THEN1: Dancers perform with veils in the newly opened Sylvan Theatre in 1922. Since that time, it has seen music and theatrical performances as well as hosting graduation ceremonies and other university events. (Courtesy UW Collections)NOW1 (for on-line use): Aspiring MFA candidates from the School of Drama improvise on the greensward in front of the 164-year-old columns. From left, standing: Sebastian Wang, Taylor McWilliams-Woods, Jerik Fernandez, Minki Bai, Yeonshin Kim, Marena Kleinpeter, and Betzabeth Gonzalez; on the ground, Adriana Gonzales. In an impromptu ad lib, each actor chose characters from Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Can you guess who’s who? (Jean Sherrard)
Published in The Seattle Times online on May 29, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on June 1, 2025
Enduring from 1861, columns bring ‘LIFE’ to UW’s Sylvan Theater
By Jean Sherrard
This idyllic grove with four tall columns contains elements that might seem contradictory: youthful expectation and ambition framed by academic tradition and a whiff of mortality — in short, the stuff that educators’ dreams are made on.
The quartet is among Seattle’s oldest extant architectural artifacts. Originally old-growth cedar trees, toppled near Hood Canal and floated to Henry Yesler’s waterfront sawmill, the 24-foot-tall columns
The Territorial University Building at Fourth and University stood on the downtown site of today’s Fairmont Olympic Hotel. Designed in 1860 by John Pike, after whom Pike Street was named, the two-story structure was razed in 1910. (Courtesy UW Collections)
adorned the portico of the 1861 Territorial University building downtown.
Carved by early postmaster O.J. Carr and cabinet makers A.P. De Lin and O.C. Shorey, the sturdy, fluted columns, topped with scroll-shaped “volutes” in accordance with Ionic style, offered potent symbols of classical education. (Shorey and De Lin later applied their carpentry skills to casket-making in pioneer Seattle, founding the funeral home that became Bonney-Watson.)
Some called it hubris when a town with fewer than 200 mostly male inhabitants built a two-story white academy on an overlooking bluff. But it also indicated exuberant faith in the region’s future. For Arthur Denny, donor of much of the academic institution’s land, and Daniel Bagley, an influential Methodist preacher, a university was the tail that was to wag the dog of civic life.
As Seattle boomed and 1889 statehood loomed, the homegrown University of Washington abandoned the then-crowded business district for largely undeveloped holdings then-north of the city in 1895. The original building, though a sentimental favorite, was left to molder before being torn down in 1910.
In 1911, the columns were installed on the Quad in front of Savery Hall.
Its four columns were salvaged and added to the expanding campus in 1911.
Edmond S. Meany, head of the History Department, supplied each column with a name: Loyalty, Industry, Faith and Efficiency, adding up to “LIFE.”
After a decade of being stranded outside Savery Hall on the Quad, the university held a contest to determine their final placement.
Marshall Gill died following surgery on June 21, 1921, one year after submitting the prize-winning design for a setting to feature the UW columns.
The winner: 19-year-old Marshall Gill, architecture student and son of the late Mayor Hiram Gill, who had died a year earlier during the influenza pandemic. His design for an outdoor “Sylvan theatre setting” southeast of Drumheller Fountain was acclaimed as “an appropriate and fitting tribute to the … impressive solemnity” of the columns.
Young Gill, however, witnessed only the first fruits of his labor. Within weeks of the grove’s creation, he died of a brain embolism following a tonsillectomy at age 20.
The stone park bench memorializing Marshall Gill sits next to the columns. (Jean Sherrard)
Two years later, School of Architecture alumni installed a stone bench and commemorative plaque at one end of the grassy stage.
In this tranquil spot, treasured by generations of UW students, Marshall Gill created a lasting monument — his only surviving design — to youth, artistry and history.
Columns with homage to Isidora Duncan
WEB EXTRAS
For our narrated 360-degree video, captured on location, click right here.
Also, in a separate video, our MFA actors introduce themselves, reflecting on their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Click on the photo below to see it.
In late-breaking news, here’s a pertinent photo and email just sent in by reader Roseanne Kimlinger:
I had kind of a “Wow!” moment of recognition reading Now and Then in today’s Pacific NW magazine. The Gill memorial bench in your photo looks an awful lot like the one these three UW students are sitting on in the photo I’ve attached! They are my aunt and two of her friends, the year was 1928.
I may have to head over to campus to check it out. Amazing that bench is still there.
Thank you for an unexpected Sunday morning delight!
THEN: Judging from the array of vehicles, this dramatic view of treeless Pioneer Square and its pergola, along with the imposing Mutual Life Building, was taken in 1956. The street section at lower right was pedestrianized in the early 1970s. It was paved first with cobblestones, later with bricks. (Bob Carney)NOW: Budding London Plane trees obscure the Pioneer Square pergola and the Mutual Life Building behind it. We could not access the roof of the three-floor Merchants Café to snap the repeat of our “Then,” so this photo, taken in mid-April, approaches that height, with the camera affixed to a 20-foot pole. (Jean Sherrard)
Published in The Seattle Times online on May 22, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on May 25, 2025
Triangular Pioneer Square endures as Seattle’s historical heart
By Clay Eals
Upon us is Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial opening of good-weather jaunts and an infusion of tourists — a perfect time to highlight and reflect upon what we can see of Seattle’s soul.
THEN: In this photo looking north from Yesler Way in Pioneer Square (then Pioneer Place), thousands line First Avenue for the June 10, 1916, Great War-era (later World War I) defense Preparedness Parade. The clear portion of street in front of the Pioneer Building became part of Pioneer Square Park in the early 1970s. (Courtesy Ron Edge)
Other more recently developed sites may draw more traffic or attention, but the triangle with the geometrically odd name of Pioneer Square Park (historically Pioneer Place) evokes a turning point in the city’s early history.
It arose from ashes of the 1889 Great Seattle Fire with enduring masonry buildings, and erupted with entrepreneurs to feed the 1897 Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush.
Click the above image to download a pdf of the Pioneer Square tree walk. (City of Seattle)
It may seem counterproductive to use a “Now” photo in which a good part of the scene is obscured. The photo was taken in mid-April when the corner was blanketed with newly budded London Plane trees, first planted in 1958.
But it’s a nicely contrasting match for our rather naked “Then” photo, circa 1956, that reveals the Square’s classic cast-iron 1909-10 pergola (per-GO-luh here, PER-gu-luh in Britain) and the imposing 1897 Mutual Life Building to its rear across First Avenue.
Discovered years ago in an antique shop by historian Bob Carney, our battered “Then,” looking northwest, hints at the awkward jog of streets near Yesler Way (lower left) that derived from the conflicting desires of early landowners. Lumberman Henry Yesler platted a southside grid with strict compass points, whereas surveyor Arthur Denny lined up northside roads with the diagonal waterfront. The tricky intersection became — and has stayed — a busy traffic hub, first for horses, then public transit and other vehicles.
THEN: Bill Speidel, home office, 1980s. (HistoryLink)
Likely our “Then” was taken from the roof of the nearby Merchants Café. We can speculate that the unknown photographer sought to document the potential of a hub long “in decay,” as later described by promoter-author Bill Speidel.
Contributing to the Square’s revival was Speidel’s popular Underground Tour business, launched in 1964. Preservationists secured the area as an official city and national landmark district in the 1970s, inspired largely by the 1961 demolition of the eye-catching Seattle Hotel nearby and erection of its replacement, the less-than-classic “sinking ship” parking garage.
NOW: The seven-floor 1897 Mutual Life Building houses 48-year-old Magic Mouse Toys. (Clay Eals)
Still standing sentinel is the seven-floor Mutual Life Building, over the years housing retail shops and offices for everything from brokers and dentists to the Seattle Checker Club and the Gemeroy word-puzzle company. Present-day passers-by readily recognize its nearly half-century-old colorful corner tenant, Magic Mouse Toys.
The park’s I-shaped pergola (Latin and Italian for archway) originally was designed to protect a lavish, now-closed below-ground restroom. The pergola took a huge hit on Jan. 15, 2001, when an 18-wheel truck clipped it, reducing it to rubble. A much stronger, identical version was rebuilt there and opened in August 2002.
Today, the triangle survives in tree-covered shade, enticing us all to visit (or revisit) the city’s historical heart.
NOW: A bust of Chief Seattle, completed by sculptor James When in 1909, was installed in Pioneer Square Park at the same time as its pergola, designed by Julian Everett. The bust tops a once-functioning circular fountain. (Clay Eals)NOW: An intriguing element at the north end of Pioneer Square Park is a Tlingit totem pole installed in 1938 and restored in 1972. It is a replica of a stolen Tlingit pole that had been installed there in 1899 and was damaged by fire. (Clay Eals)THEN: In this view looking southeast, and with the original Pioneer Square totem pole standing sentinel, horses pulling wagons line up to drink from the Chief Seattle fountain-trough (left) on Sept. 16, 1909. (Courtesy Bob Carney)NOW: This street-level view, from mid-March before trees had budded, shows Pioneer Square Park, with its 1909-10 pergola, and, behind it, the 1897 Mutual Life Building. (Clay Eals)
WEB EXTRAS
Big thanks to Jamie Lim and especially Bob Carney for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 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.
Snapped in the mid-1950s from a nearby boy scout camp…Taken on 31 October, 2019, Spirit Lake remains, still choked with millions of logs from the erruption.
THEN: The 14-story Alaska Building, Seattle’s first steel-and-concrete skyscraper, captured in 1920. First constructed in 1905, it was home to the regional Social Security Administration’s 14th floor offices through World War II. Smith Tower stands one block south. (Courtesy MOHAI)NOW: At the corner of Second and Cherry, a baker’s dozen of Social Security supporters gather on a bright spring afternoon, hoisting placards: (from left) Yuki Kistler, Marcia Sanders, Gordon Smith, Lee Bruch, David Lee, David Jensen, Michael O’Grady, Karen Chartier, Steve Toomire, Jeanne Sales, unidentified, Kathie and Clare. The Alaska Building is home to Marriott’s Courtyard Hotel. (Jean Sherrard)
Published in The Seattle Times online on May 15, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on May 18, 2025
Social Security, recipients say, ‘makes America truly great’
By Jean Sherrard
When aptly named Frank Messenger arrived in Seattle in late 1936, appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt to direct the city’s first Social Security field office, on his shoulders may have rested the weight of history.
Frank Messenger, appointed by Roosevelt to direct the Seattle field office of the Social Security Administration, is seen here in Portland, Oregon in 1931.
A veteran of World War I, then called the Great War, Messenger had served abroad as a trade negotiator for the Department of Commerce before heading the Treasury Department’s procurement offices in 21 states.
But in helming the nascent effort to weave a safety net for those devastated by the Great Depression, Messenger hit his stride. By early 1937, the rapidly expanding Seattle bureau had moved from cramped Room 213 in the downtown Alaska Building to take over the entire 14th floor.
From that perch, Messenger delivered the New Deal’s signature message of hope and promise. In a 1942 Seattle Times interview, he endorsed his office’s mission.
President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935, using taxation to provide a basic safeguard against “the hazards and vicissitudes of life.”
“If you like people,” he said, “this is an interesting spot.”
Nothing gave him greater job satisfaction, he said, than “telling a young widow [with small children] that she wouldn’t lose her home” or seeing “a trembling old hand sign a brand-new Social Security card” or witnessing “the smile of delight on a youngster’s face” when giving a first card to the child.
“This,” Messenger exulted, “is America!”
Eighty-three years later, the message is under siege. Though insisting Social Security benefits will be protected for nearly 69 million retirees, the current administration has upended the agency, promoting falsehoods about fraud while slashing its workforce by many thousands.
Online, we recently asked local recipients to sum up what Social Security means to them. Their responses:
Patricia Falsetto, retired therapist: “It’s not a giant Ponzi Scheme, but a guaranteed income after retirement, a fund which I personally have been paying into since I was 16 years old.”
John Rahn, retired professor: “An irreplaceable lifeline for retired people with little savings.”
Marcia Sanders, retired teacher: “Instead of exploding it, let’s look at ways to fix it. How about raising the Social Security wage limit above $176,000? Seems like a no-brainer. ”
Karen Kent, retired geriatric mental-health therapist: “I saw many elders whose only income was Social Security. [Without] that income, they would end up homeless or committing suicide to avoid homelessness.”
Linda Bevis, retired teacher: “With Social Security under threat, it makes it much more difficult to predict or plan what my future will look like.”
John Owen, retired City Light engineer: “Social Security is a manifestation of some of the most important values that we share as citizens. It is a fundamental example of what makes America truly great.”
I retired from teaching a little more than a year ago. I rely on a pension and Social Security to have a decent, dignified retirement. I paid into both of those funds over the years. Unlike the members of Howard Lutnick’s family, who wouldn’t complain if a Social Security check were late, I would complain, just as I would complain if a paycheck were late. I earned that money and I depend on it to pay my bills. I don’t have a billion dollar reserve that would cause my income from a Social Security check to be insignificant.
I know that as things stand currently, Social Security will eventually run out of money. I understand why people younger than me feel they won’t get any, and that every year people have to wait longer and longer before they are eligible for it. However, instead of exploding the system, let’s look at ways to fix it. How about continuing to take Social Security out of wages, beyond $176,000? That seems like a no-brainer.
Linda Bevis:
I just retired from teaching last month. In the Fall, when I sent my letter of retirement in to my college, I was factoring in Social Security payments to my monthly retirement income. Now, I don’t know if those payments will come through for me or anyone. It makes it much more difficult to predict or plan what my future will look like.
Francis Janes:
I believe that social security is foundational to our promise to seniors that they live their retirement years with dignity and security. Social security affords seniors peace of mind and a means to pay basic living expenses.
Social security payments affords me the flexibility of living in a way that allows me to explore new hobbies, volunteer with community groups, mentor young people, visit new lands and experience new cultures.
Ginny Weisse:
What does social security mean to me.
Just that Security!
One works and pays into the program and counts on the benefit to be there for you when you retire.
Social security provides essential help/support for the elderly, disabled and Social security may be the only income for some.
John Rahn:
I’ll just say, I have been paying social security tax since
I was 16, and I am still paying it at 81.
It’s an irreplaceable lifeline for retired people
with little savings.
Karen Kent:
As a geriatric mental health therapist who did home visits, I saw many elders whose only income was social security. Even living in low income senior housing, they wouldn’t survive with a cut in that income. They would end up homeless or committing suicide to avoid homelessness.”
Patricia Falsetto:
Social security is not an entitlement or a giant Ponzi scheme. It is supposed to be a guaranteed income after retirement, a fund which I personally have been paying into since I was 16 years old. I am now 74 and attempting to live on my social security. Most of my life I have worked in various places which were non-profit and served the greater social good. In later life I went to graduate school to become a mental health therapist and worked in community mental health for almost 20 years before my retirement 6 years ago. I chose these careers not because of the money I would make but because of the help that I could offer others. My parents both owned small businesses and retired with the confidence that their social security would see them through. And it did. Not because they felt they were getting a handout, but because that was the savings account created by the government to ensure they would have some kind of income besides what they could save. I understand that seriously wealthy people are exempt from paying into social security. I find it outrageous that people in our current government care so little and are so indifferent to the welfare of those with more age and less wealth than them. If they are not required to pay into the fund to help others perhaps they should check which way their moral compass is pointing and focus on that rather than judging and condemning people they don’t understand. I seem to hear the shade of Marie Antoinette whispering in their ears saying “why don’t they just eat cake”.
John Owen:
My parents lived through the Great Depression and paid into Social Security from it’s inception until the conclusion of their working days. Both of them worked very hard throughout their lives but, lacking any education beyond high school, their jobs were fairly low paying so they got by on a very modest income. Consequently, they were never able to accumulate much in the way of retirement savings.
My dad died when he was 71 so he never really got much retirement time in. We never did the math but I’m certain he paid much more into Social Security than he was able to withdraw.
My mom worked until, in her early 80’s, she was no longer able physically to make it up and down the stairs to the stock room in the Hallmark store where she was employed. At that point she finally had to retire and Social Security became her only source of income. It wasn’t much but she was very familiar with getting by on ‘not much’. Thanks to her monthly Social Security check she was able to live in dignity for the last decade of her life. Without it she would have been destitute.
In contrast to my parents, I’ve been lucky enough to have had a career which blessed me with a pension and enough financial headroom to enable me to put some money away for retirement. If my Social Security check stopped showing up, there would be some serious belt tightening required in our household but we would not lose our house or go hungry. My parents did not have that luxury and neither do millions of other Americans who are not as fortunate as I have been. One of those millions of Americans is my own brother. He, like many others who have little else besides Social Security to keep them afloat, lives in a legislative district that consistently favors the party that now plans to take those benefits away.
Francis Perkins, the Secretary of Labor under FDR, was the architect of the policies that became the Social Security Act, Medicare and Medicaid. She was also responsible for the creation of host of other things we now take for granted like the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation and workplace safety just to name a few. When I think of what Social Security means to me, I think of what she had to say about it:
“The people are what matter to government…and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.”[1]
“It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.”[2]
“…we will go forward into the future a stronger nation because of the fact that we have this basic rock of security under all of our people.”[3]
In other words, Social Security is a manifestation of some of the most important values that we share as citizens. It is a fundamental example of what makes America truly great.
THEN: Near the end of the 30-second Rainier Beer motorcycle ad, filmed in 1978, motorcyclist Randy Chase is seen facing a glowing Mount Rainier, with a Rainier Cold Pack strapped behind him. In Brian Nyjordet’s and Jack Inglis’ original vision, the motorcycle would have been a giant beer bottle. (Courtesy Isaac Olsen, “Rainier: A Beer Odyssey”)NOW: In this wider view of a re-creation of the commercial, motorcyclist Dave Lamar of Tacoma heads toward Mount Rainier, surrounded by roadway improvements and a recent 350-house development. (Clay Eals)
Published in The Seattle Times online on May 8, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on May 11, 2025
Site for 1979 Rainier ad, conceived by students, is rural no more
By Clay Eals
It’s what I call an all-too-common Northwest reality: One of our region’s best-remembered idyllic landscapes is now a vast housing development.
This rural Pierce County site, one hour’s drive southeast of Seattle, where 230th Avenue East becomes Buckley Tapps Highway, once was a narrow, two-lane curve flanked only by backwoods, meadows and aging wooden fence posts.
Long-timers know it as the setting for a 30-second commercial first aired in 1979, in which a solitary motorcycle sweeps by, heading in pre-sunset magic light toward a glowing Mount Rainier. Besides crickets, the ad’s only sound is the bike’s overdubbed, seemingly changing gears: “Raaaaiiiii-neeeerrrr-Beeeeerrrrrr.”
Longtime film actor Mickey Rooney starred in several Rainier Beer commercials. This is a poster from one of the ads.
It could be the most talked-about local TV spot ever. Its saga — and that of other hilarious Rainier commercials, including super-sized “wild” beer bottles “hunted” by actor Mickey Rooney — is told in an irresistible two-hour documentary, “Rainier: A Beer Odyssey.” It debuted at the 2024 Seattle International Film Festival and has had several later runs.
Isaac Olsen, director of “Rainier: A Beer Odyssey,” at the 2024 Seattle International Film Festival. (Courtesy Isaac Olsen)
Where did the motorcycle idea come from? Not Rainier or its ad agency. Many insisted to the documentary’s director, Isaac Olsen, that they knew someone who dreamed it up. But they offered no proof, so the doc skirted the question.
THEN: The May 13, 1979, Oregonian newspaper article that helped filmmaker Isaac Olsen locate the two originators of the idea behind the Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial, including Brian Nyjordet, who had saved the clip. The writer, Clay Eals, had lost the clip but not his photo negatives from the assignment. (Courtesy Brian Nyjordet)
After I saw the film last May, I informed Olsen that I happened to write a 1979 story for the Oregonian newspaper about two Eugene high-school students who sent in the idea in 1976 and were paid $500.
That evidence helped Olsen locate the true originators: Brian Nyjordet, a Poulsbo carpenter, and Jack Inglis, a Portland coffee-wine bar proprietor. Olsen plans to feature them in a sequel focusing on the motorcycle spot.
THEN/NOW: Shown in 1978 (inset), one year after high school, is Brian Nyjordet, who first conceived of the Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial. (Courtesy Brian Nyjordet) Today, Nyjordet stands with Dave Lamar’s motorcycle at the Pierce County site of the 1978 shoot. Inspired by Rainier’s previous commercial in which frogs croaked “Rainier,” Nyjordet imagined “Rainier Beer” sounding like a gear-shifting motorcycle. (Clay Eals)
Nyjordet (who conceived the idea after seeing the sketch-parody movie “The Groove Tube”) and Inglis (who captured it in a storyboard and handled communication) remain thrilled that Rainier embraced their basic concept and executed it at a perfect location.
THEN/NOW: Jack Inglis, who refined and sent in his and Brian Nyjordet’s idea for the Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial in 1976, sits astride his Honda 250 motorcycle while being photographed on May 10, 1979, for an Oregonian story about the resulting TV spot. (Clay Eals) Inset is Inglis today. (Courtesy Jack Inglis)
Of course, the mountain’s still there. So are the two lanes, wider and still divided by a double-yellow line, but surrounded by (no typo) 350 one- and two-floor suburban homes built over the past 10 years, with high perimeter fences, gravel berms, tree saplings, trimmed grass and shrubs, tiny pink marker flags, speed-limit and street signs, fire hydrants, a stormwater facility and a streetlamp.
Typically whizzing along the gradual turn is a sporadic stream of sizable cars, trucks and the occasional motorcycle. Many flout the posted 35-mph limit, slowing only to turn onto side streets.
Posted blue and orange placards promote “Up to 6 Bedroom Homes,” “Up to 5 Car Garages” and, naturally, “Mountain Views.”
But during breaks in traffic, you can still hear an intermittent cricket.
NOW: A real-estate sign posted at the site of the 1978 commercial promotes “Mountain Views.” (Clay Eals)
WEB EXTRAS
Big thanks to Dave Lamar, Brian & Joele Nyjordet, Jack Inglis, Bobbi Lee Betschart (of the Elk Run development) and especially Isaac Olsen for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 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.
Here is a June 11, 2025 story on Brian Nyjordet and the famed motorcycle commercial, by Mike De Felice of the Kitsap Daily Sun. And click here and here to download pdf files of Mike’s story and photos as they appeared in the Port Orchard Independent and North Kitsap Sun.
(Above) The Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial filmed in 1978 is re-created April 5, 2025, at the same spot, with motorcyclist Dave Lamar of Tacoma doing the honors. The rural Pierce County site, one hour’s drive southeast of Seattle, is where 230th Avenue East becomes Buckley Tapps Highway. Here are three versions. (Clay Eals)
(Above) The classic Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial filmed in 1978 is re-created April 5, 2025, at the same spot, with three different nameless motorcyclists doing the honors. The rural Pierce County site, one hour’s drive southeast of Seattle, is where 230th Avenue East becomes Buckley Tapps Highway. Here are three versions. (Clay Eals)
(Above) Here is the original 1979 Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial, embedded in a trailer for the documentary “Rainier: A Beer Odyssey.” The trailer includes sound effects from a previous “frog” commercial.
(Above) Brian Nyjordet, of Poulsbo, reflects on how he came up with the idea for the classic Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial that was filmed in 1978 and first aired in 1979. He is standing on April 5, 2025, at the site the commercial was filmed. (Clay Eals)
NOW: At the site of the famous Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial, Dave Lamar (left) of Tacoma stands with his motorcycle and with Brian Nyjordet of Poulsbo, who originated the idea in 1976. On the back of Lamar’s cycle is a present-day Rainier cold pack, just as in the original 1978 spot. (Clay Eals)NOW: Brian Nyjordet holds up the 1979 Oregonian clipping that details his role in originating the classic Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial. (Clay Eals)A “wild” Rainier bottle captured in a collactor’s cache. (Ron Edge)May 31, 1974, The Herald, Everett.June 16, 1977, The Herald, Everett.Spring 1977, The Axe, South Eugene High School.Feb. 6, 1979, Tacoma News Tribune.March 23, 1986, Seattle Times, p55.March 23, 1986, Seattle Times, p57.March 23, 1986, Seattle Times, p60.
THEN: The sidewheeler Alida is shown in 1870 from the north end of Yesler’s Wharf. Logs in the foreground were destined for Yesler’s sawmill, only blocks away. This photo is the second earliest extant portrait of Seattle’s waterfront. (Courtesy Ron Edge)NOW: This view looks east along the recently opened Marion Street pedestrian overpass. The open water surrounding the Alida in our “then” photo has been filled in over much of the past century. Today’s seawall stands nearly 500 feet west of the original shoreline. (Jean Sherrard)
Published in The Seattle Times online on May 1, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on May 4, 2025
Before its fiery demise, the Alida sidewheeler briefly served 1870 elites
By Jean Sherrard
Some might call it a one-hit wonder, but for a few months in 1870, the Alida, the sidewheeler steamer in our main “Then” photo, reigned on Puget Sound. Uncrowded Seattle, fewer than 20 years old, had barely topped 1,100 in population. Ambitious, rough-hewn residents focused on laying foundations for the future.
In one of the earliest extant photos of the waterfront, snapped from the west end of Henry Yesler’s wharf, a log boom from Yesler’s mill seems dense enough almost to be walkable.
Just above the Alida’s sidewheel can be made out the dirt intersection of Marion Street and Front Street (now First Avenue). Center left, the steeple of Rev. Daniel Bagley’s five-year-old Methodist Protestant Church (popularly called “the Brown Church”) points heavenward.
An early photo of the Territorial University building, built in 1861 near the corner of Fifth and University. The ionic columns in its portico were made of cedar from Hood Canal and milled at Yesler’s mill. In 1910, the structure was razed. Its columns were moved north to the University of Washington campus, where they stand today. (Paul Dorpat collection)
Bagley was a prime mover behind the construction of the Territorial University (today’s University of Washington) whose dome-shaped cupola graces the center horizon.
Snapped by photographer George Moore, a west-facing view of the first Central School (upper center) near Third and Madison, the first schoolhouse erected by the Seattle School District. The new school had two classrooms for 120 students. When it opened Aug. 4, 1870, it was standing-room only. (Courtesy Ron Edge)
Keen eyes also will make out, at upper right, the original bell-towered Central School, Seattle’s first public schoolhouse nearing completion.
The Alida, commissioned by the entrepreneurial Starr brothers, eager to obtain a federal subsidy to deliver mail between Olympia and Victoria, was constructed in two locations. Its 115-foot hull was laid in Olympia in 1869, while its upper decks, luxuriously appointed with a dozen comfortable staterooms, were installed the following June at Hammond’s Boatyard near the foot of Columbia Street.
Capt. E.A. Starr, jockeying for influence, invited Seattle’s “it” crowd for an inaugural voyage on June 29, 1870, and it seems likely that the prominent citizens are those seen assembled on the upper deck for a round-trip trial run to Port Townsend. By all accounts, the four-hour, eight-minute trip delighted the passengers.
Reported the July 4 Daily Intelligencer, “During the passage down, the beautiful weather, the delightful scenery, the rapid and easy progress made, and, last though not least, the excellent instrumental and vocal music which was furnished by the ladies, all contributed to the enjoyment of the occasion.”
Within weeks, however, the Alida, intended to supplant older, slower steamers, proved too unstable for the daunting passage across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Starrs soon replaced it with the 168-foot North Pacific, a heavier, more powerful vessel that bested all comers.
The Alida was consigned to calmer waters, steaming among Olympia, Seattle and other Puget Sound ports until 1890 when the sidewheeler met a fiery end. Moored at Gig Harbor, the elegant flash in the pan burned to the waterline, set alight by embers from a raging brush fire.
WEB EXTRAS
As promised, here’s the oldest known photo of the waterfront, taken in 1869, one year before our “then”.
Most definitely click to enlarge for full effect. Maybe click again!
Taken by George Robinson of Seward’s departure for Alaska in 1869. This astonishing four-panel panorama was stitched together by the inimitable and mighty Ron Edge.
Also, for our usual narrated 360-degree video, captured on the waterfront from the Marion Street overpass, click here!
Every column featuring maritime topics enlists the finest historians who help ensure we use only the choicest ingredients! Michael Mjelde (former editor of ‘The Sea Chest’) and Stephen Edwin Lundgren are always fit for purpose.
Lundgren adds a few notes to the mix, starting with a fascinating reflection on the 1869 photo just above:
About the Robinson photograph of Seward sailing away to Alaska in July 1869. It’s the sidewheeler Wilson C. Hunt, identifiable by the unique steeple housing for the vertical piston engine.
Accounts of Seward’s trip say he arrived in Sitka on the steamer Active. Prior to that he arrived from SF in Victoria July 20.
Here Lundgren quotes from a lengthy Historylink article written by an authoritative Phil Dougherty:
“The next morning he left for a tour of Puget Sound on the steamer Wilson G. Hunt, accompanied by a party of more than a dozen men and women that included Thomas Somerville (d. 1915), a Scottish Presbyterian minister. Somerville later wrote a vivid narrative of the trip titled ‘The Mediterranean of the Pacific’ that appeared in the September 1870 edition of Harper’s magazine.”
… First stop Port Townsend, then Port Ludlow. Port Gamble, Port Madison, then Port Seattle (just kidding) for an evening visit, thence same evening past Tacoma to Steilacoom overnight, next day to Olympia. Returned “reaching Seattle about 9 p.m., where it was greeted with a 13-gun salute. After a brief stop at Yesler’s Wharf, the Hunt continued north, passing Whidbey Island the next day.” where he transferred to the Active. (https://www.historylink.org/File/9969)
So this Seattle photo – July 22, 1869 – shows the sidewheeler “Hunt” heading north to Nanaimo enroute to Alaska via a larger ship, the Active. (Wilson G. Hunt was larger than the Alida? 185.5×25.8×6.75 461 g.t. versus Alida’s 115 feet)
The Active was also a sidewheeler, 173 feet length, in commercial service 1849-1852 as the Gold Hunter (original name), then 1852-62 as the Coast Survey shp USSCS Active, including Puget Sound service in 1856 during the Indian war. One of few Union ships on West Coast during Civil Way (1861 US Navy service). Returned to commercial service, 7 years later in the summer of 1869 to Alaska with a government survey scientific team to observe a solar eclipse, with Seward aboard. Damaged, beached and wrecked near Humboldt, California June 6, 1870.
Another intriguing note from Lundgren:
This could be the Starr vessel Isabel, dates are inclusive, obviously adequate for open water. It resembles the Alida but longer, more cabin room, enclosed bow freight deck, engine & stack further forward.
The Isabel seems to have been mostly in Canadian service until it got damaged and repaired, at which time Ed Starr bought it probably on the cheap for the Straits of Juan de Fuca leg, which as those who read the sad tale of the Clallam know are very dangerous waters.
Michael Mjelde chimes in:
I got out my copy of Roland Carey’s The Steamboat Landing on Elliott Bay, published by the author in 1962, this evening and note how he specified the Alida being originally ‘partially’ built in Olympia as the Tacoma in 1869, and being completed at the Hammond yard in 1870.
The Alida eventually went beyond Port Townsend to Victoria as indicated by brief article in the Victoria Colonist in which they mention that they “sponsoned” her out in a Victoria shipyard because she tended to roll. I don’t know how long she was a ‘mail’ boat but she did serve in that capacity.
For your information, I have a copy of the index of certificates (NARA-Seattle) issued to vessels licensed to carry passengers by the Steamboat Inspection Service.which, at that time was in Port Townsend. Alidais listed twice in that volume. Unfortunately, the page showing how many passengers she was licensed to carry is missing but the reference to Alida starts in 1875.
You may recall she was quite narrow at 18 feet plus paddle boxes; by comparison, Virginia V was eight feet wider; whereas there was only a difference of six feet in their registered length.
Note that she didn’t ‘officially’ become Alida until she was issued that first register by US Customs. Although her initial construction was in Olympia in 1869, the incomplete hull was towed to Seattle (according to Carey, she received her engines in Seattle) and officially became Alida in Seattle.
