the towering church, upper-left, we confessed our uncertainty that all four photos in this montage of Army-related snapshots were photographed in France while Ralph Johnson was saving the world for democracy but rather somewhere that prescribed English for signage. Now Matthew Eng makes it 50% (for the moment) by identifying the upper-right photograph on this page of Johnson's album as the state capitol of Minnesota in St. Paul. Perhaps the American doughboys were acclimatizing for the winter weather of France with a stopover in St. Paul. (We also learn from other sources -aka Google - that the two spire church upper-left is St. Paul's Assumption Catholic Church. And now I learn that Matthew has also identified the church and more. The pix bottom right "is of the old St. Paul City Hall and Courthouse (http://srfminneapolis.org/Images/PYinMN/St%20Paul%20City%20Hall%201900.jpg). Perhaps the fourth image was taken at nearby Fort Snelling?") To check Eng's catch on the capitol we consulted a collection of state capitols in our keep featuring the "Overland Westerners" attempts to visit every state capitol in the country in 1912-13. The Overland Westerners from Washington State take a 1912 pose before the state capitol of Minnesota in St. Paul. (Courtesy Old Seattle Paperworks in the Pike Place Market, Lower Level)The four horsemen of Washington, aka The Overland Westerners, published this hand-out to promote and celebrate their attempt to visit every state capitol in their saddles and hopefully pose with the governors too.
SEVEN more CAPITOLS from the HORSE RIDE – ALL UNIDENTIFIED & THE GOVERNORS TOO!
This artful fold in a hillside might have been set for a splendid summer romance or comedy. The rock on the left could have been intended, its masses are so democratic like spectators in the bleachers. There is a smiling face there. The slender waterfall keeps the arbor's residents nourished and happy. While far above an arid hilltop deflects the winds away. And Horace keeps it a secret. (Click Twice to Find the Face)
THEN: Only an extended arm of one pedestrian shows at the bottom-left corner of the historical scene. (Courtesy Lawton Gowey)NOW: A stream of happy weekend consumers nearly fills the north crosswalk at 4th and Pine in Jean Sherrard’s “now.”
This week’s “now and then” looks across 4th Avenue, east on Pine Street, ca. 1918. A glimpse of the new Frederick and Nelson’s terra-cotta façade gleams at the northeast corner of Pine and 5th Avenue (left of the power pole). I speculate with oft-humbled confidence that here Frederick and Nelson is still being furnished. The neighborhood’s grand new retailer opened on Sept 3rd, 1918. In 1950 four new floors were added to the then 60 year old department store’s first five.
With 4% promised from the sign on its roof, upper-left, the directly named Bank for Savings in Seattle is on the left. Across Pine the north façade of the Hotel Georgian leaves no clue here that it is a flatiron building built in 1906 at the Hotel Plaza to fill the pie-shaped block created when Westlake was cut through from 4th and Pike to Denny Way.
David Jeffers, our frequent silent film era authority, instructs us on the Wilkes sign, right-of-center. “This 3-floor structure at the southeast corner of Pine and Westlake opened in 1909 as a Vaudeville house named the Alhambra Theatre, and then jumped the cinema bandwagon in 1911. The Floorwalker, starring Charlie Chaplin opened on Thursday, May 18 1916 for a three day run . . . The Alhambra included the annoying slogan in all its ads, ‘When it’s a good Chaplin comedy we buy it.’ Unfortunately, it is too late to inquire about the bad ones. In 1917 the theatre was renamed for Seattle’s well-known dramatic company, the Wilkes. It featured live theatre, stock and movies.”
Finally, Fred Cruger, our equally frequent motorcar authority, writes about the cars speeding west on Pine, “Well, I’d bet the one in the background is a Ford, the one closest I believe to be a REO (I was torn between REO and Overland), and the one on the right is a real mystery. Maybe it’s a trick of the lighting that makes the radiator shell look unusually-shaped, but I don’t recognize it. If I absolutely had to take a guess, I’d say ‘Metz’.” Here’s a chance for some Pacific reader to surprise Fred.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul?
A few pictures and one story about dragons. Most of the relevant stories written heretofore are napping on old floppy disks or waiting for a volunteer to revive them with a character recognition program. Most of the pictures touch on Pine Street. But touch only. The stories must come later with other opportunities. After they are awakened and/or are rescued. [Click to Enlarge – with the single exception of the pix that follows. Click it and it will shrink.]
Looking south on Westlake from Pine Street. Note the Chief Seattle drinking fountain (for man and beast) out in the street with little to set it apart or protect it. It was one of three of the same.Looking east on Pine from the top of the old Standard Furniture Building, which survives as the Rack, or Sack, or Knack. All apply. Fourth Avenue is the first north-south or left-right avenue seen in this view. Courtesy of Jim Westall. (This one we used earlier.)The entrance to the nearly new monorail. The photographer Frank Shaw looks north with his back nearly at Pike Street. The old flatiron Bartell Drugs is on the left. Date: April 29, 1962. The view looks east from the Bon's parking highrise at 3rd and Pine. Frank Shaw recorded this on March 17, 1962. Like the daylighted scene directly above this night view is taken from 3rd and Pine looking east on the latter, and this time also on March 17, 1962. Frank Shaw is, of course, the photographer.Frank Shaw looks down on the kitschy roof of the Monorail. It was snapped on June 6, 1965. Shaw's mall on Dec. 13, 1966 looking south on Westlake from near Pine.An early anti-Vietnam War protest at Westlake Mall recorded by Frank Shaw on April 16, 1966. A Seafair information booth on the mall. Shaw looks north over Pine between 4th and 5th Avenues. The date:June 28, 1966. Shaw was consistently good about noting the date and more.
”]Not a Frank Shaw photograph - an unidentified one. The scene looks north from Pine on 4th on May 30, 1953. It shows the once famous Ben Paris sporting goods store.
DRAGON ON FIFTH AVENUE(First appeared Jan 9, 1983 in Pacific.)
In the Western World slaying a dragon is a crowning achievement for any hero, and champions have been rescuing damsels from the fiery embrace of these beasts and also carrying away treasures from their fierce protection for a very long time.
But in the East, the dragon is a different beast, a persistent sign of vital power, fertility and well being. And a vegetarian. In our historical photo of the Chinese dragon dance, we see the lead bearer carrying a staff tipped with a symbolic fruit. The dragon wants it, and will dance through many city blocks to get it. Here it is on Fifth Avenue, with its tail still crossing Pine Street. This is a long way from the International District where the great dragon is released on Chinese New Year to dance amid fireworks and the persistent beat of drums and cymbals through the streets south of Jackson. It still is. (I think. This first appeared in Pacific’s Jan 9, 1983 edition.)
The event pictured here is part of another celebration: the city’s 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition. This may be China Day. There is no crowd, and the question occurs, what is this herbivore doing on Fifth Avenue? In 1909, Second Avenue and not Fifth was Seattle’s parade street. Second was was not planked but bricked, and “canyoned” by skyscrapers like the still-standing Alaska Building, the by now razed Savoy Hotel and the New Washington Hotel (today’s Josephinum.)
We will ask what the man in the Caucasian costume at right is thinking. Could he be confusing this happy procession of the Asian monster with a fire-breathing history of its European cousin? Or could he be carrying beneath that derby another kind of demon – that old stereotype of the Chinese “coolie boy?”
The crude image of the opium-eating heathen, who worked more for less and then gambled it away, was the stock response to these Asian immigrants. By 1909, it had resulted in more than half a century of terrible treatment. First these “celestials” were used as cheap labor to mine the gold and coal, build the railroads and do domestic service. Then when the work was scarce they were peculiarly taxed and prevented from owning property, gaining citizenship and sending for relatives and wives. Often they were shipped or railroaded out of town – both Seattle and Tacoma in the mid-1880s – on the very rails they had helped lay.
Here, on Fifth Avenue, some of them are back. Both their costumes and cutback hairlines are from the Ching Dynasty, which in 1909 was in its 265th year. It would have two years to go. In 1911 demonstrators in the International District would replace the dynasty’s dragon flags with the new republic’s single white star floating on a field of blue and red. This was a design inspired by the Stars and Strips.
The contemporary scene is changed in every detail but one. The Westlake Public Market behind the dragon’s head has been replaced by Frederick & Nelsons. (In 1983, yes, but not now in 2010. No no now it is Nordstrom.) Across Pine the Olympic Stables and behind it the Methodist Church have both and long ago also left this corner on 5th Avenue to Jay Jacobs. (But now Jay Jacobs has left it too for Gap.) The survivor: the four-story brick building a half-block south on 5th that is signed the Hotel Shirley in the historical view is now a southern extension of the Banana Republic – I believe.
The dragon still dances every Chinese New Year, but not on this part of Fifth Avenue.
THE DRAGONS of CHINATOWN
This dragon was captured by Frank Shaw in the International District, or Chinatown, depending. The slides date from April 19, 1966.
At the start.Temporarily heading east on King Street.Shaw titles this "A Dragon Drop-out."Wandering about Chinatown aka China Town. The dragon used on April, 19, 1969 is identified by Frank Shaw as coming from the Thomas Burke Museum on the U.W.Campus.
