THEN: Darius Kinsey’s ca. 1914 panorama of the King County town of Cedar Falls (aka Moncton) set beside the unstable shore of Rattlesnake Lake. (Courtesy, Snoqualmie Valley Historical Society)NOW: Doubling a repeat of Kinsey’s pan, Jean poses a few of his students, on a recent field trip to Rattlesnake Lake from Bellevue’s Hillside Student Community School.
A decade ago, while preparing a book of “repeats” covering Washington State, Jean Sherrard and I found the panorama printed here of the little railroad town on the shore of Rattlesnake Lake. About 1100 feet above the town, the at once modest and exalted Rattlesnake Ledge faces north towards the off-camera larger and older town of North Bend. Darius Kinsey, a professional admired for his photography of lumber camps and towns, named this subject Cedar Falls, the appellation preferred by Seattle, which began building a masonry dam nearby on the Cedar River and a power plant between that new dam and the nearly-new town.
Cedar River Masonry Dam, Seattle City Light. Dated March 18, 1913. This bigger dam was completed in 1914.The “actual” or namesake Cedar Falls were upstream from City Light’s generator plant and downstream from its dam.
We have returned this week to Kinsey’s pan, largely by following the lead of Alan Berner, the Times well-versed photographer and writer who is often inspired, we have noticed, by a poetic temperament. With “Amid drought, Rattlesnake Lake Reveals its Roots,” his recent October 12 Times feature, Berner shared with readers an exhibit of oversized stumps, driftwood sculpture exposed on the bottom of Rattlesnake Lake, mostly dry after our arid year.
Moncton is printed on the postcard, so it dates most likely from before the Seattle Public Works request that the name be changed to Cedar Falls.“Cedar Falls” is signed here on the station. The town was first settled to house workers on City Lights’ nearby plant for the generators connected first with its fire dam (of timber) on the Cedar River and then its much larger “ceramic dam” of 1914. Moncton was named by railroad, and used by the SPMRR to house workers first for the construction of the man line over Snoqualmie Pass. The railroad made it thru the pass in 1909.Cedar Falls is postmarked on the flip side of this postcard.
In his caption Kinsey has used Cedar Falls, the town’s second name, but in 1907 it was still called Moncton after a railroad town in New Brunswick, Canada. The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad developed this little company town to help push and tunnel its electric transcontinental line through Snoqualmie pass. In 1911 Seattle began to first build its nearby dam and then with water from Cedar Lake the city filled the reservoir behind a new masonry dam and Rattlesnake Lake as well – unwittingly.
The Masonry Dam seen from near its east end. It was seeping from the far shore that first reached and raised the water table below Rattlesnake Lake.The Masonry Dam from the ‘other’ side.Well along in the 1915 flood “from below.”
Beginning in late April 1915, seepage from the reservoir began lifting the little lake more than a foot a day. On May 13 The Times reported that “motion picture operators this afternoon began taking films at Cedar Falls to show a town drowned out by mysterious flood waters that came from the ground beneath the homes and lands of the people.” By then, with two high-ground exceptions, all the families of Cedar River had fled their homes for boxcars or other burgs.
A dooms-day clip from The Seattle Times for May 14, 1915. About this time a hole was blasted in the dam to lower the reservoir and with it Rattlesnake Lake. It was a demonstrable confession by Seattle Public Works that its dam works had flood its neighbor Cedar Falls/Moncton and its otherwise little lake.
Seattle’s first attempts to keep Moncton/Cedar Falls dry came in 1910 when the prohibitionists in city government tried to reverse King County’s decision to allow Moncton resident William Brown to open a saloon. Teetotalers, like Seattle historian Clarence Bagley, then Secretary of the Seattle Board of Public Works, feared what drunken railroad and dam workers might do at work – and to their families and souls. Brown’s portion of Seattle’s 1916 payoff to the flooded citizens of Cedar Falls was $6,086.44. Fearing pollution to their Cedar River Watershed more than feeling guilt over their seeping reservoir, Seattle bought-out the damaged little town beside the erratic Rattlesnake Lake.
A Seattle Times clip from August 26, 1915.A pan of the dam, its reservoir and surrounds to the east, north and west. Partly cut-off on the right is Mt.Washington. Mt. Si is at the center horizon, and Rattlesnake Mountain or ridge is on the right, to the west. I do not have a date for this, but I suspect that it is during the late construction on the dam and so before t he leaking. DOUBLE CLICK CLICK to ENLARGEAn aerial from December 18, 1926 with the ceramic dam near the bottom, the reservoir above it, and Cedar Lake beyond. Rattlesnake Lake is out-of-frame, lower-left. CLICK CLICK! [Courtesy, Municipal Archive]We have colored some this “Boxley Blow-out” cartoon that was printed in The Times after the weak side of the Ceramic Dam’s broke. The size of the “intended reservoir” is vastly exaggerated in the sketch as are the peaks that surround it. The event occurred a few days before Christmas 1918, and the created waterway was called “Christmas Creek.” It joined with Boxley Creek and flooded the small milltown of Edgewick. It is marked on the map.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, guys? A few Jean – a few features that relate. Ron has put five or six, I believe. The bottom of the five is relevant to this week’s dam buster theme. The others stick to the regional aptness of their subjects. “Go East.” We will follow that with a few more ancient clips and so fresh scans introduced for the first time to this roller derby of eternal recurrence with heritage anecdotes – illustrated and sometimes bruised with our mistakes..
THEN: Pioneer mailman Dutch Ned poses on his horse on Cherry Street. The ca. 1880 view looks east over First Avenue when it was still named Front Street. (Courtesy: The Museum of History and Industry, aka MOHAI)NOW: As is his neighborly practice, Jean Sherrard has widened his repeat to help us get oriented with the “now.”
What to write about Dutch Ned – or what to re-write? The several short accounts of this Seattle pioneer are constructed of a few tidbits told and retold. And his surname is confusing: Ohn, Olm, Ohm and Ohmn, all appear in print. The last, Nils Jacob Ohmn, is chiseled on what remains of his tomb in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery. His more often used nickname, Dutch Ned, suggests one of Deutsch or German (not Dutch) descent.
“Nis Jacob Ohmn” is what is chiseled on the surviving door to his collapsed monument, his “little room.” He lived to be seventy, from 1829 to 1890. (Courtesy Lake View Cemetery)Two snapshots of Dutch Ned’s mausoleum photographed in 1964. The roof is eroding, and the structure was soon destroyed or, better, dismantled. If the head stone writing is on the white door it is hard to make out, at least in these snapshots. Ohmn, of course, is still inside about as long after his death as his birth was before it. (Courtesy, Lake View Cemetery)In this perhaps best likeness, Olmn stands beside his “little house.” The stone work here can be compared – and found – to the two colored snapshots above this, perhaps, professional record.One of C.T. Conover’s “Just Cogitating” features clipped from The Seattle Times of July 1, 1957. Conover is remembered as the regional promoter who coined “The Evergreen State.” Here he interviews Mrs. M. T. Jensen who knew Dutch Ned in the 1880s, or thereabouts, when he had the contract to carry the mail from Seattle to the Auburn and nearby communities. Diana James, my editor, is most impressed with Dutch Ned’s answer “I take no notice of it.” as remembered by Mrs. Jensen. (The question is included by Conover.) Typical of the 50’s, we are not given her first name. (Courtesy The Seattle Times)The often helpful Ron Edge found this territorial-timed listing on line. It records several bids for the 1878-1882 job of carrying on horseback the mail between Seattle and Sumner. N. Jacob Olm’s low bid – although not the lowest – was favored and he got $489 a year from the federal postal service. (Courtesy, Ron Edge)
Or was he Italian? C.T. Conover, the Seattle Times long-time heritage reporter, noted in a July 1, 1957, offering of his “Just Cogitating” feature (printed here two illustrations up) that a correspondent, Mrs. M.T. Jensen, remembered “Uncle Ned Ohm, a Sicilian, who carried mail weekly. He always stopped at my home in Auburn (then Slaughter) where I was born in 1876. There he would feed and rest his horse . . . [he was] a lone old man in a new world, his only relative a sister in far-away Sicily, to whom he always sent a part of his scant earnings.” In the featured photograph, from about 1880, Nils, holding his mail pack, poses with his horse on Cherry Street for a photographer looking east across Front Street (First Avenue).
In the 1934 clip printed above, the date 1880 is confidently given by the caption-writer, who then described the setting for Dutch Ned’s portrait with his horse as “in front of the Henry Yesler residence.” This does not lend confidence for the dating claim, for the scene here is almost surely on Cherry Street, looking east from Front Street and so one block north of the Yesler home at the northeast corner of James and Front. Still the date may be right; it falls within the 1878 and 1882 run of Ned’s or Nil’s or Nis”s first contract with the postal service. Below we’ll insert some nearby photos from the 1880 Big Snow (the biggest in the city’s history) including two snow-bound shots that also look east on Cherry from Front. The reader will be able, we hope, to decide for themselves that our locating is correct. The Times feature where these images and the text first appeared was published on December 19, 1982. This column was then still in its first year.
Yesler’s pavilion is on the right. The horizon line is near 5th Avenue. The First Baptist Church tower on Fourth Ave. shows on the horizon.
1880 wet snow damage on Yesler’s Wharf as recorded from the rear of the Peterson & Bros studio at the foot of Cherry Street . (Courtesy Greg Lang)Looking north from the front of the Peterson and Bros studio at the Front Street (First Ave.) foot of Cherry Street.
However soft the focus, considering the street construction and the Seattle photographer Moore, this is Dutch Ned again in Seattle posing with his horse and now also his dog. But it is some other corner. It is too steep for Cherry Street at Front. (Courtesy, White River Historical Society.)
Dutch Ned’s weekly labor of delivering the mail on horseback between Seattle and Auburn was but one of the two full-time jobs ascribed to him. Born in 1820 (also chiseled on his tombstone), Ned reportedly arrived in Seattle in 1854 and soon landed the job of spreading sawdust from Henry Yesler’s sawmill to lift the pioneer village above its wetlands. Lucile McDonald, another of this newspaper’s most prolific history reporters, summed up the reclaiming half of Nels Olm as “a familiar figure of the period, who was kept busy filling swampy places with mill waste.” McDonald’s March 15,1953, feature in PacificNW’s predecessor, the Seattle Sunday Times Magazine, celebrated the 100th anniversary of the opening of Yesler’s mill. On the cover was one of the Times’ staff artist Parker McAllister’s popular watercolors, a rendering of Yesler’s smoking mill. Dutch Ned and his packed “big red wheelbarrow” were part of the painting. [CLICK TWICE TO SEE AND READ]
Posthumous sketches of Dutch Ned often characterize him as “soft-brained” and “dimwitted.” Some of this probably stems from his tomb and denouement. Nils or Nels Ohmn lived in a shack on the western brow of Capitol Hill overlooking the south end of Lake Union. A few years before his death in 1898, he prepaid for his funeral and bought a burial site in Lake View Cemetery. It was near his home. There on Lot 470 he built his own mausoleum and, once completed, entertained friends in or beside what he called his “little house.” Stranger still, he often visited for long hours the lobby of Bonney-Watson, the funeral home he had paid to bury him.
Above: Two pages from Bob Ferguson’s “The Stones of Lake View,” a pocket-guide t o the cemetery. I knew Bob and can testify to his zest on the top of Capitol Hill. Below: Bob poses beside the cedar tree that rises above the Maynard graves at the high point in the Lake View Cemetery.
First appeared in Pacific, May 4, 1993.
Then MOHAI director James Warren’s Oct. 11, 1982 take on Dutch Ned, with his “Looking Back’ feature in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. (A smudged xerox copy from the Lake View Cemetery files.) The old main entrance to Lake View Cemetery off of 15th Avenue and not far from the present entrance which is a short distance to the north. The 1916 Big Snow was Seattle’s penultimate blizzard – after the 1880 one. At this time Dutch Ned has been snug in his “little house” for eighteen years.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, lads? Yup and compact too. The three links that Ron Edge has attached below are packed with neighborhood subjects – some of them repeated, of course. By the direction of the clock on the wall it is falling well into Sunday morning, so we will need to wait for our innovative “Uncle Ned Invitation to a Contest” – for our readers. We’ll assemble what factoids we have on the postman with a red wheelbarrow and offer prizes for readers who will be encouraged to elaborate on the Dutchman’s life, encouraged by their own imagination. This approach, we know, is not so rare among pop historians and many pros as well. So check back mid-week for details – we hope.
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ABOVE: The Merchants bank before the 1889 Great Fire and, below, the rebuilt merchants – along with the Kenneth Hotel – after the fire. The photographers for both shots (especially for the one above) stood near where about six and thirteen years earlier Dutch Ned posed on his horse for the featured photo at the top.
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The Dream Theatre also at the foot of Cherry Street on the west side of Front. First appeared in Pacific, Jan. 22, 1984. CLICK TWICE TO ENLARGE!!
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Appeared first in Pacific on Oct. 14, 2001.For comparison another – and somewhat later – look up Front through Cherry Street, this one by Peterson and Bros Studio, possibly the photographer also of our featured photo at the top. CLICK TO ENLARGE
BELOW: LOOKING NORTH ON FRONT STREET FROM THE PETERSON & BROS STUDIO at the FOOT of CHERRY STREET.
First appeared in Pacific, December 31, 1984.
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Surely familiar to Dutch Ned during his early years of spreading sawdust for Henry and Sarah Yesler.
THEN: Midwife Alice Wood Ellis, far right, joins her mother and two children on the front lawn of their half-finished home in the East Green Lake neighborhood, ca. 1901. Courtesy Carol SolleNOW: Left to right, Susan Fleming, Carol Solle, and Fleming’s two daughters, Annika and Kristina, pose for Jean Sherrard in front of the same home at 2130 N. 62nd Street. The healthy bush on the left made it impossible for Jean Sherrard to reach the prospect of the “then.”
Alice Ellis, the pillar of this feature, stands far right in her apron. Clara Wood, her mother, sits beside her on a bike at the front steps of Alice’s Green Lake neighborhood home, then still a work-in-progress at 2130 N. 62nd Street. Both the children are Alice’s. The standing toddler with the bonnet is Myrtle, and the laughing baby on the grass is Marie. About fourteen years later the mother and two daughters posed for a studio portrait that is on the cover of the paperback book, Seattle Pioneer Midwife, Alice Ada Wood Ellis, Midwife, Nurse & Mother to All. It is, in part, a biography of Alice, written by Susan E. Fleming, the laughing baby’s granddaughter and so also Alice Ellis’ great-granddaughter.
In Jean Sherrard’s repeat, Susan Fleming stands far left holding Marie’s baby dress, while her cousin Carol Solle holds the baby’s bonnet. Early this summer Carol showed Jean and me this more than century-old snapshot. It is one of four photographs taken that happy afternoon, and it was hard to choose just one. Another includes a peek at Green Lake, which is out of frame to the left.
Same day with a glimpse of Green Lake on the right.Grandma standing at the door.A few years later with the birthing home added on the left.A grown Myrtle standing on the sidewalk to the birthing house, with the original family home behind her.The teenage daughters and, we imagine, some beaus. Behind them the first family home is posing too .
We speculate that this front lawn snapshot (and two that follow the featured photo at the top) was taken in the spring or early summer of 1901, less than a year after this quartet took a winter train ride from Milwaukee to Seattle aboard a chilly coach of the Great Northern Flyer. The relocation was to join the rest of the family: grandpa Pierson Wood and Beulah and Eddie, Alice’s older sister and brother, who had come to Seattle a half-year earlier to prepare the way. Susan Fleming’s guess that grandpa Pierson Wood was holding the camera seems at least possible. Fresh to Seattle, the fit senior was hired by the city to drive a street cleaner, a day-labor job he started at the age of sixty-nine and kept into his eighties.
A new brevity about Grandpa Wood loaded with sensational headers but tailing with a near “never mind.” Grandpa was not hurt – so bad. The clip dates from July 5, 1908. (Courtesy The Seattle Times as are most of the local clips used here.)
Fleming recounts Alice’s brief married life with her shortly-divorced husband Gideon Ellis, including their time together in Deadwood, South Dakota. It was in that infamously wild frontier town that Alice first both donated and marketed her skills in nursing and delivering babies for pregnant prostitutes. Fleming’s book is also replete with evocative birthing stories, some from her great-grandmother’s tending to the pregnant prostitutes of Seattle and from the Yukon and Alaska in their Green Lake home. Fleming’s authority in enriching these stories with midwifery practices, lore and testimonies comes not only through her family but also her research in birthing and over thirty years as a registered nurse. This descendant of a pioneer midwife received her PhD in 2011 and is presently an Assistant Professor at Seattle University College of Nursing. Her book can be found in bookstores.
A May 5, 1908 clip about the surprise visit from Naval Machinist Gideon Ellis while he was in port visiting with Theo Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet. Gideon was the father of Myrtle and Marie. We don’t know how The Times got the story nor who inspired its optimism and hope for a new beginning for the separated family.
WEB EXTRAS
Additions, lads? Yup Jean, Ron and I have harvest from the field of past features a sample of relevance. Some of these will be the “same old story.” Click to open each. There are within, we think, certain delights.
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NEARBY NEIGHBOR – First Appeared in PACIFIC, Oct. 7, 2001
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THE PATH FROM FREMONT – First Appeared in PACIFIC JAN. 27, 1991
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WHERE MYRTLE & MARIE WENT TO SCHOOL – First Appears in PACIFIC, AUG. 7, 1994
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THE EAST SHORE
The sisters somewhere on the – most likely east shore of Green Lake near their home and before the lake was lowered in 1911.Most of the east shore in a detail from the 1908 Baist Resl Estate Map. North 62nd Street, with footprints of its homes, appears near the bottom of the detail. The green footprint of Green Lake School at 65th and Sunnyside rests left-of-center at the northeast corner of N. 65th Street and Sunnyside Avenue. CLICK CLICK for the DETAILS of the DETAIL. (Courtesy, Historic Seattle.)
The Big Snow of Feb. 1916 also froze-over Green Lake. This and the “now” scene below it were photographed from the east shore five years following the lowering of the lake. The feature that studies this “repeat” is include in at least one of the attached or linked features above. CLICK CLICK
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THE LOST BAY
First appeared in Pacific, Jan 16, 1994.A snaking dirt platform for supporting the narrow-gauged railroad used to fill in the bay. Note both the new Green Lake Library and Bethany Lutheran Church, one block to the left of the library.First appeared in Pacific, April 25, 1999.The nearly new Green Lake Branch, Seattle Public Library.
THEN: sliver of the U.W. campus building called the Applied Physics Laboratory appears on the far right of this 1940 look east towards the U.W. campus from the N.E. 40th Street off-ramp from the University Bridge. While very little other than the enlarged laboratory survives in the fore and mid-grounds, much on the horizon of campus buildings and apartments still stand. (Courtesy, Genevieve McCoy)NOW: Since its acquisition by the University of Washington for the recent construction of student housing on its west campus, N.E. 40th Street, in these blocks between the bridge and the campus, has been renamed Lincoln Way.
Through the last three years or four we have included in this feature a few street scenes that included billboards. An unnamed photographer working for the Foster and Kleiser Billboard Company recorded all of our selections, most from the 1930s. In this billboard portrait, the centerpiece sign has been stationed perfectly to keep the message directly in the eye of any driver or passenger. The “outdoor medium” boldly plugs the low $815 cost of the latest in four-door 6-passenger 1940 Dodge Sedans.
This 1929 look east thru the same block may be compared to the 1940 shot at the top. For one difference, there’s no Evidence of the future Applied Physics Laboratory on the far right. Another difference is found with the billboards. There are more of them in 1929. Also, in ’29 the trolleys and motorcars were still using the old 1919 University Bridge with the timber approaches to its bascule center, but all that is behind the unnamed photographer. (Courtesy, again, Ron Edge.)This dyptic shows on the left a detail from the feature photo on top, and on the left a detail from the same portion (with some changes – especially in the windows) of the Applied Physics Laboratory that appears on the far right of the 1940 photo.
Our anonymous photographer is standing beside a trolley safety island on the N.E. 40th Street ramp off the University Bridge. (We have dealt with or featured these “satety islands” before.) The billboard rests on the northeast corner of 40th, where it jogs just east of 11th Ave. N.E.
Like the featured photo at the top, this is from the collection of negatives covering the properties of the Foster-Kleiser Billboard company. This one is recorded with the photographer’s back to the bascule center of the University Bridge. The negative is dated June 10, 1940. . The future home of the Applied Physics lab tops the van passing out-of-frame on the far right. The flatiron Bekins Storage warehouse is far left.
The date, March 14, 1940, is typed on a strip of paper taped to the bottom of the negative for the featured photo at the top. For this sunlit Monday afternoon the Seattle Times reported that the sun that had risen at 6:30 that morning had warmed Seattle to 45 degrees by noon with winds that quivered between “gentle and moderate.” On the front page the newspaper asked, “When and how will Roosevelt answer the Third Term Question?” That is, when will FDR reveal if he will run or not run November next? He did. The day’s headline is about the war between Russian and Finland, and whether the U.S., France and England will come to the aid of the Finns. They didn’t.
FDR’s Toga Party for the New Deal.
For local rail fans, both then and now, the two parallel trolley tracks running on N.E. 40th are reminders that most of Seattle’s half-century old trolleys would be prepared for scrap before the year was out. As already noted with this feature last Sept.12, N.E. 40th Street was improved for moving visitors from the Latona Bridge to the on-campus Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909. (This Sept. 12 feature is included below at the very top of the “edge links”
The featured photo for Sept. 12, 2015. See the link below.
that follow this little essay.) The ramp came in 1918 with the completion of the University-Eastlake Bridge. (When completed the new bridge was sometimes referred to as the “Eastlake Bridge,” and it link with the primary arterial that still follows above the east shore of Lake Union. It was also, by habit, sometimes referred to as the Latona Bridge, taking the name of the bridge it replaced in 1919.)
The Latona Bridge in its last year (1919) from Latona on the north shore of Lake Union.
In the early 1940s University District boomers began their campaign for a new main entrance to the campus, one removed from this somewhat less-than-grand approach on 40th Street. The result was the nearby Campus Parkway, one small block north of 40th, completed in 1949. Critics described it as a “five-block-long $845,000 street to nowhere,” and it is true that 40th Street remained the main access to the campus. Everett O. Eastwood, a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the U.W., explained to The Times for March 4, 1949 “I don’t believe that anybody who contemplated the street as it is now would have deemed it advisable. It has no logical beginning and no logical end. It is utterly unnecessary. It serves no purpose and it is utterly illogical.”
Thanks to Ron Edge for his 11th hour contribution of this aerial of the parkway’s grandest plans which show it continuing onward through 15th Ave. N.E. and on to the University campus with the eastbound lane curving southeast to the south side of the old Meany Hall and the westbound lane creating some symmetry on the north side of Meany Hall. This fork, of course, was never built. Drivers approaching 15th on the new Parkway still need to take a right-turn south on 15th for the one short block drive to NE 40th Street, the entrance to campus that was improved for the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Expo, and which continues to be one of the two main portals to the campus. The other is off of NE 45th Street. (as you know.)
On an inside page of the day’s Times, the paper reports that E.H. Jones, the University of Washington’s Campus Mailman, had at 9:02 this morning spotted near Parrington Hall the year’s first swallow to visit the campus. This is official. Jones had been for years the campus bird registrar for the U.W.’s annual Swallow Derby. Marjorie Shields, assistant manager of the Association of Women Students, won the $2.50 prize by guessing earlier that the bird would arrive at 9 o’clock this morning.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, boys? Yes Jean, once again Ron Edge has pulled forth a number (16 I’ve counted) of fitting links from former now-ten features, and he has also added some 11th hour illustrations used in the text above. Thanks again Ron – and again. It is now fast approaching our scheduled “nighty-bears” hour and so will take a slumbering break, but hope to add a few more relevant features after a late breakfast.
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RETURNING NOW (Sunday Nov. 8 at 4 PM) AFTER A LATE BREAKFAST
This feature on the University Bridge’s temporary span appeared first in Pacific for January 20, 1985. [click to enlarge]Planking on the temporary bridge with the 1919 University Bridge to the right. The photo was taken (I believe) from the Van de Kamp Bakery building at the northeast corner of 10th Avenue and NE. 40th Street. (See below) [Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archives]
Lower-right, pile-driving for construction of the temporary bridge. The photo was taken from the bridge’s south tower. The nearly new Meany Hotel peeks above the bridge – top-center – and the concrete block Bekins Storage appears upper-right, the future home of the Applied Physics Laboratory for the U.W. and the U.S. Navy.Traffic detoured to the temporary bridge – seen from the south end on May 26, 1932. [Courtesy, Municipal Archive]Looking north on the University Bridge from near the bascule. Nov. 9, 1933. The address at the base of the photo’s own caption refers to the billboard at the scene’s center, and not the photographer’s prospect. This is another Foster-Kleiser photo. Might that be the photographer’s coupe on the far left, with the open door?
September 9, 1932, paving the new approaches. Bekins storage is on the right, and the Van de Kamp windmill on the left. [Courtesy, Municipal Archives]The Van de Kamp Bakery windmill watches over the laying tracks to and from NE 40th Street at the north end of the new bridge on March 9, 1933. [Courtesy, Municipal Archive]
First appeared in Pacific, Nov. 22, 1998. CLICK TO ENLARGEApril 4, 1929, the northeast corner of 10th and 40th but before the baker and the windmill and before the bridge remodel. Still, shot from a safety island and before the October market crash. The view looks north on 10th.Another billboard negative, this with the windmills, the trolley tracks heading for the bridge from NE 40th and a stack of pancakes with KARO syrup.
Pilot-photographer Laidlaw’s Arpil 17, 1933 aerial of the completed approaches to the University Bridge, with the temporary bridge still in place to this (east) side of it. The photo is dated April 19, 1933, two weeks following the new 6-lane bridge’s dedication. A DETAIL of the bridge’s north end at NE 40th and 10th NE follows. [Courtesy, MUSEUM of HISTORY and INDUSTRY aka MOHAI]A detail from the April 1933 aerial showing the north end of the newly widened and supported bridge with the future Applied Physics Laboratory at the bottom-right and part of the Van de Kamp windmill beside it and to the right. The odd intersection of NE 40th and 7th NE, our feature from Sept 12, this year, is top-center. The 1908-9 6ht Avenue underpass below the 1887 Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern RR Right-of-Way is seen, in part, upper-left corner. Also, the old route for the trolley – before the 1908-9 underpass on 6th – after it first crossed the Latona Bridge in 1891, was the curving street on the left and just above the bridge, which it passes under and still does. Finally, note the two spurs off the railroad line, which curve to bunkers, probably for coal. Finally finally, many of the homes – upper-right- survive. [Courtesy, MOHAI]
This detail from the 1908 Baist Real Estate Map show the route of the trolley as it comes north off the Latona Bridge, bottom-center, and curves to the east (right) eventually (and off-the detail) curving north to cross the railroad tracks at grade and reaching 14th Avenue NE, aka University Way when the neighborhood thereabouts was still called either Brooklyn or University Station. The map does not show, as yet, the underpass on NE 6th, the trolley’s new route to the campus and the AYPE in 1909. .Thanks, again, to Ron Edge for another aerial, this one marked with the line or path of the then planned I-5 Freeway bridge over the Portage between Lake Union (proper) and Portage Bay. Can you – by now – find the underpass on 6th NE, the underpass on Campus Parkway, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and the odd intersection of 7th Ave. NE and NE 40th Street?A circa 1961 look east from the nearly completed Freeway Bridge and down on “our” odd intersection of 7th Ave. NE and NE 40th Street – at the bottom. The still mostly barren Campus Parkway appears upper left, the Applied Physics Laboratory, right-of-center, and one of the rail spurs off the still tracked SLSERR bed is intact on the far right, with Mt. Si on the horizon.
I (paul) took this “now” shot long ago and long before the “Bridge of Death” sign was in place under this north end of the University Bridge. You can find it, however, in all of its strange splendor in Jean’s video at the top.
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NOTE: I hope to complete, sort of, this Sunday’s blog before I retire from it – from Sunday. Now I must turn to write next week’s deadline with the Times with a feature on Rich Haad’s Gasworks Park and a kind of review of Thaisa Way’s biography of Rich. It was published recently by the University Press.
Jules JamesI like Allenville. The history of Paul Allen’s investment into the old hard-bitten Southlake neighborhood is too often ignored. He gave $20M to purchase land for a civic park. When taxpayers rejected The Commons (thank goodness!), he rightfully took possession of the land. Allenville began as local civic do-gooding and became internationally significant — good enough reason to award a place name.
Lorna JordanIf the Commons had been handled differently, I believe it would have passed and would have been a great asset to the city. Green space downtown? Heck yeah.
Jules JamesTax Increment Financing was entirely a scam. The Commons was a victim. But what we got worked out: jobs & housing well in excess of Commons proponents’ predictions plus the instant classic Southlake Park.
Peggy Durant-StoreyYoung Amazonia.. For all the 20 somethings (all with name tags showing) walking fast, on their way somewhere, anywhere..
Can’t remember the original ‘flavor’ of this district except for the feeling of run down bldgs & quiet history..
UNRECOGNIZABLE now.. Everything brand spanking new.. HATE it grumpy emoticon
![An aerial from December 18, 1926 with the ceramic dam near the bottom, the reservoir above it, and Cedar Lake beyond. Rattlesnake Lake is out-of-frame, lower-left. [Courtesy, Municipal Archive]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/cedar-lake-12-18-1926-web.jpg?ssl=1)
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![THEN: The Gothic University of Washington Campus in 1946 beginning a seven-year crowding with prefabricated dormitories beside Frosh Pond. In the immediate background [on the right] is Guggenheim Hall. (Courtesy, Ron Edge)](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/frosh-pond-housing-1946-then-mr1.jpg?resize=474%2C365)
![Planking on the temporary bridge with the 1919 University Bridge to the right. The photo was taken (I believe) from the Van de Kamp Bakery building at the northeast corner of 10th Avenue and NE. 40th Street. (See below) [Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archives]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/university-bridge-bldg-temp-bridge-fm-no-end-lk-so-muni-neg-web.jpg?ssl=1)
![Traffic detoured to the temporary bridge - seen from the south end on May 26, 1932. [Courtesy, Municipal Archive]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/university-bridge-traffic-turned-to-temp-bridge-5-26-32-web3.jpg?ssl=1)
![September 9, 1932, paving the new approaches. The Bekins storage is on the right, and the Van de Kamp windmill on the left. [Courtesy, Municipal Archives]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/clip-van-university-bridge-9-29-1932-paving-new-concrete-bridge-approaches.jpg?ssl=1)
![The Van de Kamp Bakery windmill watches over the laying tracks to and from NE 40th Street at the north end of the new bridge on March 9, 1933. [Courtesy, Municipal Archive]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/clip-van-de-kamp-ubrdg-web1.jpg?ssl=1)
![Pilot-photographer Laidlaw's Arpil 17, 1933 aerial of the completed approaches to the University Bridge, with the temporary bridge still in place to this (east) side of it. The photo is dated April 19, 1933, two weeks following the new 6-lane bridge's dedication. [Courtesy, MUSEUM of HISTORY and INDUSTRY aka MOHAI]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/a-laidlaw-aerial-april-17-1933-lk-w-over-u-bridge-web.jpg?ssl=1)
![A detail from the April 1933 aerial showing the north end of the newly widened and supported bridge with the future Applied Physics Laboratory at the bottom and part of the Van de Kamp windmill beside it, to the right. [Courtesy, MOHAI]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/a-rons-u-bridge-aerial-n-end-detail-1933-web.jpg?ssl=1)
