To see answers to the three questions posed in the first paragraph of text, scroll down to “Web Extras.”

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 29, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 1, 2026

Pioneering ‘Quizdown’ showcased local students’ wisdom, futures

By Clay Eals

Quick quiz: When the Ice Age ended, was the terrain rocky and rough or flat and fertile? What type of engine burns oil, not gasoline? If you turn a quart of water into steam, would the steam be more or less than a quart?

For answers, many of us today would dive into Google. Not so, however, for children who starred in 366 episodes of Seattle’s first locally produced program, “Quizdown,” which featured 5,000 fourth- through sixth-graders from public and private schools across King County.

Broadcast on Saturdays, “Quizdown” began on KOMO radio on Jan. 8, 1949, converted to TV on KING on Nov. 1, 1952, and on Dec. 12, 1953, returned to KOMO, where it remained on TV for the rest of its 16-1/2-year run.

From schools, KOMO and the co-sponsoring Seattle Post-Intelligencer solicited students’ questions, which numbered in the tens of thousands and probed topics in science, history, math and civics.

Longtime “quizmaster” Millard Ireland then interviewed and popped questions to pre-teens during the half-hour shows. Installments featured six students from each of two schools (plus alternates), competing for their schools to win encyclopedias, record players and other prizes.

“That it was on TV made it an example for countless kids that education is important, it can be fun, and it can lead to rewards,” reflects former longtime KING-TV anchor Jean Enersen, who helped represent Magnolia’s Our Lady of Fatima Parish School at age 11 in 1956.

The show’s name stemmed from “spelldown,” an event in which all contestants start standing, then sit as they’re eliminated. In “Quizdown,” though, students sat at school desks, facing cameras. Signs hung from their necks indicating their names and grade levels.

The show’s peppy personality derived from Ireland, an early newscaster who later became a U.S. Civil Defense official. His encouraging, rapid-fire exchanges with kids hinted at their later lives. On Feb. 1, 1958, for example, he ferreted out the interests of John Hay Elementary sixth-grader Norm Ahlquist.

“I like to work with radio and television,” Ahlquist said. “When they don’t work, I like to find out what’s wrong with them. … One time there was just a raster [grid pattern] but no picture. There was only one video tube in there, so we checked it, and it turned out to be completely dead.”

“You know,” Ireland deadpanned, “you might be teaching our technicians something about how to fix their own sets.”

Today, Ahlquist, 79, of Capitol Hill, boasts a long career in computers and civil engineering.

For another student from the same show, former Colman Elementary sixth-grader Cris Krisologo, (pronounced kris-OH-luh-go), 80, of Columbia City, “Quizdown” was consequential:

“It was like, ‘I can do that. I could probably answer those questions.’ Doing a show with younger kids really makes a difference. You start to get their juices going and thinking, ‘What do I want to really be?’ ”

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Norm Ahlquist, Cris Krisologo, Darwin Mitchell, Cal Ernst, Jean Enersen and especially Lindsy Ireland and Joe Wren 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 while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you will find answers to the quiz questions posed in the first paragraph above, a video of the Feb. 1, 1958, episode of “Quizdown”; a video interview with a participant in that show, Cris Krisologo; 2 additional photos and 42 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Answers to quiz questions in the first paragraph above:

1. Rocky and rough.
2. Diesel.
3. More. (One quart equals 1,600 quarts of steam.)

 

UPDATE: We just received the following email from Eugenia Woo of Historic Seattle:

Historic Seattle decided to reschedule our HeartBomb at Gas Works Park because of the Seahawks parade on Wednesday, February 11.

The HeartBomb is now scheduled for Tuesday, February 17. Meet at NOON; photo around 12:10/12:15 pm.

On Jan. 21, 2026, the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted 5-0 (with two recusals) to table Seattle Parks’ proposal for Gas Works Park, with conditions for Parks to address.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 21, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 25, 2025

Past, present, future:
Balancing safety and art at Gas Works Park

By Jean Sherrard

(Reader’s Note: This column is being published a day early to coincide with today’s pivotal Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board meeting regarding the fate of the Gas Works towers.)

In February 1971, 13-year-old Peter Steinbrueck accompanied his father, architect Victor Steinbrueck,

to an abandoned industrial site on the north shore of Lake Union.

The coal-gas plant had been shuttered since 1956. Its towers, pipes, and vats were widely regarded as toxic leftovers — candidates for removal rather than reverence.

But camera in hand, Peter saw something else.

“I was just a kid exploring,” he told me recently. “But even then, you could feel the power of it.”

While his dad sketched the two dominant towers from the ground, Peter photographed him at work, capturing a moment when the site’s fate hung between erasure and reinvention.

Even then, its uncertain future had drawn the attention of landscape architect Richard Haag. He had come to Seattle to help establish the University of Washington’s landscape architecture program at

Victor Steinbrueck’s encouragement. Haag proposed transforming the abandoned gas plant into a public park — a radical idea at the time.

Haag never sugarcoated the site’s condition. “It was awful,” he recalled in a 2015 interview. “I just thought, ‘God, what a horrible place … What an ecological disaster.’”

But where others saw only blight, Haag saw possibility — and a design problem to solve.

With no forests or rock outcroppings to anchor a conventional park design, Haag camped on the site, sleeping beneath the towers, waiting for the place to declare itself.

It did, unmistakably.

Facing fierce public opposition — particularly from the

family of late City Council member Myrtle Edwards, who viewed the plant as an ugly stain on the lakefront — Haag defended the towers in public hearings by turning them into characters.

The largest became “Myrtle Edwards.” The one behind it, standing in her wake, became her husband.

“Wait a minute,” Haag realized. “Here’s a whole family.”

By anthropomorphizing what critics dismissed as junk, Haag reframed industrial debris as presence — what he later called “obdurate objects,” refusing to disappear. When Gas Works Park opened in 1975, the towers remained.

A half-century later, the skyline has risen around Gas Works Park, but the vision of open engagement has narrowed.

In 2015, Haag and historian Thaisa Way publicly argued to “Free the Towers” — remove the fencing around them and allow visitors to walk among the structures as sculptural ruins.

That hope has collapsed with tragedy. Since 2012, at least three people have died after falling from the park’s structures, most recently a 15-year-old boy in July. Eleven others have been injured in the past decade, some suffering broken bones or brain damage.

In the aftermath of those accidents, grieving parents called for the site to be declared a public hazard. The city, facing anguish and liability, confronts a painful question: Has preservation of the structures become untenable?

For now, Seattle Parks & Recreation has reinforced the fencing that encircles the central tower complex.

Noted Seattle public artist John Fleming finds the fencing dispiriting — visually dominant, hostile in tone and, as the tragedies have made clear, no guarantee of safety. It leaves the city trapped in a seemingly impossible binary: leave the hazard as it is, or remove it entirely.

“Do we cut down our trees because someone might climb one and fall?” Fleming asked during a recent visit. “You can’t eliminate all risk from the public realm. We have to live with facts on the ground,” he continues. “But that doesn’t mean tearing everything down.”

Fleming — whose public art includes “Western Tapestry” along Western Avenue below Pike Place Market and “Grass Blades,” an installation at Seattle Center composed of 110 tall, brightly colored vertical metal pieces — has an idea for a third way: a protective wrapper encircling the tower complex.

In his concept, a smooth, serpentine wall of colorful panels weaves around the rusting Gas Works bones. It would be impossible to climb and could rest lightly atop the capped, toxic soil, avoiding deep foundations.

The proposal is practical and philosophical.

The towers would no longer beckon as a playground. But instead of a fence that shouts “keep out,” Fleming describes his proposed art wall as a tribute — both to the historic structures and to the imaginative impulse that first saved them.

WEB EXTRAS

Update: John Fleming’s “Third Way” Perspective

Following the publication of this column, artist John Fleming shared with us a letter he has drafted for the Seattle Times. Writing in response to a previous reader’s letter regarding safety at the park, Fleming argues that the current “middle path” offered by the city is actually a plan for erasure.

John describes the Parks Department’s December 2025 eighty-five page “Pedestrian Appurtenance Removal Report” as a failure of imagination, noting that if their plan is followed—removing every item rendered in red in their drawings—the historic character of the site will be lost.

Countering the “Red Zone”

In a follow-up exchange today, Fleming provided an illustration to counter the Parks Department’s proposal to strip the structures of their “danger.” By taking the city’s own drawings and adding an 11-foot high gray band at the base, he illustrates a simpler, more surgical alternative.

Fleming notes that since the city’s own reports state that 99% of people cannot scale an 11-foot barrier without assistance (like a ladder or rope), a targeted barrier in the 11-to-15-foot zone could effectively keep climbers out while saving the historic “red” elements above that line.

As John notes in his response to the Times:

“I am writing in response to Tim O’Connor’s letter claiming that Seattle Parks Department has presented a well thought out middle path… The report includes detailed drawings with items rendered in red for removal. If you take away everything marked in red, all that is left are nine or ten tall smooth cylinders, hardly what we think of as our historic Gas Works.

We’ve been stating that we don’t want to cut down our trees to prevent young people from falling out of them. SPD’s so called middle path is like cutting all the branches off so we’re left with telephone poles.”

His vision reminds us that treating these industrial relics with the same respect afforded to high art might finally shift public behavior from hazard-climbing to appreciation.

For our narrated 360-degree video of this column, head over here.

Also, Peter Steinbrueck shares his astonishing never-before-seen photos of Gas Works, snapped in February 1971 when he was just 13 years old.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 15, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 18, 2026

Past is present: Immersion in the Depression’s day-to-day ordeal

By Clay Eals

When people picture the Great Depression in Seattle, one scene usually comes to mind. It’s depicted in in our “Then” shot looking north along the waterfront to downtown.

Even in bright sunlight, it’s a dark landscape. While smoky piers bespeak activity, the foreground paints a dispiriting amalgam of scattered, makeshift dwellings. This “town that forgot the straight line,” as dubbed by American Architect magazine in 1933, appears devoid of people. But contrary evidence abounds, including light-colored clothes flapping in the wind.

Overseen by the Seattle Tower (1929, center) and Smith Tower (1914, right), this formerly vacant acreage had been the site of World War I concrete machinery pits before it became known as Hooverville, a jab at Herbert Hoover, the new president when the stock market crashed in 1929, triggering the Depression.

The landscape portrait was taken early in Hooverville’s nine-year existence. What many don’t realize — and what may resonate in today’s homelessness debate — is that the city declared the Hooverville huts hazardous and twice used kerosene to burn them down before letting the 600 inhabitants, nearly all men, rebuild with a promise to keep order. The pact lasted until 1940, when the site was cleared for use by U.S armed forces as the country again mobilized for war.

Those are among countless details in the narrative carved by former Seattle Times editorial board member Bruce Ramsey in his book “Seattle in the Great Depression” (2025, WSU Press). Therein, the retired, longtime regional business reporter, a child of Depression parents, offers two noteworthy approaches to the topic.

First, Ramsey mines material straight from the city’s three daily newspapers and other period publications, including a master’s thesis by a University of Washington student who lived in Hooverville. Second, unusual for history books, Ramsey casts his tale entirely in the present tense.

The result is that, in 344 pages and with 120 photos, readers can experience how Seattle lived through the nationwide economic and social crisis day by grueling day. As Ramsey puts it, “Newspaper stories are first impressions, fresh takes. Because I wasn’t there, I want to listen to the people who were.”

Today, the Hooverville site is near the Port of Seattle’s Terminal 46, eerily empty since the 2017 collapse of cargo giant Hanjin Shipping Co. The governing Northwest Seaport Alliance is seeking a replacement.

Meanwhile, Greg Nickels, tagged with his own Nickelsville jab for homeless villages arising late in his 2001-2009 Seattle mayoral term, argues in a recent Facebook post that the land should “come back in the heart of the city” as a vibrant urban center like Granville Island in Vancouver, B.C.

Whatever its future, the area’s haunting past persists in perspectives of the present.

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Ensign Santiago Vazquez and Petty Officers Daylan Garlic and William Kirk of the U.S. Coast Guard for photo access to their building and especially Bruce and Anne Ramsey 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 while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you will find a 1982 “Now & Then” column on Hooverville, 8 additional photos and 2 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 11, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 8, 2025

Built in 1925, restored Devonshire Apartments preserve affordable housing

By Jean Sherrard

FOR A CENTURY, the red brick Devonshire Apartments have anchored the northern edge of Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. The Tudor flourishes of the handsome, U-shaped touchstone have greeted generations of clerks, shop workers and downtown strivers.

Yet this resilient 1925 structure has more than once come close to death, threatened by economic collapse, eyed by developers and nearly surrendered to decay.

A rare alignment of community will and financing has granted the Devonshire a new lease on life, securing the property’s 62 units as affordable housing for the next century.

Designed by locally prominent architect Henry

Bittman, the building rose during Belltown’s regrade-fueled boom as Wall Street Court — a name that reflected prestige until the 1929 stock market crash. Two weeks later, newspaper ads quietly reintroduced the property under a less toxic banner: the Devonshire.

For nearly a century, its design remained intact, including a basement garage tucked beneath its courtyard — a rare amenity in the early auto age. Discreet brick openings in the exterior masonry reveal vintage pie-safe vents, narrow enough to cool a pastry but too tight for anyone to pinch one. What’s more, the original terrazzo floors and mirror accents in the central stairwell were carefully preserved during the gut renovation.

By 1979, developer Martin Selig, who later built the 76-story Columbia Center, proposed replacing the three-story walk-up with a 48-story tower. Tenants protested and prevailed, saving the bricks but not stopping time. In 2021, a plumbing failure signaled the structure’s pending demise.

Community Roots Housing, the Devonshire’s nonprofit owner since 1993, chose to preserve and modernize. Backed by $33 million from the city Office of Housing, Heritage Bank and federal tax credits, the organization completed a top-to-bottom restoration. “Every time we peeled back a layer, it was like playing back an idea from 100 years ago,” says Jordan Sullivan, real estate director.

Crews poured new concrete shear walls inside the masonry to meet seismic codes. They solved puzzles ranging from odd rooftop structures composed of stacked old-growth timbers to ancient ducts, nicknaming the new walls after cheeses — cheddar, never Swiss. (“No holes allowed,” Sullivan quips.)

One facade detail puzzled the team: repeating terra-cotta shields bearing a large “S.” Did it stand for Seattle? Newly unearthed 1925 documents offer a clue:the letter likely honors F.M. Stanley, the original owner who abandoned the “Wall Street” branding after the crash.

For new tenant Kat Metrovich, the “S” means survival.

A former PCC cheesemonger priced out of Queen Anne, Metrovich says landing affordable digs feels life changing. “It’s challenging to locate housing in this town if you’re not right in the money,” she says. “This feels like home.”

According to Community Roots CEO Colleen Echohawk, that sentiment is the renovation’s true measure. “The goal is simple,” she says. “To keep people housed and happy for another 100 years.”

WEB EXTRAS

 For a narrated street-side 360 degree video view of the Devonshire Apartments, click here.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 1, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 4, 2026

Meadowbrook Pool turns 50

‘A sense of belonging’ where there’s ‘nothing but water’

By Clay Eals

If you zip along busy 35th Avenue Northeast, Meadowbrook Pool is hard to miss, just as when it opened 50 years ago.

The building bears a distinctively broad and slanted roof. Up a wooded sweep of steps and inside the entry, its bustling lobby acts as a prelude to action in the pool itself. Swimmers dot the pool’s water beneath a wood-beamed vault ceiling that creates the aura of a mountain lodge.

Smiles are everywhere — exactly the point when the natatorium was dreamed up with six other city pools  and voter-approved as part of the Forward Thrust campaign in 1968.

“In a place like Seattle, there was really nowhere to learn to swim except the lakes,” recalls 94-year-old Green Lake resident David Towne, city Parks superintendent when Meadowbrook opened. “I think the idea was to teach everybody to swim and live in this part of the world where we have nothing but water.”

Designed by Seattle architects Calvin/Gorasht, the 44-by-75-foot pool was dedicated Oct. 28, 1975. It presides at the southeast corner of Meadowbrook Playfield, a site with deep roots. Formerly part of Meadowbrook Golf Course, established in the early 1930s, the complex abuts the 1963 Nathan Hale High School, mirroring school/pool placements elsewhere in Seattle.

Though fueled by Forward Thrust money — bond measures that created the Kingdome, neighborhood improvements, arterial highways and other projects — Meadowbrook Pool’s construction was no easy endeavor.

Hindered by swampy land near Thornton Creek and bids more expensive than forecast, plus economic fallout from the notorious Boeing Bust in the early 1970s, the project took several years longer than anticipated to complete.

Today, however, the pool — with a newer community center built next door in the late 1990s — is a point of pride, what Towne calls a “mark of achievement” for a district tucked between Lake City Way and northern Lake Washington. Of course, he allows that not everyone is a swimmer, but the pool and community-center combo provides a sum greater than its parts, a place “to socialize, be involved. It adds a sense of belonging.”

Embodying that spirit is Jenson Yuen, who grew up in the neighborhood and began swimming at Meadowbrook at age 4.

He started volunteering at the pool in 2010, has been employed there for 11 years and is now senior lifeguard and assistant coordinator.

“Connecting with various generations” inspires him, he says. “In our recreation swim, we have grandmothers bringing their grandkids. We have parents who take the day off, who take their newborn babies here, and they swim. It’s truly a way for everyone to come together, and it’s a really great place to just have fun.”

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Valarie Bunn, Jeanette Voiland, Dave Belanger, Stacy Moe, Jenson Yuen and especially David Towne 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 while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you will find a video interview of Jenson Yuen,  the pool’s dedication program, 14 additional photos and 8 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.