Seattle Now & Then: “Murder” on Aurora

March 28, 2015 jrsherrard 6 Comments

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: Like violence in a classic Greek play, the carnage suggested by this 1934 crash scene on the then new Aurora speedway was kept off stage, either behind the city’s official photographer, or in the county morgue. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archive.) — THEN: Like violence in a classic Greek play, the carnage suggested by this 1934 crash scene on the then new Aurora speedway was kept off stage, either behind the city’s official photographer, or in the county morgue. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archive)

NOW: In the mid-1970s the three- mile long “Jersey Barrier,” named for the state where it was first used, was installed down the center-line of Aurora Avenue, north of the Battery Street subway, to the southern boundary of Woodland Park. Each of the barrier’s pre-cast 20-foot long segments weighed about three tons.

Few Seattle streets – perhaps no other Seattle street – have accumulated such a record of carnage as its first “speedway,” Aurora Avenue. From Broad Street north to the then new Aurora Bridge, the speedway opened to traffic in the spring of 1933.

ABOVE: Looking north from the new speedway’s beginnings just north of Denny Way, and thru one of the city’s busiest intersections where both Broad and Mercer Streets crossed Aurora through traffic lights, years before both streets were routed below Aurora and its only stop-and-go light south of the Aurora Bridge. BELOW: The nearly new Aurora Bridge, the north end of the speedway’s first section, the one opened in 1933, although this record was made later – late enough for the speedway to be extended through Aurora Park.

A traffic expert from Chicago described this nearly two-mile long speedway as “the best express highway in the U.S.” Its exceptional qualities were the six lanes – eight counting the two outside lanes for parking or rush hour traffic – and the speed limit of 30 mph. Still, Aurora had the arterial worries of cross-streets, left turns, and head-on traffic, plus the extraordinary risk of pedestrians negotiating the ninety feet from curb to curb. For these endangered pedestrians traffic engineers built what they called “safety islands.” You see one above (at the top), looking north from the Crockett Street crosswalk in 1934. Just below is the same (if I’ve figured it correctly) island, only looking at it from the north and four years later on Sept. 21, 1938.

Looking south along the not-so-safe center-line of Aurora towards the Crockett Ave. safety island. Below, is a detail from the same 1938 negative.

No pedestrian was injured in the mess recorded at the top. It was made around 2:30 in the morning on January 19, 1934. Rather, it was 37-year-old Carl Scott who, heading south from the Aurora Bridge in his big Packard, crushed the north reinforced concrete pole of the safety island. The Times, then an afternoon daily, explained front page: “Autoist Dies Instantly in Terrific Crash.” Photographers from both The Times and the city’s department of public works reached the island after Scott’s body had been removed, but not the scattered parts of his sedan. In the accompanying photo at the top, the city’s photographer aimed north with his back to the intact south pole, possibly with its red light still blinking. Interested readers will find The Times photos in this newspaper’s archive for the date of the crash. (Ask your Seattle Public librarian – the archive can be accessed with a computer and a library card number.)

Some of The Seattle Time Jan. 19, 1934 coverage of Carl Scott’s crash and death.

The same section of speedway recorded in the primary photo at the top.

A long Seattle Times clip from Dec. 8, 1937, which seeks and finds a variety of local opinions of what to make of the "safety islands." — A long Seattle Times clip from Dec. 8, 1937, which seeks and finds a variety of local opinions of what to make of and do about the “safety islands.” **CLICK TWICE TO ENLARGE**

After a few more speedway accidents and deaths (see more clips below), The Times turned from seeking advice on how to improve and protect these imperfect pedestrian bulwarks to a campaign for getting rid of these targets for “the brotherhood of bad drivers . . . careless, reckless, defective, drunken and sleeping.” Headlines for the December 2, 1937, issue read, in part “Stop Murder On Aurora – Center-Pillars Are Death Magnets.” The following March, after another motorist lost his battle with a safety island, the newspaper’s librarian calculated that thirty-eight persons had died in Aurora Ave. traffic accidents since the highway was opened in 1932. Eighteen of these were killed hitting “safety” islands. By then, Times reporters were instructed always to put safety in quote marks when running with island, as in “safety” island.

Most of Times reporter Robert A. Barr’s Feb. 14, 1973 summary of safety island history on the eve of the installation of the “Jersey Barrier” down the center of the by then forty year old speedway. Directly below is a detail of a section of center-stripe that was meant to alert drivers with a grid of raised bumps. This subject dates from July 25, 1945.

The installation of this bumpy center strip failed to stop the carnage.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, lads?

Jean as sure as something has to give, we will too. Below, Ron Edge has again put up some fertile links: eight of them, and we may add one or two more tomorrow. If you click to open the first of these, which features the Arabian Theatre, it will include (as we hope some of you will already anticipate) its own “web extras.” We will name these added features as lures to clicking. They are illustrated stories about the nearby intersection of Aurora and 84th Ave., a feature about the swath of clear-cutting that ran through Woodland Park in prelude to cutting the park in two with the paving of Aurora Avenue. Next you will find the story of the Twin T-P’s restaurant, a local landmark which was razed in the night, unannounced. Green Lake’s northwest swimming beach follows, and then also the story of Maust Transfer’s original flatiron quarters (before moving to Pier 54) at Winona and 73rd.

Continuing our promotion of links, the Signal Station story below, includes within it features about two once cherished speedway cafes: the Igloo, and the Dog House. It includes as well features on the Aurora Speed Bowl and the pedestrian overpass between Fremont and Wallingford – although some Fremont partisans will insist that it is between two Fremonts: Central and East. And as a lesson in our oft-quoted mother’s truism that “Repetition is the mother of all learning.” Ron has included down below the overpass link on its own. It will surely have other links within it. After the links we will finish with a few more Times clips and more speedway photos too. A trip to nighty-bears follows, and eight hours more some proof-reading too.

Not to click for more story - only to enlarge. The subject here is below the viaduct and on its east or Wallingford* side. * aka East Fremont. — Not to click for more story – only to enlarge. The subject here is below the viaduct and on its east or Wallingford* side. * aka East Fremont.

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Roughed at its foot but not fallen, an Aurora Safety Island on Dec. 3, 1937. (Courtesy the Seattle Times)

Today's Traffic Lesson on March 27, 1939. — Today’s Traffic Lesson on March 27, 1939.

Looking south on Aurora thru Roy and more safety islands on Dec. 8, 1938. {Click to Enlarge]

A Seattle Times clip frm January 22, 1940. — A Seattle Times clip from January 22, 1940.

Aurora, looking north towards Ward Street on June 19,1940.

A City Light Clerk's shunned solution. — A City Light Clerk’s shunned solution.

North towards Valley and Aloha, on August 26, 1940

Again near Crockett, this time two injured. In The Times, August 25, 1950.

I expect by some its rarity but cannot prove it with any convincing negtive evidence (but it ever?) that such a press photo as this one for our local daily that depicts or reveals or exposes a victim-corpse is rare. The photo was printed on July 28, 1950. — I suspect but cannot prove that such a press photo as this that depicts or reveals or exposes a dying victim that has met an irresistable object, including a safety island, is rare. The photo was printed in The Times on July 28, 1950.

CONCLUDING with a planned wreck from 1979.

Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: Anderson Hall

March 21, 2015 jrsherrard 3 Comments

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: Named for a lumberman, and still home for the UW’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, the upper floor’s high-ceilinged halls, including the Forest Club Room behind Anderson Hall’s grand Gothic windows, were described for us by the department’s gregarious telephone operator as “very popular and Harry Potterish.” (Courtesy Lawton Gowey)

NOW: With many new campus structures built nearby along Stevens Way, Anderson Hall holds to its elegance while waiting for its turn at restoration.

While driving West Stevens Way, the loop that nearly circles within the UW’s original interlake campus, both Jean and I were startled by the campus’s many new, and to us, seemingly instant landmarks – until we reached the familiar charms of Anderson Hall. There we settled down and Jean took this “repeat.”

With the Columns on the right holding the southeast border of the Sylvan Grove Theatre, the unnamed photographer looks southwest on S.Stevens Way NE to the east facade of Anderson Hall. — With the Columns on the right holding to the southeast border of the Sylvan Grove Theatre, an unnamed photographer looks southwest on S.Stevens Way NE to the east facade of Anderson Hall.

Another early view of the Columns in a ritual enactment of ecstatic dance exposed under a full moon. The flower, we don't know. — Another early view of the Columns in a ritual enactment of ecstatic dance exposed under a full moon. The flower, we don’t know.

The hall is an exquisite example of Collegiate Gothic design. It holds it pose at the most southern point in the loop, where West and East Stevens Ways merge. From Jean’s prospect, the landscape around the now 90-year-old Anderson Hall has been allowed to flourish, creating a fitting milieu for what was first called the University’s Department of Forestry but is now its School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. The Hall rests just west of Rainier Vista, that nearly 1500-foot-long green sward that opens and protects the University’s view of “The Mountain,” as seen from Drumheller Fountain.

Another Academic Gothic creation on the U.W. campus, but this time - 1928-29 - not by Bebb and Gould but by John Graham, Sr. — Another Academic Gothic creation on the U.W. campus, but this time – 1928-29 – not by Bebb and Gould but by John Graham, Sr. Note the Engineering Department’s Sieg Hall on the far left. It was a modern effort to keep the on-campus Gothic going. It has not worn well, and yet survives.

Sieg Hall photographed by Victor Lygdman in the early 1960s, when it was new.

Sieg Hall's Gothic variations resemble those used in the early 60's for the construction of Seattle Center's Science Center for the 1962 world's fair. To one writer* the texture and coloring imply another variation, one of a Formica countertop or ashtray. *this writer. — Sieg Hall’s Gothic variations resemble those used in the early 60’s for the construction of Seattle Center’s Science Center for the 1962 world’s fair. To one writer* the texture and coloring imply another variation, one on a Formica counter-top or ashtray. On the inside, the windows “work,” but so does the commonplace wit that students have learned to use for this building, when asked how they liked it. The answer, of course, being that inside Sieg Hall one does not have to look at it. The first use of this joke may have been, if memory serves, by some famous Parisian, when asked what he thought of the Eiffel Tower when it was new. *this writer.

Robert Bradley's ca. 1955 look southeast in line with the campus' Rainier Vista. — Robert Bradley’s ca. 1955 look southeast in line with the campus’ Rainier Vista.

I snapped this look back towards the center of campus from Stevens Way in 1985, I think. Or near it. I was on my was to Hub's parking lots for a rear approach to the Suzallo Library. On such a snow-bound day, I figure, surely the campu police would not be checking my lack of credentials for parking in that most - of all - convenient lots. — I snapped this record of Rainier Vista with my back to the mountain, looking back towards the center of campus from Stevens Way in 1985, I think. Or near it. I was on my way to the Hub’s parking lots for a rear approach to the Suzallo Library. On such a snow-bound day, I figured, surely the campus police would not be checking anyone for credentials for parking in that most convenient of lots. And there was room. And I got away with it. Here, if we were to to pivot to the left and look west on Stevens Way we would be looking over the prospect used in our feature this week for both the Webster and Stevens and Jean Sherrard recordings.

Anderson Hall was a gift to the UW by Agnes Anderson, a Vassar graduate, who, it seems loved both higher education and her 6’5” tall husband, the “lumber king” Alfred H. Anderson. They came west in 1886, settled first in Shelton where they helped form the Simpson Logging Company, and then moved to Seattle’s somewhat exclusive First Hill. There they erected a big home made from lumber of many sorts, including panels of Honduran mahogany, rosewood, and Siberian oak. (The Anderson home is featured in one of the Edge links below.) Perhaps most famously, although rarely seen, was a marble bathroom with a ten-foot long bathtub for Alfred. A hole was cut in the outer wall to install it.

To a trained eye - and by now your's too - Anderson Hall can be locateed in this 1937 aerial — To a trained eye – by ow your’s – Anderson Hall can be locateed in this 1937 aerial just below the subject’s center. Note also the long swath of green lawn running southeast from the campus Drumheller Fountain, aka Frosh Pond.

A 1939 vertical aerial of the campus, Anderson Hall included. A golf course covers the South Campus now given to the health sciences, and the wetlands of Union Bay are still free of the east campus parking – parking not nearly as convenient as that beside the HUB.

An Ellis aerial looking east over the UW campus in the 1950s. Anderson Hall shows to the right. Early conversion of the Montlake Dump for UW parking proceeds on the far left.

An aerial with a splendid witness to Anderson Hall on the left and the new UW Medical School above it. Can you name the ship resting on Portage Bay? Watch for clues on local billboards.

After her Alfred died in 1914, Agnes turned to philanthropy. Among her beneficiaries is the on-going Agnes Healy Anderson Research Fellowship and, in 1925, Anderson Hall, her tribute to her husband. Anderson Hall is one of the eighteen buildings that architect Carl Gould completed on the UW campus between 1915 and 1938. Gould founded the school’s Department of Architecture in 1914.

The entrance off Red Square into the Suzzallo Library, March 1987.

Suzzallo Library (1922-27) and Anderson Hall (1924-25) are probably the most admired examples of Collegiate Gothic buildings that distinguish the campus core. University Press recently release a ‘bigger and better’ second edition of Shaping Seattle Architecture, edited by Jeffrey Karl Ochsner. Authors T. William Booth and William H. Wilson, the book’s essayists on Gould and his partner Charles Bebb, describe Anderson Hall as the partners’ “most suavely detailed” contribution to the campus.

Album art for the Husky Cello Sextet's live dedicatory performance of Bachiana Brasileiras in the U.W. underground parking lot below Red Square. Good acoustics and free parking for the players who brought their own instruments. — Album art for the Husky Cello Sextet’s live dedicatory performance of Bachianas Brasileiras in the U.W. underground parking lot below Red Square. The event featured both good acoustics and free parking for the players. And they brought their own instruments. (dedicated to Stephan Edwin Lundgren)

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, lads?

Yes, but first Jean congratulations on your successful stage direction this Saturday afternoon of composer and librettist Jay Hamilton’s opera “The Map” in the Cornish auditorium – the one we fondly remember and still serving in the school’s old plant on Harvard Avenue. Your good taste and stoic strengths have again proven themselves up for moving singers around the stage in, to complete its name, this “opera with moments of comedy and Epicurean philosophy.”

This week, like others, Ron Edge has put up several links to past features. Again, some of them will be repetitive, like operatic leitmotifs, but others will be new to the blog. Most will feature subjects from the U.W. campus.

As you know, in preparation for the book we hope to publish later this year, we have just completed making a list of all the weekly Pacific features we have put up since the early winter of 1982. Of the – about – 1700 features handled, roughly fifty of them were about UW campus subjects. Perhaps for a while we should slip out of that gown and keep to the town. And yet fifty in thirty-three years only amounts to about one and one-half a year. We’ll keep the robes on. The campus deserves it.

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Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: The SINGULAR TRAFFIC TOWER at FOURTH and PIKE

March 14, 2015 jrsherrard 1 Comment

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: Looking west on Pike Street from Fourth Avenue, the variety in the first block of this retail district includes the Rhodes Bros. Ten Cent Store, Mendenhall’s Kodaks, Fountain Pens and Photo Supplies, Remick’s Song and Gift Shop, the Lotus Confectionary, Fahey-Brockman’s Clothiers, where, one may “buy upstairs and save $10.00”. (Courtesy, MOHAI)

NOW: Celebrating its centennial, the Joshua Green Building (1914), on the left at the southwest corner of Fourth and Pike, still lights up the corner with its brilliant terra-cotta tile facade. — NOW: Still celebrating its centennial, the Joshua Green Building (1914), on the left at the southwest corner of Fourth and Pike, brightens the corner with its terra-cotta tile facade.

A good date for this Webster and Stevens Studio photo is July 20, 1925, a Saturday. The Seattle Times had announced (more than reported) on the preceding day: “Traffic Ruler To Mount Tower, New System In Use Tomorrow – ‘Stop’ And ‘Go’ Signals For Blocks Downtown Will Be Regulated From Fourth And Pike – Pedestrians Must Obey, Too.”

A 1924 traffic jam at the south end of the Fremont Bridge.

By 1925 motorcars had been on Seattle streets for a quarter-century, but except for frightening horses, their disruption was tolerable through the first decade of the 1900s. But then the horseless carriers got faster, heavier and multiplied at a rate that even then famously booming Seattle could not match. Especially following World War I, having one’s own car became a matter of considerable urgency for both modern mobility and personal status. Quoting from “Traffic and Related Problems,” a chapter in the 1978 book Public Works in Seattle, the citizen race for car ownership was revealed in the records for the 15-year period between 1922 and 1937, when “the number of motor vehicles increased by 211 per cent, as against a 22 per cent increase in population.” Fatal accidents became almost commonplace.

Hardly a statistic, it made it to the driveway - somewhere on First Hill, perhaps. — Hardly a statistic, it made it to the driveway – somewhere on First Hill, perhaps.

Consequently, on this Saturday in the summer of 1925 the nearly desperate hopes of Seattle’s traffic engineers climbed high up the city’s one and only traffic tower with the officer (unnamed in any clippings I consulted), seen standing in the open window of his comely crow’s nest. Reading deeper into the Friday Times, we learn that this ruler would have powers that reached well beyond this intersection. From high above Fourth and Pike he was assigned to operate all the traffic signals on Fourth Avenue between University and Pine Streets, and on Pike Street between First and Fifth Avenues, while watching out for disobedient pedestrians. And no left turns were allowed. Were you heading north on Fourth here and wanting to take a left on Pike to reach the Public Market? Forget it. You were first obliged to take three rights around the block bordered by Westlake, Pine, Fifth, and Pike.

It was primarily the “morning and evening clanging of the bells,” about which the pedestrians and merchants of this retail district most complained. The hotels particularly objected. The manager of the then new Olympic Hotel, two blocks south of the tower, described customers checking out early and heading for Victoria and/or Vancouver B.C. rather than endure the repeated reports of the “traffic ruler’s bells.” As Seattle’s own “grand hotel,” when measured by size, service and sumptuous lobby, the Olympic was heard. (See the Thurlby sketch, three images down.)

A Seattle Times clipping from December, 7, 1923 [Click to ENLARGE]

In early June, 1926 after a year of irritating clanging at Fourth and Pike, Seattle’s Mayor Bertha Landes summoned heads of the street, fire, and municipal trolley departments to dampen the cacophony escaping from both citizens and signals. The three executives’ combined acoustic sensibilities first recommended brass bells. These would report “a much softer tone, and more musical too, than the harsh, loud-sounding bell now in use.” J. W. Bollong, the head engineer in the city’s streets department, advised that the new bells ringing be limited to “two short bells at six-second intervals,” instead of a long continuous ball. The new bells would also be positioned directly underneath the signals to help muffle the sound. Bollong noted, that with the bells and lights so placed both pedestrians and motorists would get any signal’s visual and audible sensations simultaneously. Putting the best construction on this package of improvements, Bollong concluded, “That’s like appreciating the taste of a thing with the sense of smell.”

Time's Bell coverage from July 13, 1926, with a sketch from the paper's then popular political cartoonist, Thurby. — Time’s Bell coverage from July 13, 1926, with a sketch by the paper’s then popular political cartoonist, Thurby. [Click to ENLARGE]

Bertha Landes shaking hand of Mayor Ed.Brown whom she defeat in the 1926 mayoral election. — Bertha Landes shaking hand of Mayor (and dentist) Ed.Brown whom she defeated in the 1926 mayoral election.

Nearby traffic light at Westlake and Pine, — Nearby traffic light at Westlake and Pine.

Taffic light at 5th and Olive, looking north from Westlake Ave., 1939. — Traffic light at 5th and Olive, looking north from Westlake Ave., 1939.

Also in 1926, the city’s public works figured that the its rapidly increasing traffic had need of “stop-and-go lights” at 50 intersections. Engineer Bollong had done some traveling, and concluded that Seattle was lagging. “Los Angeles now has 232 lights, or one to every 3,000 citizens. Seattle has only 30 lights, one for every 16,000. “

Some years after this photograph was recorded looking north on 15th Ave. NW from 64th Street, the next intersection at 65th was determined by crash statistics to be the most dangerous in Seattle. It cannot be seen here if the intersection has, as yet, a stoplight in 1938.

While Seattle’s traffic lights proliferated along with its traffic, the towers did not. By 1936 there were 103 traffic signal controlled intersections in the city – none of them with towers. Much of the left-turn nuisance was ameliorated in 1955 when the city’s one-way grid system was introduced.

Not finding a 1955 example I substituted this snapshot I made in the late 1970s under the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, boys? Jean, yes. We are startled about how much attention we have given to this intersection over the years. Recently, within the last year or two, two or more features have been contributed for subjects either directly on this five-star corner or very near it. Here Ron Edge has put up links to eight of them. The top two are recent, indeed.

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SEATTLE, 1924 aerial looking north over business district to Lake Union and Green Lake. [Click to Enlarge]

Seattle, 1925 Birds-eye [CLICK – twice maybe – to ENLARGE]

Mid-20's chorus line - or posing players - at one Seattle's busiest vaudeville stage. [Courtesy, MOHAI] — Mid-20’s chorus line – or posing players – at one of Seattle’s busiest vaudeville stages then. [Courtesy, MOHAI]

Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: Going Postal at Marion & Western

March 7, 2015 jrsherrard 2 Comments

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: Arthur Denny named both Marion and James Streets for his invalid brother, James Marion Denny, who was too ill to accompany the “Denny Party” from Oregon to Puget Sound in 1851. (Courtesy, Gary Gaffner)

NOW: The Colman Annex was razed for a parking lot in the 1970s, but the Colman Building survives with the four brick stories added to its brownstone base in 1909. The year the Marion Street pedestrian viaduct to Colman Dock was also added.

While none of the names for this team and the driver of this U.S. Post wagon are known, the intersection is. The view looks east-southeast on Marion Street and across Western Avenue, in about 1903, to a three-story stone structure advertising the Seattle Hardware Company. (The business was so prosperous that it required an 1100-page hard-bound catalog to cover its inventory.) James Colman built the rustic stone structure across narrow Post Alley from his Colman Building, and named it, perhaps predictably, the Colman Annex. The Puget Sound News Company, a retailer of stationary, books and periodicals, was the Annex’s first tenant. The hardware store soon followed, the tenant until 1906 when the Imperial Candy Company moved in after Seattle Hardware moved to its own new home at First Ave. S. and King Street. With its popular Societe Chocolates, Imperial became the Colman Annex’s most well-known and abiding tenant.

A detail selected from the 1884 Birdseye of Seattle to look down at the intersections of Front Street (First Ave.) and Marion (left w. "9" written on it) and Colubmia, right. In 1884 the northwest corner of Marion and Front was grandly improved with the Frye Opera House, which kitty-korner the future site for the Colman Building was a long line of commercial sheds given a sometimes unifying front facade. From the bottom of this detail to two block east at Second Avenue, the 1889 fire consumed it all. — A detail selected from the 1884 Birdseye of Seattle to look down at the intersections of Front Street (First Ave.) and Marion (left w. “9” written on it at the original location of Arthur and Mary Denny’s cabin and so the community’s first post office.) and Colubmia, right. In 1884 the northwest corner of Marion and Front was grandly improved with the Frye Opera House, which kitty-korner the future site for the Colman Building was a long line of commercial sheds given a sometimes unifying front facade. From the bottom of this detail to two block east at Second Avenue, the 1889 fire consumed it all.

An unidentified photographer has climbed a ruin on the west side of Front Street (First Ave.) to look north along the waterfront following the Great Fire of 1889. The already filled street ends on Columbia and Marion are evident just north or beyond the ruins. — An unidentified photographer has climbed a ruin on the west side of Front Street (First Ave.) to look north along the waterfront following the Great Fire of 1889. The already filled street ends on Columbia and Marion are evident just north or beyond the still somewhat standing ruins. Columbia street cuts thru the photograph left-right just above its its center. Upper-right stands the tower of the Stetson-Post Block, a subject recently covered here.

After the city’s Great Fire of June 6, 1889, most of the streets between Yesler Way and Madison were extended east into Elliott Bay, as far as the fire’s dumped rubble would support them. Soon both Post Alley and Western Avenue were extended off-shore and between the streets on rows of pilings driven into the tideflats. More than pilings, heavy stone and/or brick structures like the Annex also needed a hard packing of earth for their foundations. Colman built his Annex from stone delivered around the Horn that was intended for a new central post office at Third and Union, but the stone was rejected as too soft for a government building. Colman got it cheap.

Central Post-Office at the southeast corner of Union Street and Third Avenue. This is the accepted Chuckanut stone, while the Colman Annex is made of the first stone ordered for the P.O., but then rejected by the Feds. — Central Post-Office at the southeast corner of Union Street and Third Avenue. This is the accepted Chuckanut sandstone, while the Colman Annex is made of the first stone ordered for the P.O., but then rejected by the Feds.

We’ll note that this “studio” location for a mail wagon’s portrait has a fine coincidence. Arthur Denny, the city’s first postmaster, built his family’s cabin two short blocks to the east of this intersection, at the northeast corner of First Avenue (originally Front Street) and Marion Street. It was also the first Post Office. The party of pioneers led by the Dennys, Bells and Borens had moved over from Alki Point early in 1852 to mark their claims. The first mail to arrive in Seattle came later that year by canoe from Olympia. Robert Moxlie, the mailman, may have paddled his dugout through this intersection. The future foot of Marion Street was a low point on the beach where it was easy to step ashore. When Arthur and David Denny’s parents later joined them from Oregon, they built their home at the southeast corner of Union Street and Third Avenue. In 1908 the new Post Office and Federal Building opened on that corner. It was made of nearby Chuckanut sandstone, apparently harder stuff than that salvaged by James Colman.

In this look east on Marion from Railroad Avenue, work on the Colman Annex (above the team) is still progressing. The Methodist spire stands at the southeast corner of Third Ave. and Marion Street. [CLICK TO ENLARGE]

A clipping from Pacific: the Methodists at the southeast corner of Third and Marion. This Gothic head piece (for the corner) was built in the late 1880s and survived the 1889 fire, but not the regrade on Third Avenue, 1907.

The Polson Implement Hardware Company, far-right, prospered by facing the Great Northern Railroad’s tracks on Railroad Avenue, here out-of-frame. Established in 1892, Polson sent its farm machinery throughout the west by rail. By 1906, the year this rudimentary structure of corrugated iron was replaced with the brick building on the right in our “now,” Polson had moved south to another train-serviced warehouse on the tideflats.

Some of the Post-Office rolling stock that replaced the teams. (This first appeared in Pacific, Nov. 24, 2002)

The mid-1880s Mail line leading into the pioneer P.O. on Mill Street (Yesler Way) between Post and Western.

[DISREGARD the video order DIRECTLY above. I’ve changed my box from the University District to Wallingford where it is Box 31636, which I must right down for I have had a hard time memorizing it. ]

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, history hucksters? Hubba-hubba-hubba Yes Jean, and once again Ron starts it by rolling out some relevant links. Please Click Them.

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To be continued sometimes on Sunday, March 8 . . .

	Clay Eals on Seattle Now & Then: Fishe…
	David Williams on Seattle Now & Then: Fishe…
	Vince Ferriols on Seattle Now & Then: April…
	Jim Stettner on Seattle Now & Then: Rosar…
	The Gin Griffey Juni… on Seattle Now & Then: Parad…

Seattle Now & Then

Monthly Archives: March 2015

Seattle Now & Then: “Murder” on Aurora

WEB EXTRAS

Seattle Now & Then: Anderson Hall

WEB EXTRAS

Seattle Now & Then: The SINGULAR TRAFFIC TOWER at FOURTH and PIKE

Seattle Now & Then: Going Postal at Marion & Western

WEB EXTRAS

Now & then here and now…