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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 31, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 3, 2024

‘Vanishing Seattle’ book trains our eyes on local signs of the past

By Clay Eals

Funny, the word “vanish.” In a magic trick, when something vanishes, it suddenly disappears. But is what we cannot see really gone? What if it lingers in our minds and hearts? Sometimes, collective memory can be as strong — or stronger — than real, physical life.

Cynthia Brothers embodied such thoughts eight years ago in launching a social-media movement to document and celebrate well-known local places that seemingly drop daily from our view. She named it Vanishing Seattle.

Brothers, 43, has grown her mostly volunteer and partly grant-funded following to 117,000. Last year, she mounted a flashy exhibit in Pioneer Square and this year published a book, “Signs of Vanishing Seattle,” which returns to our consciousness the eye-popping branding remnants of more than 75 lost treasures.

Such as Andy’s Diner! If you moved to Seattle since 2008, you may not recognize this unpretentious eatery on Fourth Avenue South, at least by that name. (For the past 16 years, it’s been a Chinese restaurant and karaoke bar, the Orient Express.)

Long before stadiums arose in industrial Sodo, Andy’s Diner embraced the area’s rail-track milieu and created a colorful identity, easily seen from its busy arterial, by piecing together a building made of decommissioned railroad cars.

In 1949, Andy Nagy started with one car at 2711 Fourth Ave. S.. Joined by nephew Andy Yurkanin in 1955, he moved it two blocks south in 1956 and eventually expanded to seven cars. The pair built it into a steakhouse and banquet facility — the most visible element of what became a local food-service empire — revered by a broad swath of return customers, including hungry newswriters.

It wasn’t that railcar eateries were unusual. Such diners have deep roots in the East. It was more the flair of a fun image. “We are after a tradition, an atmosphere,” Nagy told Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Emmett Watson in 1959. A Seattle Times headline in 1973 added a playful pun: “Choo Choo Chew Chew.”

Hence Brothers’ affection for the fanciful Andy’s Diner sign, which collector John Bennett loaned for last year’s exhibit and is included in the “Signs” book. Other Seattle touchstones range from music venues and LGBTQ+ bars to record stores and even shoe and antique shops.

Some signs still hang on. A few, as with Andy’s Diner, are modified. Most have … vanished. The book likens them all to rabbits out of the proverbial hat.

To Brothers, they’re “love letters to the sign artisans and social landmarks that brought soul to our city, and a testament to their ongoing impact and legacies, still being felt today.”

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Cynthia Brothers, John Bennett and Chuck Flood for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you also will find 2 additional photos, 4 documents on Andy’s Diner by restaurant historian and author Chuck Flood and 61 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.