(click to enlarge photos)

The oversized posters hanging in the first floor corner windows of the Wax and Raine Building, on the right, reveal the date for this look east on Jackson Street from First Avenue South.  (Granted, you can not read them at the print size offered here, but you can trust us.)  They promote the 1904 visit on August 24 and 25 of the Ringling Brothers Circus to Seattle’s exhibition grounds, located at what is now the High School Stadium in Seattle Center.  The circus came with one rhinoceros, two giraffes, and forty elephants. It was also the year that the earnest and still steady Wax and Raine Building first opened. 

In our featured photo at the top, the lonely man standing in the company of a fire hydrant on that same southeast corner of Jackson Street and First Avenue South might be adopted as a symbol or sign for this sturdy street.  Aside from a few hotel lobbies, there is little sidewalk commercial bustle here.  Jackson Street was then primarily stocked with wholesalers and manufacturers at home in new quarters built in the early years of the twentieth century, most of which survive.  Perhaps the man on the corner is headed north for the big bar facing First Avenue inside the Jackson Building, out of picture on the left.  It was the sudsy

home for Olympia Beer, the “it’s the water” that was Rainier Beer’s principal Puget Sound competitor.  The Jackson Building, construction in 1901 for the Capitol Hotel, is also distinguished by the loving attention it has since received.  Architect and preservationist Ralph Anderson restored the classical landmark in 1963.  It was the first renovation in what soon became a movement and a decade later the Pioneer Square Historic District.

Through its first half-century First Avenue South was easily the busiest retailing strip in Seattle and was appropriately first named Commercial Street.  After its largely framed four-block-run from Yesler Way to the tide flats below King Street was consumed by the Great Fire of 1889, along with all else in Seattle’s original neighborhood, Commercial Street quickly returned to its varied enterprises.  In the roaring 90s, following the fire, Jackson Street

was a generous contributor to Seattle’s skid road neighborhood of bars and cheap lodgings, especially on its south side where it nearly reached the King Street train trestles above the tide flats.  During the 1890s, Salvation Army street bands trumpeted concerts that competed with house bands in the bars along Jackson Street.  This sawdust row of cheap lodgings and obliging bars was razed to make way for the manufacturing and wholesaling brick neighborhood shown at the top.

Below: THE PLUMMER HOME at the NORTHWEST CORNER of OCCIDENTAL AND JACKSON IN THE LATE 1870s.

Within a block of this intersection in the 1904 Sanborn Real Estate Map there are five hotels, a flour and feed warehouse, a ship chandler, a second-hand store, several machine shops of various sizes, a shirt factory, a printing press, a rubber factory, three plumbers’ supplies, a candy factory, a photo engraver, a bakery (in the alley behind the Capitol Building) and a saw shop, the latter promoted by the billboard, shaped like a circular blade, that sits atop the roof, right-of-center.   The blade also appears above the roof of the Luna Park bound electric trolley below, circa 1907.  Note as well the Washington Shoe Manufacturer sign left-of-center and the Wax and Raine Building on the right.

WEB EXTRAS

I’m going to deviate from our usual pattern and include a few photos from the Hands Around Green Lake event that just concluded minutes ago.

Anything to add, guys?  Certainly Jean.  Your “Hands Around Green Lake” diversion is most caressing.  Thanks much.   Living near the lake you have often shared some unique moments out of its vibrant life with us.  NEXT: Ron Edge has gathered an assortment of neighborhood features and strung them below.

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