Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: An Approach to the Campus

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(click to enlarge photos)

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)
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.
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 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.
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 another 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. .
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.)

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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.

THEN: From 1909 to the mid-late 1920s, the precipitous grade separation between the upper and lower parts of NE 40th Street west of 7th Ave. NE was faced with a timber wall. When the wall was removed, the higher part of NE 40th was shunted north, cutting into the lawns of the homes beside it. (Courtesy, Lawton Gowey)

THEN: For the four-plus months of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, the center of commerce and pedestrian energy on University Way moved two blocks south from University Station on Northeast 42nd Street to here, Northeast 40th Street, at left.

THEN: The Latona Bridge was constructed in 1891 along the future line of the Lake Washington Ship Canal Bridge. The photo was taken from the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railway right-of-way, now the Burke Gilman Recreation Trail. The Northlake Apartment/Hotel on the right survived and struggled into the 1960s. (Courtesy, Ron Edge)

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THEN: With great clouds overhead and a landscape 45 years shorter than now, one vehicle – a pickup heading east – gets this part of State Route 520 to itself on a weekday afternoon. (courtesy Lawton Gowey)

 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)

THEN: First designated Columbus Street in the 1890 platting of the Brooklyn Addition, and next as 14th Avenue to conform with the Seattle grid, ‘The Ave,’ still its most popular moniker, was renamed University Way by contest in 1919. This trim bungalow at 3711 University Way sat a few lots north of Lake Union’s Portage Bay. (Courtesy, Washington State Archives, Puget Sound Regional Archive)

THEN: Looking west down Ewing Street (North 34th) in 1907 with the nearly new trolley tracks on the left and a drainage ditch on the right to protect both the tracks and the still barely graded street from flooding. (Courtesy, Michael Maslan)

THEN: When it was built in 1902, this box home, with classic Ionic pillars at the porch, was set above the northwest corner of the freshly graded Brooklyn Avenue and 47th Street in the University District. (Courtesy, John Cooper)

THEN: Long-time Wallingford resident Victor Lygdman looks south through the work-in-progress on the Lake Washington Ship Canal Bridge during the summer of 1959. Bottom-right are the remnants of the Latona business and industrial district, including the Wayland Mill and the Northlake Apartments, replaced now with Ivar’s Salmon House and its parking. (Photo by Victor Lygdman)

THEN: The historical view looks directly south into the Latona addition’s business district on Sixth Ave. NE. from the Northern Pacific’s railroad bridge, now part of the Burke Gilman Recreation Trail. (Courtesy, Lawton Gowey)

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)

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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.
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]
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.
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]
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?
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. The Bekins storage is on the right, and the Van de Kamp windmill on the left. [Courtesy, Municipal Archives]
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]
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 ENLARGE
First appeared in Pacific, Nov. 22, 1998. CLICK TO ENLARGE
The northeast corner of 10th and 40th but before the baker and the windmill and before the bridge remodel. Still, from a safety island. The view looks north on 10th.
April 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.
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. [Courtesy, MUSEUM of HISTORY and INDUSTRY aka MOHAI]
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 and part of the Van de Kamp windmill beside it, to the right. [Courtesy, 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 t he route of the trolley as it comes north off the Latona Bridge, bottom-center, and curves to the east eventually (and off-the detail) curving north to cross the railroad tracks at grade and reaching 14th Avenue NE, aka University Way which the neighborhood their was soon still called either Brooklyn or University Station. The map does not show, as yet, the underpass on NE 6th, the trolley's thereafter new route to the campus.
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?
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 work on the Freeway Bridge down on "our" odd corner of 7th Ave. NE and NE 40th Street - at the bottom. The still mostly barren Campus Parkway appears upper right, the Applied Physics Laboratory, right-of-center, and one of the rail spurs off the still tracked SLSERR bed is still intact on the far right, with Mt. Si on the horizon.
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.

clip Latona-two-bridges-swing-and-life-lk-west-from-U-Bridge-ca1917

clip-Latona-Bridges-fm-University-Bridge-ca.19--WEB

Portage-Bay-North-Short-looking-southeast-WEB

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.
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.

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One thought on “Seattle Now & Then: An Approach to the Campus”

  1. I worked at the Applied Physics Lab in the 1970s, so the caption of the Then photo caught my attention. Sadly, the Times has cropped the Applied Physics Lab out of the photo, rendering the caption indecipherable. Happily, the confusion led me to this blog, where I can see the entire photo.

    Reply

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