THEN: Following the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition on the U.W. Campus, the AYP’S Tokio Café was converted into a crew house for the University’s already popular rowing crews. (Courtesy: Museum of History and Industry)NOW: For his “repeat” Jean moved about three-hundred feet west from our more precise repeat, the U.W.’s now landscape-enshrouded Oceanography Building (aka the Old Ocean Building, 1931), to the same department’s newer but by now middle-age Oceanography Teaching Building (1969) on the right and its similarly-designed Marine Sciences Building, on the left. We wish to thank University School of Medicine cardiologist Douglas Stewart and his rowboat for delivering Jean to the north side of Portage Bay. The doctor also made note of the department’s historic research vessel docked there, the Clifford A. Barnes, named for the distinguished professor of oceanography from 1947 to 1973. Our friend the cardiologist knows his vessels.A Japanese art auction from the fall of 1909 and the fading of the Fair, or Expo.
This week we visit the University of Washington’s South Campus. The “then” photo looks north from Portage Bay to the south façade of what was built as the Tokio Café for Seattle’s first world’s fair, the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition (AYP). The Tokio was the most southerly of the attractions that opened on the Exposition’s carnival named the Pay Streak, which reached as far as the bay. Practically all the Streak’s approximately fifty attractions were either exotic, like the Tokio, or eccentric, like the Upside Down House.
The Upside-Down-House at the AYP – one the Pay Streak.
[above: Looking west over the Pay Streak landing with Portage Bay on the left and the Cafe Tokio at the middle-distance center. The Pay Streak extends out-of-frame to the right. This was photographed on the expos’ New England Day. ] (Courtesy, U.W. Libraries, Northwest Collection)
With the conclusion of the AYP the Pay Streak attractions were either razed or recycled. The result was the barren corner of the campus shown here in the featured photo at the top to either side of the seemingly stranded café. The Tokio, however, was saved. The University’s athletics department was in need of a new crew house, for what was decreed
A distant detail of the Tokio Cafe turned into Crew House photographed from Capitol Hill. The similarly-sized structure to the left (west) of the crew house may be more crew quarters. The rows of distant tents stand on campus for a World War One related camp.A 1909 Times clip on coed hopes for “Aquatics.”The UIW Campus from Capitol Hill with Portage Bay between them. The saved Tokio Cafe stands at the north shoreline on the far right. CKICK TO ENLARGEA Seattle Times clip from Nov. 28, 1909 – Click to EnlargeThe popularity of rowing is expressed in the intention (or hope or plan) to give every student a chance at it. From the Seattle Times for March 25, 1910.
in the press as “now the leading sport at state university.” Actually, rowing took football’s place at the top only after the latter’s playing season was over in November. In any season, rowing coach Hiram Conibear and football coach Gil Dobie contended for the athletic department’s resources and the presses’ attentions. To the delight of Conibear and his crews, the Japanese eatery was remodeled for both storing the shells and building the spartan, we imagine, living quarters for the elite students who were selected to train and repeat the smooth and powerful paddling that would ultimately propel them to victory on the waters of the world.
Forty years after the U.W. Crew’s victory in Berlin for the 1936 Olympics. Coxswain Bob Moch, crouches center-front. Behind him, left to right, are Don Hume, stroke; Joe Rantz, 7; George Hunt, 6; Jim McMillan, 5; John White, 4; Gordon Adam, 3, and Roger Morris, bow. Empty between Adam and Morris is an open space for the late Charles Day who pulled No.2 oar.UW crew practicing on Lake Union before the Olympics of 1936
Before the opening of the Montlake Cut in 1916, the crew’s stroking was for the most part restricted to the smaller Lake Union. On January 28, 1917, The Seattle Times reported, “The Washington crew will row on Lake Union until March 1, when it will row through the canal each afternoon and practice on Lake Washington. Coach Conibear has issued a standing invitation to all who are interested in watching the boys work to go out in the coaching launch…” The Times report concludes with the last evidence that I could find of Conibear’s oaring kingdom abiding here in the converted cafe: “The boathouse is at the foot of the Pay Streak of the Exposition.”
First appeared in Pacific on July 7, 2002 -CLICK to ENLARGE
Conibear and his crews soon abandoned the Tokio for another useful oddity. This time a larger shell house was made from a seaplane hangar built by the navy to help with waterways surveillance during World War I. Set at the eastern end of the Montlake Cut, it never accommodated planes, only shells. In 1931 the Tokio’s footprint was covered by the University’s first
A Times clip from October 6, 1931 illustrating the laying of the cornerstone for the UW’s Oceanography Building on the former site of the Tokio Cafe at the Portage Bay foot of the AYP’S Pay Streak.The aerial photographer Laidlaw recorded lots of revealing photos of the U.W. Campus, mostly in the 1930s. Here at the bottom-center, between Portage Bay and the U.W. golf course, stands the school’s new Oceanographic Building. Courtesy, [MUSEUM OF HISTORY & INDUSTRY]Another of MOHAI’s aerials by Laidlaw showing the South Campus when it was still a golf course. The new Oceanographic Building shows on the far left.
oceanographic laboratories built in the then popular Collegiate Gothic style with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Until 1947 the oceanographers shared the future south campus with grass and sand traps. The 1947 ground-breaking for the University’s new School of Medicine began the ‘cultivation’ of the University Golf Club’s nine-hole course into a South Campus overflowing with doctors, nurses, oceanographers and other scientists.
WEB EXTRAS
Another heartfelt thanks to the good doctor, Doug Stewart! He rowed me around Portage Bay and we visited some faves…
The rowing cardiologist – talk about heart health!Jensen’s Motor Boat Company – a family business devoted to restoration of classic boatsHard at work on a Saturday morningA pause at the yacht club to check out a classic tug; gorgeous lines, but given its condition, in need of a major restoration…
Anything to add, boys? Surely more from the neighborhood Jean, and one analogy from Portland, Oregon. Also, the bottom two links, those on the north end of the University Bridge and at Gasworks Park, include two of the video’s we managed to produce early last year (2016).
First appeared in Pacific Feb. 18, 2001. CLICK TO ENLARGE
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CLUES FOR FINDING THE TOKIO FOOTPRINT
On the far right of the Google-Earth aerial shot a red line has been placed in line with the former AYP Pay Streak’s commercial promenade and now – for part of the away – the drive that circles inside the campus. CLICK CLICK TO ENLARGEA detail of the Tokio Cafe’s roofline showing some of the south facade of the Architecture Building that still stands and serves near the 40th Street entrance to the campus..Click the image to download a pdf of an article by Lee Corbin on the Gun Shed built for World War I naval training on the south UW campus. (Lee Corbin)