Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: The Knights Templar take Seattle, 1925

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(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: From the Smith Tower (1914), far left, to the Frye Hotel (1911) and its ranks of American flags, far right, this 1925 recording looking east from the corner of Second Avenue and Yesler Way is filled with mid-summer commotion sponsored by the Masonic Knights Templar. (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry)
NOW: Both terra-cotta landmarks, the Frye Hotel and the Smith Tower, survived the ninety-three years that have passed between our “now” and our “then” and promise to serve well for some time to come.

Through Seattle’s so far brief history (when compared to Jerusalem), one of the most flamboyant invasions of this well-defended city of about seventy-seven hills came in late July 1925 when 30,000 “members and families” of – and the name is long – “The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta of England and Wales and Its Provinces Overseas.“

Two frames lifted from a clip of Pathe Newsreel photographer Will Hudson’s 16m film of the Knights Templar parade marching south on Second Avenue in 1925.  The cross-topped arch straddled Marion Street.  (More of this below.) 

Appeared first in The Times on March 18, 1984.

These Masons were better known as the Knights Templar, named for the medieval crusading Christians who attempted to break the Moslem grip on Jerusalem and most of the eastern Mediterranean.   These twentieth-century marching Protestants –mostly – reached Seattle by land and sea (but not quite yet by sky) for the “conclave of the grand encampment of the United States of America for the 36th Triennial of the Knights Templar.”

Some of the bleachers constructed to either side of Fifth Avenue north of Virginia Street when much of Fifth was still free for “adjustments” during the years of pause (1911-1928) in the Denny Regrade.

Surely the most enduring vestiges of these warriors –preachers, super-salesmen, educators, disciplined clerks, meat-packers, and other ambitious protestants – were their uniforms, which they took care to keep brushed.  Make a quick on-line visit with “Masonic Knights Templar” and you will be treated with a polished flood of fraternal regalia, most of it for sale.  The on-line show includes, but is not limited to, shoulder boards, sleeve and collar crosses, swords, pins of many sorts, stars centered with crosses, and chapeaux.

These chapeaux are the fancy plumed caps we see here heading east up Yesler Way from Second Avenue like a disciplined flock of low-flying ostriches. Here the marching is in order, and you will not find any mason out of line or step. They are moving up First Hill to their fort.  I imagine them singing the still popular, uniquely militant, hymn that goes, in part “Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.”

A clip from The Times for May 3, 1929. (Enlarge to read = of course.)

A cross is hanging over Yesler Way center-right, nearly lost in the shadows of First Hill.  It is but one of scores of crosses the Templars raised in Seattle during their July visit.  The largest sat atop the grand-sized welcome arch that covered the intersection of Second Avenue and Marion Street.  (See above)  The cross mounted on the roof of the then brand new Olympic Hotel competed with the cross on the welcome arch for dominance on the cityscape.

Not able for now to find the Olympic topped with a cross, here’s an early record of its sumptuous lobby.  CLICK TO ENLARGE

It is likely that the warriors in our featured photo are headed to their faux fort and headquarters constructed for their visit on City Hall Park, seen at the center of the photograph below. The fort’s drawbridge on Terrace Street was “manned” by Boy Scouts, some of them, most likely, future knights.

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, lodge members? 

Jean, do you remember when we lectured to a Masonic group at its home in Greenwood and had a good time?  With the new NOW-THEN book scheduled for release in late October we should start calling the lodges and clubs and schools and churches about putting on our show and selling books – books which we both will sign.  Of course the value of the book is thereby increased by our estimate – and we have noted this often when lecturing and signing – 20 Cents.   We could reconsider this.  Normally the value of one of our books inflates a dime when we sign it.  With two signatures it seems to me that the value is doubled.  What do you think – if you have read this far? 

(Howz about putting up an inquiry of interests (for illustrated lectures) and such on this BLOG?  Show our interested readers some of the pages.)

THEN: The Sprague Hotel at 706 Yesler Way was one of many large structures –hotels, apartments and duplexes, built on First Hill to accommodate the housing needs of the city’s manic years of grown between its Great Fire in 1889 and the First World War. Photo courtesy Lawton Gowey

THEN: Harborview Hospital takes the horizon in this 1940 recording. That year, a hospital report noted that "the backwash of the depression" had overwhelmed the hospital's outpatient service for "the country's indigents who must return periodically for treatment." Built in 1931 to treat 100 cases a day, in 1939 the hospital "tries bravely to accommodate 700 to 800 visits a day."

THEN: The address written on the photograph is incorrect. This is 717 E. Washington Street and not 723 Yesler Way. We, too, were surprised. (Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archive)

THEN: A winter of 1918 inspection of some captured scales on Terrace Street. The view looks east from near 4th Avenue. (Courtesy City Municipal Archives)

THEN: This Seattle Housing Authority photograph was recorded from the top of the Marine Hospital (now Pacific Tower) on the north head of Beacon Hill. It looks north to First Hill during the Authority’s clearing of its southern slope for the building of the Yesler Terrace Public Housing. (Courtesy, Lawton Gowey)

THEN: Sometime around 1890, George Moore, one of Seattle’s most prolific early photographers, recorded this portrait of the home of the architect (and Daniel Boone descendent) William E. Boone. In the recently published second edition of Shaping Seattle Architecture, the book’s editor, UW Professor of Architecture Jeffry Karl Ochsner, sketches William E. Boone’s life and career. Ochsner adds, “Boone was virtually the only pre-1889 Fire Seattle architect who continued to practice at a significant level through the 1890s and into the twentieth-century.” (Courtesy MOHAI)

THEN: This “real photo postcard” was sold on stands throughout the city. It was what it claimed to be; that is, its gray tones were real. If you studied them with magnification the grays did not turn into little black dots of varying sizes. (Courtesy, David Chapman and otfrasch.com)

THEN: Looking north from Yesler Way over the Fifth Avenue regrade in 1911. Note the Yesler Way Cable rails and slot at the bottom. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archive)

THEN: Adding a sixth floor to its first five in 1903, the Hotel Butler entered a thirty-year run as “the place” for dancing in the Rose Room, dining at the Butler Grill, and celebrity-mixing in the lobby. (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry)

THEN: The original for this scene of a temporary upheaval on Mill Street (Yesler Way) was one of many historical prints given to the Museum of History and Industry many years ago by the Charles Thorndike estate. Thorndike was one of Seattle’s history buffs extraordinaire. (Courtesy, Museum of History and Industry.)

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              TO BE CONTINUED …

 

 

 

 

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