Seattle Now & Then: Thor at Victory Plaza, 1959

jrsherrard

7 years ago

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: When University Street was first cut through the original University of Washington Campus in 1907-8 it was graded wider between Fourth and Fifth Avenues with the intention of giving that block greater potential as a public place. This it received especially well during World War Two when the street’s plaza temporarily became Victory Square. (Courtesy, the Museum of History and Industry.)

NOW: The elegant brick and tile faces of the several Metropolitan landmarks that once covered the four corners of Fourth Avenue and University Street have been modernized by half in the half-century plus since the Webster and Stevens Studio “then” was recorded in 1959. Jean Sherrard, this feature’s “repeater,” is especially pleased with how the construction crane on the right in his “then” may remind one of the surviving skyscraper that resembles a golf-T but is here out-of-frame.

**PERHAPS the same exhibit Thor but not the same place. Does anyone recognize the location of this Alamy Stock photo – from the Fifties?**

**Another mysterious Thor visit. Surely some encyclopedia reader will know this ?capitol? building.**

On September 24, 1959, City Hall’s busy Board of Public Works easily approved a temporary display of Thor, the Air Force’s Intermediate Range Ballistic missile named for a Nordic deity with a not always righteous reputation and a rather ignitable temper. The faithful to scale public relations copy of the Air Force’s Intermediate Range Ballistic missile was lifted above University Plaza, still one of the central business district’s rare public places.

About two stories of stairs led a line of curious visitors up one side of the shiny Thor to an open door and on to a platform that eight feet later reached another open door leading to the stairway designated “down.” It was a command that some of the visitors were no doubt pleased to obey, And yet while walking that plank the explorers were, of course, safe, and kept free of the BM’s liquid fuel (aka gas), stabilizing gyros, and “pay package” of merely one nuclear bomb.

**A Seattle Times clip from August 31, 1957.**

By the fall of 1959 Thor had been running through nearly three years of flight tests that included several crashes. Meanwhile both the Navy and Army were working with their own Cold War responses to Russia’s surprising success two years earlier with the three weeks of world circling by Sputnik, a shining metal sphere with antennas. I recall the “Sputnik Surprise” of October 1957 very well and I suspect that many readers will also remember that the satellite that began the space age was about the diameter of the two basketballs that were famously dribbled side-by-side by one member of the Globe Trotters.

Boeing’s briefd embrace of an Atomic Plane. Seattle Times clip from March 13, 1952

More than for its citizens, the Seattle appearance of Thor was engineered for the about one thousand delegates to the 14^th Annual Convention of the National Defense Transportation Association, a happy group of munitions dealers and military brass that represented well what former President – and general – Dwight D. Eisenhower named “the military industrial complex.” Unfortunately the primary show-time for Thor before the three-day convention was foiled by a forgetful air force sergeant who had the keys to the missile’s two doors, but was off-duty. Besides the disappointed military brass, among those invited to walk the eight foot plank thru the full width of the Missile that special day was Donald Douglas, of Douglas Aircraft, the builder of the Thor.

**A Times clip on Victory Square “reopening”, April 16,1944.**

**A late mention of Victory Square pulled from a post-war Times published on April 16, 1944.**

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, compatriots! Welcome home to Green Lake Jean following your applauded performance on the morning KING TV show.

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**Victory Square during WW2, looking east from Fourth Avenue.**

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WEB EXTRAS

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