Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: Broadway and Roy and The Deluxe

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(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: Looking south on 10th Avenue E. to the freshly re-paved intersection where Broadway splits into itself and 10th Avenue North in 1932.
THEN: Looking south on 10th Avenue E. to the freshly re-paved intersection where Broadway splits into itself and 10th Avenue North in 1932.
NOW: The trolley tracks on Broadway and 10th Avenue North were removed in the early 1940s, and the gas stations at the intersection with Roy more recently.
NOW: The trolley tracks on Broadway and 10th Avenue North were removed in the early 1940s, and the gas stations at the intersection with Roy more recently.

Here is another Foster and Kleiser photo of a prominent business intersection in Seattle where the famous billboard company may have been planning, or merely hoping, for a giant-sized sign.  Let us imagine it on the roof above the Harrah Brothers grocery at the scene’s center. (The grocery fills the space behind the three plate glass windows shown above the motorcar moving south on 10th Avenue North.) 

A Harrah ad from 1925
A Harrah ad from 1925
Another from 1925
Another from 1925
An ambitious ad from either Harrah or Heaven run in The Times one Sept. 9, 1926.
An ambitious ad from either Harrah or Heaven run in The Times on Sept. 9, 1926.
On the home front during the First World Ware, the Harrah Bros agree with fourteen other prospering "food dealers" to six restrictions.
On the home front during the First World Ware the Harrah Bro. agree with  fourteen  other prospering “food dealers”  to six restrictions.

The Harrah brothers opened their new store on August 25, 1931. The “then” photograph is dated 1932, so the comely light brick business block, designed by architect Earl W. Morrison for the southwest corner of Broadway and Roy Street, is about a year old.  The Harrahs were not new on Broadway, having first settled on this North Broadway block about twenty years earlier.  The brothers ran their first Seattle Times classified ad in June 1910, when they were looking for a “first-class bread baker.”  A year later in an illustrated Times advertisement on April 14, 1911, the grocery’s new van was pictured. Below it the partners bragged in print that with their auto-delivery, “Harrah Bros. succeeded in supplying their patrons with Hot Cross Buns in time for breakfast this morning.”

From April 14, 1911 and in The Times.
From April 14, 1911 and in The Times.
The Harrah's make it to their Silver Anniversary two years into the Great Depression. [Click-Cllick to enlarge for reading!]
The Harrah’s make it to their Silver Anniversary two years into the Great Depression. [Click-Cllick to enlarge for reading!]

In 1934 this corner was disposed for a tavern by Washington State’s then new Liquor Control Board.  With prohibition recently over, the Board fancied it for a bar, and somehow convinced Berlin Cleaners, which was then holding the corner next door to Harrahs, to relocate two blocks south at 619 Broadway North, where a popular baked bean merchant name McCullock was persuaded by the sturdy board to move to the nearby Haynes Candy Store on Olive Way.  The confectionery had been swayed by the Liquor Board to move to a nearby and vacant storefront on E. Pine Street.  Despite the Board’s Machiavellian efforts, by 1939 this southwest corner of Broadway and Roy had been temporarily reformed from alcohol to ice cream.  However, in seven more years it reverted to spirits with the first of the De Luxe taverns.

Deluxe adver. from 1978 - about.
A Deluxe adver. from 1978 – about.  Note the Grant Wood are in the advertisement where t he farmer has been traded for the Deluxe chef, which we also share in the photo that follows.  It too dates from the ’70s, my last years on the Hill.   I first lived near the Deluxe in 1964, nearby on Summit Avenue.

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The Deluxe on September 12, 2006.
The Deluxe on September 12, 2006 with Victoria B. and friend.
Victoria, again, twenty-seven years earlier in the Harvard Exit Theatre, atanding at the doorway between the lobby and the "living room."
Victoria, again, twenty-seven years earlier in the Harvard Exit Theatre, standing at the doorway between the lobby and the “living room.”

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A page from the Century Club's 1937 tax card. courtesy Seattle Washington Archive, the branch that is on the Bellevue Community College campus.
A page from the Century Club’s 1937 tax card. courtesy Seattle Washington
Archive, the branch that is on the Bellevue Community College campus. (Click to Enlarge)

With “De” and “Luxe” joined, the Deluxe in Jean’s “now” opened in 1962 with Joe Rogel and Bernie Minsk the gregarious partners.  Sixty-four years later, Rogel’s son Barry is the owner.  Living nearby on Broadway while teaching film at the Cornish School in the 70s, I remember well both Joe and Bernie, and their hamburgers.  In 1970, the humorist and Times restaurant reviewer John Hinterberger described how “about 200 people streamed out of the Harvard Exit,

Posing at the front steps in the mid-70s, Jim Osteen and Art Berstain, the creator-owners of the Harvard Exit conversion of the Women's Century Club.
Posing at the front steps in the mid-70s, Jim Osteen and Art Berstain, the creator-owners of the Harvard Exit conversion of the Women’s Century Club.
My Broadway home in 1976-77 posing for CHAOS (Capitol Hill Arts On Show) promotion on the roof reached from our kitchen window. Our apartment had been passed along or down for many years from one Cornish student or instructor to another.
My Broadway home in 1976-77 posing for CHAOS (Capitol Hill Arts On Show) promotion on the roof reached from our kitchen window. Our apartment at the southeast corner of Broadway and Republican had been passed along or down for many years from one Cornish student or instructor to another.    It can be seen in the photo that follows, which was taken in the 1930s during the widening of Broadway. 
The roof on which we posed above was behind the Wiggly sign on the right.
The roof on which we posed two photos above was behind the Piggly-Wiggly Market sign on the right.

turned right and many streamed into the Deluxe Tavern; adjacent buildings with a symbiotic relationship.”  The still charmed and cosmopolitan neighborhood of Capitol Hill will, I figure, forever thank Joe, Bernie and Barry for their burly and buttered baked potatoes. [Long ago I drew for Joe and Bernie a bake potato adorned with butter and sour cream and imagined as a billboard on the roof of the tavern.  When & if found I will attach, or introduce with an addendum.]

THE CORNER TAX CARD FROM THE LATE 1930s Followed by two other tax photos of this west side of the 600 block on Broadway.

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x-tax-photo-1937-601-611-broadway-n-web

BELOW:  TWO of the MCKALE SERVICE STATION, ACROSS ROY STREET from the CORNER STOREFRONT – The FUTURE DELUXE.

x-mckales-station-700-broadway-1937-tax-photo-web

x-mckales-service-stations-web

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, fellahs?  Surely Jean, more Edge Links of the neighborhood.

THEN: The Volunteer Park water tower was completed in 1907 on Capitol Hill’s highest point in aid the water pressure of its service to the often grand homes of its many nearly new neighbors. The jogging corner of E. Prospect Street and 15th Avenue E. is near the bottom of the Oakes postcard. (Historical Photo courtesy Mike Fairley)

THEN: The brand new N&K Packard dealership at Belmont and Pike in 1909. Thanks to both antique car expert Fred Cruger for identifying as Packards the cars on show here, and to collector Ron Edge for finding them listed at this corner in a 1909 Post-Intelligencer. (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry.)

A-Broadway-Row-THEN-MR

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: The Dog House at 714 Denny Way was strategically placed at the southern terminus for the Aurora Speedway when it was new in the mid-1930s. (Photo courtesy of Washington State Archive, Bellevue Community College Branch.)

THEN: Revelers pose on the Masonic Temple stage for “A Night in Old Alexandria,” the Seattle Fine Art Societies annual costume ball for 1921. (Pic courtesy of Arthur “Link” Lingenbrink)

THEN: Built in 1887, the Minor-Collins Home at the northeast corner of Minor Avenue and Cherry Street was one of the grandest and longest surviving pioneer mansions on First Hill. (Courtesy Historic Seattle)

THEN: Beginning with the Reynolds, three hotels have taken tenancy in this ornate three-story brick block at the northeast corner of Boren Avenue and Pike Street. (Courtesy Lawton Gowey)

THEN: A.J. McDonald’s panorama of Lake Union and its surrounds dates from the early 1890s. It was taken from First Hill, looking north from near the intersection of Terry Avenue and Union Street. (Courtesy, Museum of History and Industry)

THEN: Samuel McKnight’s early 1890s panorama of Lake Union also looks north into most of Seattle’s seventeen square-mile annexation of 1891, when the city limits were pushed north from McGraw Street to 85th Street. Fremont, Edgewater, the future Wallingford, Latona, and Brooklyn (University District) were among the neighborhoods included. (Courtesy, Dan Kerlee)

THEN: A carpenter’s jewel with Victorian ornaments recorded by a tax assessor’s photographer in 1936, nestles at 615 Eastlake beside the surviving Jensen Apartments, aka the O’Donnell Building, on the left. (Courtesy Stan Unger)

THEN: The ‘Seattle showplace’ Rhodes mansion on Capitol Hill, ca. 1916. (Courtesy, Museum of History and Industry)

3 thoughts on “Seattle Now & Then: Broadway and Roy and The Deluxe”

  1. Hello, I am writing a book on poet artist Clyde Sanborn who used to frequent the Deluxe back in early 1970s. He was also a dishwasher there for a while. Did you ever bump into Clyde?

    Reply

  2. Thank you for the photo. My Gramma lived on the third floor (no elevator) in the 50s https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/x-mckales-station-700-broadway-1937-tax-photo-web.jpg?ssl=1

    I loved it there. Would sit on the radiator by the window and watch all the activity below, the antique store across the street and great memories of the apple pie or grilled cheese at the restaurant around the corner on Broadway. Walking to Volunteer Park. Walking all over downtown, Bartells, Pike Place Market, Woodland Park Zoo, Greenlake and the wading pool. Some Grammas had farms, mine had the adventures of city life. Perfection.

    Reply

  3. Why do the old streetcar line and underlying road shunt right from Broadway and to 10th on Roy? Is this related to the Aloha turnaround for the still existing bus turnaround from times immemorial?

    Reply

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