Seattle Now & Then: Dairy Men at Dreamland

jrsherrard

8 years ago

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: Thanks to Larry Lowry who long ago shared with me this grand photograph of Dreamland. He noted, “My grandfather, Waverly Mairs, was the ice cream maker at the old Seattle Dairy.” Perhaps, Waverly is also in the photograph.

**NOW: The Eagles Auditorium replaced Dreamland in 1925. In 1983 the Auditorium was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It became the home of ACT Theatre in 1996**

Once cameras could be used comfortably out-of-doors, one of the sustaining services promoted by commercial photographers was portraits for families posing on the porch or front yard and businesses that grouped owners with their employees in front of the shop or factory that supported them. This week’s feature has both, with a variation.

**Pulled from The Seattle Times for August 20, 1934**

The man in the dark suit nearest the camera is probably Syvert Stray, proprietor of the Seattle Dairy. He is standing beside, we assume, his wife Lillian, while holding onto the high wagon chair where his daughter poses for the professional photographer. Down the line are the horses and drivers for Stray’s five milk wagons. The twist in this group portrait is that the subjects here are not posing beside the

Shot from the roof of the Cambridge Apartment-Hotel, the Seattle Dairy is boldly signed – right-of-center – at the front of the dairy’s factory on the south side of 8th Avenue. The dairy is one of the exceptions – it was built of bricks. (The accompanying details from the 1908 and 1912 Baist maps show the dairy only in the later one at 1415 Eighth Avenue. Most of the Dreamland roof shows upper left and beside it, to the right, the Unitarian Church with its clipped tower. (By the time of the above photo the Unitarians had moved up to Capitol Hill.) Surely one of the two gas stations are a McKales, and under the management of the milkman Stray and his son.

**Details of Baist Maps, 1908 on the left beside 1912. {CLICK to ENLARGE]**

For comparison with the two Baist maps above here is a detail from the ever-helpful 1925 Kroll map of the Seattle Business Section. University Street is on the far right, followed by Union, Pike, Pine Streets leading to the split where Howell Street begins off of OLive Street (or Way). Eagles Hall is marked at its corner of Union and Seventh one block to the left from the details’ east border (far-(right) with University Street. Seattle Dairy can also be bound on Eighth Ave. “behind” the Eagles.

company’s office and/or livery on Eighth Avenue. Rather they are around the corner from it on Union Street. The reason is obvious. They are sharing the splendor of a new and magnificent neighbor. This is the showy south façade of Dreamland, a hall that filled the northeast corner of Seventh Avenue and Union Street.

**DREAMLAND at the northeast corner of 7th Avenue and Union Street.**

**The Dreamland interior on November 17, 1911**..

This ornate landmark could have held a hundred horses but never did. Rather, it was made for entertainments and engagements. From its arching roof to the hardwood floor this big room was made for dancing, skating, conventions, banquets and shows of many sorts. It was often decorated with streamers hanging from the ceiling. Dreamland was also the political platform of choice for progressives, labor unions, and political campaigning. The dances thrown here were big ones. And the sweating populist spectator sports of boxing and wrestling could fill the place.

**Dreamland’s adver. for its opening in 1906.**

From its beginning, Dreamland was promoted primarily as a roller skating rink. The opening was “by invitation” on October 14, 1906, for the Monday Night Skating Club. The following night it was promoted in The Times as “the ideal rink for discriminating skaters… with Prof. Chas L. Franks and his daughter Lillian “performing as Champion Fancy Skaters.” Stray, Dreamland’s dairyman neighbor, was also into roller skating, sponsoring a competitive team in the Seattle Roller Hockey League.

**“Give a little, Take a little,” Stray gets a deal on a new Rothweiler**

In 1915, after Stray bought a Rothweiler truck, an illustrated advertisement of the purchase appeared in The Times. Like the milk wagons Stray was replacing, his new truck was partially covered with a sign naming his dairy. Stray’s spirit for internal combustion developed into his second entrepreneurial passion, as director of McKale’s Inc., a small chain of stylish service stations. The number one McKale’s was on the northwest corner of Union Street and Eighth Avenue, two doors from Stray’s Seattle Dairy.

A McKales on Broadway, ca. 1937. This is the intersection with Roy Street where Broadway “splits” to either side of McKales. From here going north it is still Broadway on the west and 10th Avenue East on the east.

Born in Christiansun, Norway, in 1871, the seventeen-year-old Syvert reached the U.S. in 1888 and Seattle in 1902. Prior to his death in 1934 Stray was a life member in The Fraternal Order of Eagles, whose elegant aerie replaced Dreamland at Seventh Avenue and Union Street in 1925. Since 1997, it is a corner where the play has continued with ACT Theatre.