Another sidewalk capture by Victor Lygdman, and most likely from 1962. Now separated by nearly a half-century from these costumes it is easier to imagine them all as studied and chosen with care. Lygdman is pointing northwest from the southeast corner of 3rd Ave. and Pine Street, where briefly from 1903 to 1906 a block-long counterbalance trolley climbed north to the front door of the Denny/Washington Hotel, which straddled 3rd Avenue between Stewart and Virginia Streets, almost 100 feet higher than this grade.The block-long trolley can be seen here in profile near the middle of the scene. The view looks west on Pine from 4th Avenue during the regrade of Pine in preparation for taking away the southern hump or summit of Denny Hill, north from here to Virginia Street. The trolley's southern "insertion" or anchor at Pine has been disassembled. The Fire Station, on the right, sits at the northeast corner of 3rd and Pine. The likely date for this is 1906 after the hotel was closed that spring. The caption at the bottom of the print may be misleading. The photograph is more about the Pine Street regrade than the 3rd Avenue regrade. The Fire Station, now on the far left, has survived the razing of most of Denny Hill's front hump, although some of the hill survives at the center of the scene where 4th Avenue still climbs the southeast flank - but not for long. That too will soon be lowered (eroded with water jets actually) down to the present grade, then as far east as 5th Avenue only, where the regrading stopped until 1929. This scene is from ca.1908. It looks north into the regrade from the south side of Pine, closer to 3rd avenue than to 4th and so quite close to the corner taken by the women in the top photograph, only some 54 years later.The trolley appears here on the left above the roofline of the big hotels neighbors - a row of houses that face 4th Avenue at the southwest corner of Stewart.
