Seattle Now & Then: Mill Street, ca. 1887

jrsherrard

8 years ago

(click to enlarge photos)

**THEN: A pre-1889 Great Fire look east on Mill Street (Yesler Way) from the west side of Commercial Street (First Ave. South). (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry)**

**NOW: Jean Sherrard’s arresting look east on Yesler Way, on the east side of First Avenue, in Pioneer Square.**

This week I wish to lead with Jean Sherrard’s “now.” It is a noon-hour streetscape graced by a morning downpour. The clean puddle on Yesler Way reflects the dappled clouds that fringe the 40-plus story Smith Tower, which is mirrored in this small flood nearly as brilliantly as the landmark’s terra-cotta tiles shine in the noon-hour sky. Sunlight escaping across Yesler Way from the alley between First Avenue and Occidental Street draws a warm path through the scene’s center.

Looking east on Mill Street (Yesler Way) a few months earlier than the featured photo. Note that the distant east end of the Occidental Hotel (right-of-center) is in an earlier stage of construction than is t he featured photo.

The featured “then” at the top we have picked to ponder with Jean’s now is not “on spot.” Rather, it was recorded a half-block west on Yesler Way. I chose this “then” for a list of reasons, including repeat photography. At the photograph’s center stand two of the landmarks that Seattle rapidly raised in 1883-84, early boom years for the growing town that in 1881 first took the prize for numbered citizens in Washington Territory. This developing strip of Victorian landmarks on Mill Street (Yesler Way) continues south from this intersection on Commercial Street (First Ave. S.) and especially north on Front Street (First Ave.) (If you wish to explore the blog dorpatsherrardlomont you will find many opportunities to keyword-explore all with the help of past now-and-then features and books compiled from them.)

**Lawton Gowey looks east from a spot close to that taken by the photographer of the featured photo. Lawton visited the site on February 7, 1961.**

This look into Pioneer Square, or Pioneer Place as it was first named, shows the photographer W.F. Boyd’s stamp on its flip side. Boyd arrived in Seattle not long before he recorded this view. Beside his centered stamp there are additional messages written by other hands on the back, including “Photo taken day before fire,” meaning the Great Fire of June 6 1889. But it cannot be. Instead we have chosen to date this circa 1887, largely on a lead from Ron Edge, who pointed out the work-in-progress extending the Occidental Hotel (with the flagpole and mansard roof) to fill the entire flatiron block bordered by Mill Street, James Street and Second Avenue.

**Looking northwest thru Pioneer Place at the Yesler-Leary Building when it was new, ca. 1884.**

An item copied by Michael Cirelli from an 1883 feature in the Seattle Weekly Chronicle on August 23, 1883. . It is one of the many discoveries he shared from his enthused study of Seattle’s pioneer history. [CLICK TO ENLARGE]

Another grand construction stands center-left: the Yesler-Leary Building, with its showplace tower topped by a weather vane, at the northwest corner of Front and Mill Streets. One of our “other reasons” for picking this “then” on Mill Street is the brick building in the shadows on the scene’s far right. We ask readers smarter than we to name this three-story pre-fire landmark. [Soon after we made this request, Ron Edge, a frequent contributor to this blog, came forward – or up – with the answer. Continue on for both his correct identification and his evidence.]

While I have never seen any face-on photograph of this south side of Mill Street, west of First Ave., it does appear in a Seattle1884 birdseye map and in that year’s Sanborn map as well. But neither of these early sources give it a name or address. Perhaps it is the Villard House*, listed in the 1884 city directory at 15 Mill Street and “near the Steamboat Wharf,” aka Yesler’s Wharf. C.S. Plough, the proprietor, dauntlessly advertised it with a mondo boast, “The Villard is the best and cheapest hotel in the city.”

RON EDGE’S 11TH HOUR DISCOVERY: NOPE – NOT THE VILLARD HOUSE, BUT RATHER THE SCHWABACHER BUILDING.

Here the “mystery” structure is revealed in a detail pulled by Ron Edge from a 1887 panorama taken of the city from Denny Hill. The SCHWABACHER BUILDING, not the Villard Hotel, is circled by Ron. Compare this facade to the one depicted in the 1884 etching above it. Note here, far left, the slender spire of the Yesler-Leary Building at the northwest corner of Front Street (First Ave.) and Mill Street (Yesler Way.)

RON EDGE also found this new report in the July,8,1883 Post-Intelligencer (its forebear) on the construction of the Schwabacher Building. As the frame for this clipping reveals, Ron copied this from a scan open to the public on-line in the Library of Congress.

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JEAN ASKS – ANYTHING TO ADD LADS.

Anything to add, lads? Beyond what is revealed just above, Ron Edge’s 11th hour identification of the three-story brick building on the far of the week’s feature, we have more of our weekly same, which is more past feature’s from the neighborhood.

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