Seattle Now & Then: Puget Sound Regional Archives, late 1970s and 1958

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

THEN1: In the late 1970s, a Western Airlines jet flies over Sunset Junior High School, from which the Puget Sound branch of the state archives operated from 1979 to 1998. Formerly open space, the site hosted the school from 1957 to 1975, when it closed due to protests over jet noise. (King County Archives)

 

THEN2: In one of more than 750,000 prints from the archives’ Property Record Card collection, featuring distinctive white lettering hand-scratched into the negative, the former Sunset Junior High School stands in 1958 at 1809 S. 140th St. Scans of such photos throughout King County — part of the lifeblood of this column— are available for a nominal fee. (Puget Sound Regional Branch, Washington State Archives)
NOW1: Eleven longtime Puget Sound regional archives staff and other veteran agency leaders, anchored at left by retiring regional archivist Michael Saunders (1980-85/1989-2022), stand at the former Sunset Junior High School site while a Spirit Airlines jet at upper right flies south to land at Sea-Tac Airport. Those besides Saunders, from left, are David Owens (deputy state archivist 1970s-2000), Scott Cline (Seattle city archivist 1985-2016), Charles Payton (former longtime King County museum adviser), David Kennedy (collections inventory and transport in 1998 from the Sunset to Bellevue College facilities), Deborah Kennedy (assistant regional archivist 1997-2000/King County archivist 2000-2011/King County archives, records management and mail services manager 2011-20), Greg Lange (research assistant 1997-2011/King County archivist 2012-present), Philippa Stairs (research assistant 1989-2019), Elizabeth Stead (research assistant 1986-89), Candace Lein-Hayes (regional archivist 1985-88/National Archives regional administrator 1988-2016) and Chuck Cary (regional archivist 1988-89). (Jean Sherrard)
NOW2: Gathered below the 1997 sculpture “A Collection” by Harold Balazx at the entrance to the Bellevue College-based Puget Sound branch of the state archives are 18 longtime regional archives staff and other veteran agency leaders and supporters, from left, retiring regional archivist Michael Saunders, new branch manager Emily Dominick, Greg Lange (research assistant 1997-2011/King County archivist 2012-preent), Philippa Stairs (research assistant 1989-2019), T.A. Perry (Bellevue College instructor and volunteer), Janette Gomes (assistant regional archivist 2002-2007/current Northwest branch manager), Jessica Jones (research archivist 2021-present), Emily Venemon (branch records management consultant 2019-present), Graham Haslam (Bellevue College instructor and volunteer), Midori Okazaki (lead branch archivist 2005-present), Chuck Cary (regional archivist 1988-89), David Owens (deputy state archivist 1970s-2000), Tsang Partnership Design Team members Randall Robbins (project manager), Scott Shaw (project architect), Kelly Shaw (interior designer), David Kennedy (collections inventory and transport in 1998 from the Sunset to Bellevue College facilities), Deborah Kennedy (assistant regional archivist 1997-2000/King County archivist 2000-2011/King County archives, records management and mail services manager 2011-20), Charles Payton (former longtime King County museum adviser). (Jean Sherrard)

Published in the Seattle Times online on March 31, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 3, 2022

Smile! Here’s where you can find a DNA test for your home
By Clay Eals

Whether we’ve been here 40 years or 40 days, we all yearn to embrace the place we call home. One way to do so is to see what came before.

The Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives — a godsend to some, unknown to others — provides just such a peek, drawing 5,000 research requests annually. Among its wide-ranging governmental records is a showcase collection that can touch nearly every King County resident.

The collection, starting in the late 1930s, assembled a Property Record Card for each of 146,000 buildings, revealing year of construction, structural materials and myriad other specifics, often with crisp black-and-white photos of same.

Taken with large-format view cameras, the photos bear dates and addresses hand-scratched into their negatives, appearing in white in corresponding prints. Today they might be called a DNA test for your home. But that wasn’t their original purpose.

VIDEOS: Click image above to reach the “Films of King County Assessor Roy Misener” page, where you can access several videos from the late 1930s about his Land Use Project.

In 1935, King County Assessor Roy Misener sought to jettison poor data and subjective appraisals that had produced incomplete property-tax valuations. With federal Works Progress Administration dollars, over five years he hired 700 workers to create maps, interview residents and create photos to equalize assessments.

After initial work ended in 1940, if a building was upgraded, staff updated its data and took a new photo. In 1972, high-grade imaging ended. Seven years later, the collection transferred to the state archives. Ever since, copies and reprints (digital scans today) have been available to the public for nominal fees. The reasons for such requests range from nostalgic to legal.

Photos for a few sites, such as areas beneath Interstate 5, are missing. But the collection, which often provides a historic building’s only visual evidence of existence, has remained largely intact— from 1979 to 1998 inside the jet-noisy former Sunset Junior High in the north clear zone of Sea-Tac Airport and since 1998 at a facility built for the archives at Bellevue College.

T-shirt design based on the late 1970s photo. Michael Saunders gifted these T-shirts to his staff and others upon his retirement. The T-shirts were created by destination-goods.com. (Michael Saunders)

That the collection survives and thrives owes to a tenacious staff led by a regional archivist who retired in March after 46 years, Michael Saunders. He is quick to credit the “innate stubbornness” of his team and support from the Secretary of State’s office, partner agencies and scores of volunteers.

Of course, digitizing, gatekeeping and otherwise managing the records is an endless task fit for the mythical Sisyphus. It requires, Saunders says, “the ability to see how a bunch of mundane and even sometimes tedious work gets you to a better outcome.” Which is, he says, to serve “a legacy of societal memory.”

In other words, for our collective psyche, there’s no place like home.

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Michael Saunders for his invaluable help with this installment.

Below are 2 additional photos, 4 pages of a 20th anniversary program, a newsletter page and 24 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Also helpful was a HistoryLink essay on the King County Land Use Survey.

Regional Archives System graphic. (Puget Sound Branch, Washington State Archives)
Dedication plaque for the entry sculpture “A Collection.” (Clay Eals)
First page of a program marking the 20th anniversary of the archives branch Bellevue College location. (Michael Saunders)
Second page of a program marking the 20th anniversary of the archives branch Bellevue College location. (Michael Saunders)
Third page of a program marking the 20th anniversary of the archives branch Bellevue College location. (Michael Saunders)
Fourth page of a program marking the 20th anniversary of the archives branch Bellevue College location. (Michael Saunders)
March 2010 page from Fall City Historical Society newsletter saluting the archives. (Ruth Pickering)
Jan. 15, 1936, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p10.
March 15, 1938, Seattle Times, p5.
May 19, 1940, Seattle Times, p3.
Sept. 3, 1940, Seattle Times, p5.
Sept. 5, 1940, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p8.
June 16, 1956, Seattle Times, p5.
Oct. 28, 1956, Seattle Times, p133.
May 12, 1957, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p36.
Sept. 15, 1957, Seattle Times, p37.
March 23, 1958, Seattle Times p38.
Feb. 1, 1973, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p4.
Feb. 18, 1973, Seattle Times, p37.
May 17, 1973, Seattle Times, p8.
May 22, 1973, Seattle Times, p3.
May 22, 1973, Seattle Times, p15.
Dec. 2, 1977, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p3.
Dec. 2, 1979, Seattle Times, p166.
March 23, 1980, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p43.
March 23, 1980, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p45.
June 18, 1980, Seattle Times, p101.
March 25, 1981, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p25.
Feb. 24, 1982, Seattle Times, p87.
July 6, 1983, Seattle Times, p81.
March 23, 1994, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p22.
March 31, 2007, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p88.

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