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Seattle Now & Then: The Alley That Became I-5

jrsherrard

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: Everything here is terminal. When Werner Lenggenhager recorded this section of Melrose Place N. in the mid-1950s he understood that soon after – in five years or ten – it would be transformed into the Seattle Freeway. It was especially revealing to find the tall hillside home, here on the left, in an aerial photograph, also from the mid-1950s.

 

NOW: Jean Sherrard’s repeat was recorded from the Denny Way overpass above Interstate Five, or nearly two blocks south of the muddy prospect from which Werner Lenggenharger recorded his spattered Melrose Lane North. Readers wishing to look upon Lenggenhager’s spot should head north on Melrose Avenue North to the point from which they can look directly west across the freeway to the letter Q in the Recreational Equipment Coop’s sign on the west side of Eastlake Avenue. That’s just north of John Street. Werner’s muddy alley was close to the freeway’s existing green center-stripe.

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180 DEGREE VARIATION 

Here gain is Werner Lenggenhager on Melrose Place North, but this time looking in the opposite direction to the north and in the summer with the Place now dry and looking like it has been so for a while.    We do not known which of the two Werner shot first.   We used this one a few years back in our book Washington Then and Now, and the summer comparison also appeared in Pacific, but before they added color to our pages – and many others – in the magazine.   

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Again, for this Sunday “repeat” (at the top) Jean respects the historical prospect of the featured photograph and returns to it – barely.  To really repeat the prospect of the featured photographer, Werner Lenggenhager, would require a hovering drone or the guiding and guarding of a phalanx of the Washington State Patrol Troopers accompanying Jean north of Denny Way to the narrow green belt of shrubbery between the Seattle Freeway’s lower south bound lane and its higher north bound lane.

While I cannot prove it, I’m pretty confident that Werner Lenggenhager  knew Lawton Gowey, the photographer of this look north through the grading work on I-5 where Denny Way temporarily crossed over with a wooden trestle.

What Jean did instead was take to the closest prudent prospect: a position above interstate-5 on the Denny Way overpass.  From there, looking south, his “now” reveals an electric cityscape of high-rises and cumulous clouds standing above the north-bound late-morning traffic.  It is an eye-popping contrast.  Within a few seconds of an I-5 driver heading north under Denny Way they will pass by Lenggenhager’s “alley-scape” position in the mid 1950s. It is about a block and a half north of Denny Way.  (We found it with the help of aerial photographs.) The sensitive perambulator was then exploring what he knew was the doomed block-wide strip between Eastlake and Melrose Avenues, then recently condemned for cutting the Seattle Freeway.

Frank Shaw dates this snap of his May 30, 1962. He looks south on the nearly cleared construction swatch between Melrose Ave. (proper) and Eastlake Avenue.  The site is near where the comely stairway on Republican Street climbed the hill east from Eastlake.   The trees here would soon be felled.  The Pontius Court  Apartment House that was built just north of the steps (see the photo below this one)  has been razed.  It was one of the greater victims of or losses to the freeway construction.. 
The Pontius Court, looking east from Eastlake up the Republican Hill Climb.
The Republican Street Hill Climb looking east from Eastlake ca. 1910, before the Court.  We have written features earlier for both the Hill Climb and Pontius Court subjects.  The latter is included at the top of the Edge Links below.  

The Austrian Werner Lenggenhager moved to Seattle in 1939 and was soon working at Boeing.  He lived on nearby Olive Street just up the hill. As already not above, this is not the first time we have followed Lenggenhager to this alley.  On July 28, 2001 “now and then” featured him looking north at it in the summer when the mud had turned to dust.  Next Spring (2018) when Jean and I hope to publish a book featuring an idealized “best of” collection of one hundred picks from the by now nearly 1800 “now and thens” printed in Pacific since the feature started early in 1982, we will want to include one or the other  (mud or dust) of Lenggenhager’s nostalgic preludes to the Seattle Freeway.

A slide-prone section of the I-5 construction near the Lakeview overpass. Note the City Light steam plan with its stacks on the left.

Werner Lenggenhager retired from Boeing in 1966, giving him more time to explore both Seattle and Washington State with his camera.  Parts of the many thousands of prints that make up his oeuvre are kept in public collections, including those at the University of Washington Library, the Museum of History and Industry and the Seattle Public Library.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, boys?  Yes Jean more faithfully ours and the  readers’ Edge Links that will click us about the neighborhood and beyond, followed by a few more from more ancient features.  For those you’d best click-and-enlarge to read them – sometimes twice.

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CLICK CLICK the ABOVE to Read Read

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Freeway Park Cannonball. Are you allowed to do this?

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With the Federal Bldg at the center-bottom, and looking north-northeast through the razing and wreckage when I-5 begins its building through the Central Business District.  What else can you identify?  The Exeter appears in both this aerial, near its center, and upper-right in the sculpture photo above it.   The week’s  featured site is just out-of-sight off the top of the aerial.  CLICK CLICK TO ENLARGE by all means.
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