THEN: Yesler Way’s corner with 17th Avenue is about three blocks west and 30 feet short of Yesler Way’s summit on Second Hill. (Courtesy Lawton Gowey.)NOW: Most likely the Amelia was razed in 1979, the last year the apartment’s owners were taxed for it.
These Amelia Apartments – 16 of them – were, it seems, first noted in a Seattle Times classified ad on Sept. 4, 1910. The agent, John Davis and Co., was one of the super real estate dealers of the time with 61 apartment buildings, “in all parts of the city. Davis advised, “simply step into our office and tell us what kind of a place you want. We will endeavor to meet your every requirement.” Seven days later on the 10th the agent admitted his first renters here into 104 17th Ave. East.
The Amelia was conveniently built beside the Yesler Way Cable Line, with its musically clanking cars reaching the corner every 3 minutes during busy hours. The Amelia offered 3 and 4 bedroom apartments; large, light rooms; modern conveniences; linoleum bathroom and kitchen floors, gas ranges, large closets, cupboards and coolers.” Agent Davis declared it “very desirable.” In 1912, depending on size, the rent ran between twenty and twenty-seven dollars a month. By 1914 the Amelia’s Apt No. 4 was used by a practitioner offering “woman-to-woman” consultations about a “dependable remedy for every married woman” that the personal “women’s ad” left unexplained. (Was it proven techniques on how to be rid of one’s husband?)
Until their internment during the Second World War, this was a neighborhood where Japanese Americans integrated with Seattle’s Jewish community and a miscellany of many others. Here on the corner is Beckerman’s Delicatessen, also a Jewish center where, for instance, in the spring of 1926 one could pick up tickets for the famous singing cantors Mordecia Hershman and Zavil Zwartin appearing in concert at the Masonic Temple at Harvard and Pine. Across Yesler Way and out of frame to the far right was the synagogue for the Bikur Cholum Congregation, now home for the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute.
Although I confess that the subject seems earlier to me, perhaps this scene dates from 1926, the year that the Jewish labor organization named the Workmen’s Circle, gathered with workers from throughout the city for a Labor Day Monday afternoon of music, speeches, dancing and games at Renton’s Pioneer Park. Most of this is promoted across the banner that stretches here over Yesler Way.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? Yes and staying close to Yesler Way. We will go as far up the hills, First and Second, as we can before surrendering to those patient nighty bears. We will be following the route of the old Indian Path to Lake Washington, which the first settlers were please to find and follow in their exploration of the ups and downs behind their waterfront claims. I do not mean to include any additional features, unless I am surprised by one. Just pictures with short captions. But as prelude – readers who remember last Sunday’s coverage of the new book LOST SEATTLE by Rob Ketcherside, will find below these additions something put up earlier today: The longest caption in the history of this blog and written by that First Hill picker-scholar Stephen Edwin Lundgren. Stephen gave most of an afternoon to giving a decent caption to the historical photo featured last week – the one on the cover of Lost Seattle – and he has dated it sensitively and, I’m convinced, properly too.
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Henry YeslerYesler’s Wharf during the Big Snow of 1880 (hereabouts, the very biggest ever) with damaged sheds and a West Seattle horizon. Photo by Peterson & Bros. (Courtesy, Greg Lang)Yesler Wharf ruins from the Great 1889 fire. Scene looks east from the end of the dock to Pioneer Square and the stately brick ruins on Front Street (aka First Ave.)A repeat.This look north across the water end of Yesler Wharf was shared with me long ago by Lucy Campbell Coe, who also shared her vivid recollections of the 1889 fire. Yesler’s small post-fire pier shed is on the right. The unidentified vessel’s black stack hides the work progressing on the Denny Hotel at the top of Denny Hill. The tall firs far left are Seattle’s second park, Kinnear Park on Queen Anne Hill.The Northern Pacific’s “Alaska Piers Nos. 1 and 2” (right and left) early in the 20th century. They covered the site of the original Yesler Wharf at the waterfront foot of Yesler Way.Seattle’s second biggest snow – after the 1880 one shown above – fell early in 1916. Woodrow’s postcard looks east on Yesler Way from Railroad Avenue.Nine years later.Yesler way and the Smith Tower with its tiles gleaming as advertised – or remembered. The photo was taken by either Robert Bradley or Horace Sykes. Their collections came to me mixed. The date is from some Spring afternoon before April Fools Day 1953, with the subject being one of several taken during a walk of the new Yesler Viaduct, before it was opened to traffic.An early scene from the Seafair. (Courtesy, Greater Seattle)Looking west on Mill Street (Yesler Way) from Second Ave. The Occidental Hotel is on the right and beyond it, Yesler’s Mill with the smokestack.The Olympic Block, southeast corner First S. and Yesler Way, standing – but on its last legs. (Courtesy Seattle Public Library)After the 1980s collapse. First South is on the right.At the other end of the block, the southwest corner of Yesler Way and Occidental Ave., the affected Korn Building beneath which Underground Seattle tours still excite tourists with tales of toilets and the Great Fire.A 1925 public works photo of a then recently installed Concrete Safety Island on Yesler east of Third. (Courtesy Seattle City Archive)
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A fresh cable
First published in Pacific May 2, 1993The fated Car 22
Late on some latter day.City Hall (Public Safety Bldg., City Hospital, etc.) when nearly new in 1908/9. Restored in the 1970s as the 400 Yesler Building.The abandoned old Public Safety Building, here on May 24, 1970, photographed by Lawton Gowey. I have fond memories of this wreck with its broken windows. Inside the lower floors were used for covered parking and, if memory serves, some minor car repair.
Looking west down Yesler from the east end of City Hall ca. 1912. The Frye Hotel, on the left, is nearly new and the most imposing structure on Yesler. Soon – with its dedication in 1914 – the Smith Tower would take those bragging rights.On February 7, 1977 Lawton Gowey returned to the 400 Yesler Building to record the beginning of its restoration.
Looking south on 5th Avenue from its Yesler Way overpass circa 1950, long before the Kingdome and SODO.SEATTLE CITY LIGHT’S Yesler Way substation on the north side of Yesler at 7th Avenue. (Courtesy Lawton Gowey)Climbing First Hill (Here AKA Profanity Hill and Yesler Hill) beside the City Light Sub-Station.With the cables open for repair running on the right up Yesler Way, this classic reveals a line-up of civic landmarks beginning with the King County Courthouse on the horizon of “Profanity Hill.” The sprawling clapboard at the subject’s center is the still celebrated Katzenjammer Kastle – Seattle’s City Hall following the Great Fire of 1889 and staying for for nearly 20 years. City Light’s transfer station can also be found, and closes to the photographer is Bohemian Beer, a brand I’m familiar with. Herman Keys, my painting instructor and friend in Spokane, married into the family and thereby operated a salon for a circle of friends in the Bohemian Manse with its upper class footprint firmly planted in Spokane’s oldest distinguished neighborhood, the Brown’s Addition west of the business district.The flatiron Sprague Hotel – mostly hidden here behind another cable car – fit the block bordered by Yesler, Spruce and 8th Ave.Another of the Sprague Hotel – one that appeared here with a feature within the last year – or nearly. The reader could find it if so desired through the blog’s own key-word search service. For the clear eye and big monitor the Sprague Hotel can also be found in the panorama, two subjects above, where it mostly hides behind the City Light Sub-Station.
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While we did not make it to 17th Avenue and the Amelia – or beyond it – we will return later today* with a few more looks to the sides of Yesler Way. But now we will take the steps – two flights – to the last reading of the day followed by the comforts of nighty bears, so comforting for these colder nights.
* While we surely did not “return later today with a few more looks to the sides of Yesler Way,” we will now begin to watch for and collect them and add them at some future date (perhaps a Sunday).
