(click to enlarge photos)

I confess that I know neither who took this photo nor when, nor do I know whose fleet of trucks this is, nor the names of any of the, I presume, drivers posing with them.  (Hopefully, a Times reader will know and enlighten us all with a letter to the editor.)  With the combined help of Sherry Stilin, heritage activist, Tom Hitzroth, the Chair of Redmond’s City Landmark Commission, and Nancy Way, the author of Our Town, Redmond, I do know who built this sturdy brick business and when. Bill Brown was serving his first term as Redmond’s mayor when he began construction on what is now an official landmark, located in what high-tech Redmond is calling its Old Town Historic Core.  Both the date, 1920, and the name, Brown’s Garage, are posted above the front door, and another sign swinging above the sidewalk, lets one know that Good Year tires are included among the motorcar services that Brown is selling.

Earlier, before building his garage here at the southwest corner of Redmond Way and 164^th Ave NE.,  Brown had operated a popular saloon in the neighborhood.  It survives as another Redmond landmark: the Brown Building. When new in 1913, the two-story brick bar was the tallest commercial structure in town.  It may have also been the most companionable.  There was drinking on the main floor, while upstairs there was dancing in the big room, and, it seems, some hooking in the smaller ones. With national prohibition closing the legal taps in 1919, Brown turned his saloon into a drug store.  He then jumped from fixing sorrow through alcohol to mending motorcars in his garage with twenty mechanics’ stalls – plus a gas station.  Sherry Stilin explains that Brown’s motto was “All Roads Lead to Redmond.”

Conveniently, Snoqualmie Pass opened to adventurous motorists in 1915.  The improved Yellowstone Trail (aka the Sunset Highway) reached the pass through Redmond, but not yet as easily through Renton or the strawberry fields of bridgeless Bellevue.  Also a

graded road between Kirkland and Redmond had been completed in 1911. The astute Brown purchased an open omnibus to carry passengers between them. By author Way’s reckoning, Mayor Brown’s “biggest accomplishment” was the building and paving of the West Lake Sammamish Parkway between Redmond and Issaquah.  That Brown then also developed commercial home sites along the way would not be considered cricket today, although he was surely industrious.  This convivial and boomer mayor was widely appreciated and kept his title for three decades, until beat in the 1949 election in which 332 Redmond citizens cast their votes.  Now, a mere sixty-sixty years later, Redmond employs around six-hundred workers to serve its citizens.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, fellahs?  Just a few relevant links from the east side.  On the whole, however, for the now 34 yeasrs of this Sunday Times feature we have not ventured across the lake that much.  We had a few eastern county runs when we were preparing the book “Washington Then and Now”  – it was published in 2007 – but since then not so much.  Next week when we feature Redmond’s pioneer bank, we will pull up a few more, including some aerials from Ron Edge’s scans.

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AS FROM ABOVE

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LONG BEFORE THE GILDED AGE

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KNOWN AND YET UNKNOWN

The pastoral and picturesque scene below I identifies itself as on Squak – aka Sammamish – Slough.  But where?  The bridge on the far right is surely a clew.   Again, we hope for readers’ help.