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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 23, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 26, 2026

Seattle family sails Norwegian racer through its 100th year

By Jean Sherrard

[For a late breaking update on the Oslo story, head down to the bottom of the column for Peter Giese’s spellbinding account – which includes news from the Norwegian royal family!]

Is there anything more graceful than a wind-filled sail — half an angel’s wing, completed in reflection?

For nearly 90 years, the Giese family has piloted that grace across Northwest inland waters aboard the Oslo, a 36-foot classic sailboat of the Six Metre racing class once sailed by Norway’s Crown Prince Olav, later King Olav V.

In the politically turbulent summer of 1936, German-born Hans Otto Giese (known by his middle name) and his Norwegian American wife, Borghild (“Borgy” to friends and family) crossed the Atlantic by steamship on their honeymoon, visiting relatives in Germany and Norway.

Convinced that a sleek sailboat’s elegant lines were perfectly suited to Puget Sound’s light air, Otto went shopping in Norway. In Trondheim he found the Oslo — 10 years old, built for the crown prince by designer Johan Anker and boatbuilder Christian Jensen. Otto bought her on the spot for $1,650, delivered to Seattle.

When the Oslo arrived in 1937, her mahogany planks had shrunk so badly they showed daylight. She was met at the dock by Anchor Jensen of Jensen Motor Boat — coincidentally sharing the same name as the Oslo’s Norwegian builders, who later built Seattle’s renowned Slo-Mo-Shun hydroplanes. For 50-plus years, Jensen cared for the Oslo: Mast down each fall, into the shed. Mast up each spring.

Each season, the Oslo proved herself, winning races across the region. So infectious was Otto’s enthusiasm that by the 1960s

Seattle boasted one of the largest Six Metre fleets in the world — 18 boats on the starting line each Wednesday night off Leschi. As Otto and Borgy raised their six children, the boat became part racer, part floating campground.

“We were potty-trained and Oslo-trained,” says son Peter Giese, youngest of the siblings. “With Captain Otto,” his brother Emil says, “we were racing competitively and cruising for discovery.” Their brother Stephen recalls the boat as “a member of the family, getting us through wonderful and sometimes hair-raising situations.”

After the war, Otto helped establish Seattle’s Corinthian Yacht Club, where, in his words, members were “athletes, not society people.” He remained at the Oslo’s helm well into his 80s, racing her for the last time at the 1985 Shaw Island Classic. He died the next year.

Today, the siblings who grew up on the sailboat boast other passions and with Otto’s unsentimental clarity have decided to sell. On May 2, the Oslo will make her final Opening Day parade under Giese family colors.

A boat built for a prince became, in time, a vessel of family memory, its seraph’s wing still catching the wind.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 video, captured off of Leschi on Lake Washington, head over here.

And a huge thank you is owed to Howard Lev who, once again,

loaned us his sturdy cabin cruiser to travel from Lake Union to Leschi, where the Oslo is berthed. Also, gratitude in spades to Rob Wilkinson, who piloted Howard’s boat through the treacherous shoals of the Leschi Marina.

Below see more photos of the Giese family, including the magical Oslo under sail, even if on a near windless March day.

Peter Giese’s update – THE REST OF THE STORY

“Several years ago I thought it was time to sell Oslo. My brothers and I were becoming less physically capable of maintaining her, and we each had our own obligations. While my two children were raised aboard Oslo and cruised with us into B.C., their interests lay elsewhere. Our brother Emil convinced me it was time—let’s see her to 100! I placed ads with the Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Swiss, and Canadian national Six Meter associations, as well as the North American Six Meter Association (NASMA), the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, the Victoria Yacht Club, a local boat magazine, and on the International Six Meter Association (ISMA) website.

“NASMA had interest but could not afford trucking Oslo across the country to the East Coast. We received many inquiries. A sailor from Portland made a date to meet me at Leschi to see Oslo, but never showed—later claiming an ER visit. I never heard from them again. Another person demanded a clean history report of any liens, liabilities, and accidents, for which I lost $55; after sending the spotless report, I received no response. The only accidents Oslo had ever been in were touching soft mud or sand while adventuring throughout Puget Sound. There was another sailor in Boston who called several times but bowed out after learning the cost of transportation.

“Early in the advertising blitz, I contacted the Norwegian Consul for this area, inquiring whether the Royal Family was interested in reacquiring Oslo. I actually got a response: they would communicate with the Royal Family about Oslo’s history and availability. The Consul soon reported that the Family was not interested.

“We also got an email from a European company in the midst of rebranding, relishing the opportunity to showcase their new focus with Oslo as the prime example—of what, exactly, I did not know. They promised to maintain her in partnership with the Royal Norwegian Yacht Club, then gift Oslo to the Crown Prince when he became King. But what if he wasn’t a sailor?

“We received many offers that were all very similar: I agree with your price; send me your name and address and I will send you a cashier’s check to pay yourself and the shipper, which I will arrange. The vocabulary and sentence structure were always just a little off-kilter. When I wrote back asking about their sailing history and location, I got no answer.

“There were a few well-wishers who commented, and some mild inquiries, until late January, when I got a call from Brian. He had found our ad on the ISMA website. My first question: what is your sailing experience? Brian had competed in the 2024 and 2025 Six Meter World Championships, and had trailered a Six Meter from Vancouver to New York by himself in three days—sending me a photo of the Six on its trailer behind his beefy truck.

“We spoke at length, and by the end of the conversation we were both giddy and laughing: each of us was exactly what the other had been looking for. Brian wanted a project Six Meter he could maintain and race. He has a shop, is a woodworker, owns a sewing machine for the sails, and can machine parts in both wood and metal. He is an industrial designer. As our ad had made clear, the price for Oslo was secondary to finding her a proper home. We both scored.

“Brian came down to Seattle last weekend to see Oslo on the water—and I met him to confirm he actually existed. We went for a sail that started with just a few airs but freshened into a beautiful reach, where we saw 6 knots. Brian immediately felt the balance of Oslo under sail. He was born to tinker and truly appreciated her hundred-year-old fittings and the several unique procedures they require. The final proof: Brian was on the tiller as we sailed out from the berth into the lake.

“When the sail was over and we headed back into the slip—rounding the big turn, coasting in, not breaking an egg as we came alongside—we were still giddy.”

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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 9, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 12, 2025

For 140 years, Wilson Machine Works has made bricks, boats, inventions

By Jean Sherrard

What inspires a family for nearly 140 years? At Wilson Machine Works on Elliott Avenue just south of the Magnolia Bridge, the answer lies in sparks, steel and a stubborn love for problem-solving.

The Wilsons trace their Seattle roots to German immigrant Robert Niedergesaess, a master brickmaker who had lived in New Zealand for 12 years, arrived alone in Seattle in 1887 and two years later brought his family north. In Seattle they found both a home and a vocation. His son, Robert John Niedergesaess, later changed the family name to the easier to spell and pronounce Wilson.

Today, Wilson Machine Works remains a family enterprise, housed in a 1926 shop constructed with

the very bricks the family once manufactured. Built during Seattle’s industrial expansion and run by its founder’s descendants, the shop reflects a family business that evolved from brickmaking to boat building and eventually to elevator repair. Along the way, generations of Wilsons have patented inventions such as high-efficiency brick-pressing dies and specialized marine propellers, many of whose basic ideas remain in use

today.

“It’s about using your brain,” says Dave Wilson, the 82-year-old great-grandson of founder Robert Niedergesaess. “We get to figure things out that nobody else can.”

His son and business partner Max Wilson agrees. “We get to play with metal and fire,” he adds with a grin.

Max coined a family motto, what Dave calls a “Maxism”: “At Wilson Machine Works, the impossible takes just a little longer.”

Niedergesaess founded Seattle Brick and Tile Company using a patented brick-pressing method that dramatically increased production. His timing proved fortuitous. When the city rebuilt its downtown with brick and stone after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, demand for fireproof materials surged.

Within a decade, the company was producing 6 million bricks annually from rich clay deposits in Interbay and South Seattle.

Prosperity encouraged experimentation. The family expanded into marine engineering, building boats and engines for Puget Sound’s mosquito fleet — the swarm of private steamboats that served as the region’s primary highway system before roads and bridges. They launched more than a dozen vessels — all bearing “Yankee” in their name — on Elliott Bay. Later generations moved into propeller manufacturing and other mechanical innovations.

As a boy, Dave Wilson remembers stepping outside the family shop and fishing from nearby docks. “I pulled salmon right out of the bay,” he says. Since then decades of fill have pushed the shoreline several hundred feet west, transforming Elliott Bay into Elliott Avenue.

As the geography shifted, so did the vocation. Since the mid-1960s, Wilsons have specialized in repairing the complex gears of elevators, beginning with Smith Tower.

Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, 3-year-old William Wilson already delights in exploring the century-old shop, roaming its maze of machines and metal and flipping switches that bring the old motors humming to life.

Dave watches with quiet pride: “I think we’re looking at the sixth generation here.”

WEB EXTRAS

To watch our onsite narrated 360 degree video, click here.

Also, see Paul Dorpat’s Jan. 12, 1992, “Now & Then” on the same subject below.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on March 26, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on March 29, 2026

April Foolery Quiz: Think you know the towers of Seattle and Paris?

By Jean Sherrard

Springtime in Paris brings “poisson d’avril” — literally “April Fish.” On the first of the month, children across France tape paper fish to the backs of unsuspecting people in a ritual of gentle mischief dating back to the 16th century. While some link the tradition to the lean meals of Lent, it primarily celebrates the “catch” of a good-natured prank.

For several years, we at “Now & Then” have marked the arrival of cherry blossoms and the promise of warmer weather with our own brand of civic April Foolery. With the help of noted Parisian photographer Bérangère Lomont, a longtime collaborator of our column, we offer an exercise featuring two great structures: the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle. Each is shorthand for its city. But which is which — and which is not?

Space Needle or Eiffel Tower?

Choose one answer per question:

• The Space Needle
• The Eiffel Tower
• Both
• Neither

1. Which tower was built for a world’s fair celebrating technological progress?

2. Which one was conceived as a dining destination as much as an observation platform?

3. Plans for this one were first sketched on a napkin (or serviette, in French).

4. Which was primarily financed with significant government funding?

5. Financed largely with private capital, this structure generated enough revenue in its first year to repay its principal investor.

6. This one debuted in varied shades of red.

7. It was attacked by prominent artists as a monstrous eyesore.

8. Its official height increased after antennas were added.

9. Originally, it was intended to stand for only 20 years.

10. Which one was famously climbed by a reigning British monarch during its inaugural year?

The Answers (No Peeking!)

1: Both. The Eiffel Tower (1889) marked the centennial of the French Revolution. The Space Needle (1962) celebrated the Space Age.

2: Space Needle. Its revolving restaurant was central to the Century 21 vision.

3: Space Needle. Edward E. Carlson sketched his early concept after visiting Stuttgart’s TV tower.

4: Neither. Both relied primarily on private financing.

5: Eiffel Tower. Gustave Eiffel’s personal underwriting reportedly paid off during the first year of operation.

6: Both. The Eiffel began “Venetian Red.” The Needle’s “Galaxy Gold” was more orange than gold.

7: Eiffel Tower. A “Committee of Three Hundred” artists protested it in 1887.

8: Both. Each gained height through later antenna additions.

9: Eiffel Tower. Its permit ran 20 years. Radio transmission saved it.

10: Neither. Queen Victoria never climbed the Eiffel (she died in 1901). Queen Elizabeth II visited Seattle in 1983, long after the Needle’s debut.

Scoring Your ‘Catch’

• Master angler, 7–10 correct: You know your statehood and your steel. You’ve navigated the currents of history without getting snagged.
• Expert troller, 4–6 correct: Deepwater understanding, though on technical details you may have swallowed a bit of bait.
• Nibbler, 1–3 correct: You’ve got a taste for history, but big truths slipped the line.
• The poisson d’avril, 0 correct: You are the catch of the day — hooked, lined, and sinkered by our historical lures. Wear your paper fish with pride. And if you’ve discovered that one of these towers has been quietly affixed to your back, consider yourself properly celebrated. After all, April belongs to the fish.

WEB EXTRAS

For a narrated 360 video of this quiz on location at the Seattle Center, click right here!

Published in The Seattle Times online on March 12, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on March 15, 2025

Weyerhaeuser’s shrine to wood was built to move as waterfront changed

By Jean Sherrard

Meant as a grand showcase for the Weyerhaeuser Lumber Company, the building in our “Then” photo provided an administrative headquarters in 1923 while offering a structural ode to timber itself. Weyerhaeuser’s timber-trade dominance at the time was legendary, rooted in the 1900 “neighborly deal” in which Frederick Weyerhaeuser purchased 900,000 acres of Washington timberland from railroader James J. Hill for $5.4 million.

After the purchase, Everett quickly became the manufacturing heart of Weyerhaeuser’s empire, with waterfront mills producing wood products shipped globally. To manage this reach, the company commissioned a headquarters that doubled as architectural persuasion. Designed by the firm Bebb and Gould, its stylized English Gothic structure was built not only to impress but also to move—literally. Architect Carl F. Gould anticipated future evolutions on the waterfront and engineered the building onto four giant crossbeams, making portability a feature, not a bug.

The structure was relocated at least three times. First, in 1938, it was barged along the Snohomish River to accommodate expanding mills. It moved again in March 1984, when the tug Whidbey towed the office from its base at

Preston Point to the new Everett Marina Village. Finally, in 2016, it traveled nearly a mile by land to its present home at Boxcar Park on the Everett waterfront.

Today, the Port of Everett owns the landmark, which was restored at the behest of NGMA Group CEO Kwok “Jack” Yang Ng to house The Muse Whiskey & Coffee, which serves as a coffee shop by day, speakeasy-inspired whiskey bar by night. During a recent visit, general manager Joseph Mottola and NGMA VP Rachel Escalle led a tour through the historic space. Mottola pointed out that the building was designed as a physical “demo”—each room features different trim work to showcase the versatility of Douglas fir, western red cedar and western hemlock.

At the building’s heart remains an original 160-ton

vault, its thick concrete walls now sheltering wine rather than payroll. The vault held a sharp surprise for restorers from Grant Construction: Designed to release tear gas if tampered with, one canister remained charged after a century. When disturbed during the 2023 renovation, it “popped”—a stinging reminder that some early security systems never lose their bite.

Mottola is particularly fond of the corner office associated with the Weyerhaeuser family. As the story goes, after his retirement in 1942, company President John P. Weyerhaeuser would occasionally return to “boot out” the current manager, reclaiming his former desk for a day or two. From there, he could look out over the docks, where log-laden ships still departed to fuel his family’s empire.

WEB EXTRAS

For a narrated 360 degree video created on the Everett waterfront at Boxcar Park, click here.

A few more photos:

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 19, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 22, 2025

Border control: How muralist Billy King outlines the world

By Jean Sherrard

Billy King believes that borders define attention.

A longtime Seattle artist and muralist, King, 77, is best known for large-scale works in Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square — vibrant, colorful panels crowded

with vendors, hustlers, passersby and dreamers. He also paints, sketches and makes prints, finding recurring cosmic and human patterns in any medium.

On a recent weekday afternoon, hunting down King’s murals is an adventure in occasional trespass. Some adorn well-traveled paths. Others are tucked into apartment foyers or half-forgotten corridors. At least

one, King says, has simply disappeared. Whenever he explores downtown, he brings along food for “the first homeless guy we see.”

Sure enough, outside a downtown doorway, King hands a small bag

of snacks to a ragged man holding a cardboard sign. After a companionable howdy-do, King offers design advice he learned decades ago while working at Sean’s Produce in the Market.

“Have you got a magic marker?” he asks the man. “Draw a black border around the edge of your sign. That border means people have to look at it. If you leave the edges open, it’s optional.”

Born in Coos Bay, Ore., King grew up in Spokane before arriving in Seattle in 1966 to study art at the University of Washington. Like many artist peers, he never graduated — “a badge of honor,” he calls it — and worked a succession of jobs: railroad yard checker, dishwasher, bartender and Market vendor. Art, however, remained the through line.

Hustle and timing eventually landed King in a 1974

Smithsonian exhibition surveying Pacific Northwest art, a turn that “confounded and irritated” local critics because King was, in his words, “a nobody.”

Early on, he learned that declaring oneself an artist mattered as much as credentials, a lesson reinforced when, in 1977, King received his first major mural commission for the Fairmont Hotel Apartments on the First Avenue side of the Market.

Inspired by a classic, early 20th-century photo of Market farmers unloading wagons, he reinterpreted the scene. “When you make art, you have 10,000 elements,” he says. “The artist’s job is to winnow that down, first to 1,000, then maybe 100. Out of that, you paint the most important 30.”

Such distillation defines King’s best-known works. For his Market and Pioneer Square murals, he has painted primarily from memory. The result isn’t nostalgia. It’s taxonomy — a living catalog of urban roles still very much with us.

On a return visit to the Market, we encounter the same homeless man. His cardboard sign now includes a neatly drawn black border. King notices immediately and gives a thumbs-up. Attention, after all, begins at the edges.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video, click here.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 5, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 8, 2025

How Seattle’s 1892 Metropole Building went from gunfight to the good fight

By Jean Sherrard

On June 25, 1901, a feud between former friends turned deadly at the Metropole Building. Armed with a sawed-off shotgun and a brace of revolvers, disgraced former Seattle police chief William Meredith ambushed theater owner John Considine outside G.O. Guy’s drugstore at Second Avenue and Yesler Way.

Once close allies, the two men had become bitter enemies after Considine’s accusations of corruption led to Meredith’s dismissal. Meredith fired first. His shotgun blast missed Considine, tearing through the store’s front doorway and lodging in the ceiling. Considine fled into the shop with Meredith close behind. The two wrestled until Considine drew his own .38 and shot and killed the former lawman, according to contemporaneous reporting in The Seattle Times and later historical accounts. (For an authoritative retelling of this story, visit HistoryLink, where historian Phil Dougherty masterfully lays out the fascinating, if sordid, details)

The encounter lasted less than 90 seconds. Seattle was transfixed. Though Considine was later acquitted, for years passersby stopped to peer at shotgun pellet holes still visible in the drugstore’s ceiling. The violence passed. The city moved on. The building survived—then slowly slipped into a long, silent decline.

Today, nothing remains of the drugstore or the damage. But the Metropole originally known as the H.K. Owens Building, financed by Henry Yesler in 1892 as a brick phoenix rising from the ashes of the Great Fire—still remains, across the street from the Smith Tower. A century after the shooting, it became the site of another fight. Not over vengeance, but purpose.

Following a damaging 2007 fire and more than a decade of vacancy and false starts, the building was purchased in 2019 by the Satterberg Foundation, a

Seattle philanthropic organization that experienced a seismic shift in 2014 when its endowment grew from $4 million to more than $400 million following a major gift. Instead of treating the Metropole as a conventional real estate investment, the foundation chose to make the building itself a tool of its mission, which centers on social justice, equity and community-based work.

In 2018, it had architect Matt Aalfs and his firm, BuildingWork, transform the ruin into a hub for nonprofits with office, child care and community spaces while meeting the strictest possible environmental standards. The renovation achieved LEED Platinum certification, turning a 19th-century structure into a model of modern sustainability. The building is now fully electrified. Old-growth timbers milled in the 1890s have been salvaged and repurposed into stairs and furniture. Daylight reaches deep into the interior, and a structure once sealed and abandoned has been

reopened to the public.

If the shootout in 1901 reflected a young city struggling to establish order, the Metropole’s rebirth signals something quieter and harder: the work of sustaining a city over time. The shotgun pellet holes are gone. What remains is a foundation for the good fight.

WEB EXTRAS

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

See below for a few more photos of the Metropole’s reconstructed interior:

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.

(click to enlarge photos)

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.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 11, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 14, 2025

For Space Needle’s longtime Santa, Christmas is all about presence

By Jean Sherrard

Some things must be seen to be believed. The transformation of mild-mannered Russell Long into Santa Claus is one.

Emerging from a basement changing room beneath the Space Needle, snowy-bearded Santa Russ encounters wreaths of smiles and spontaneous delight.

“Santa, you’re back!” exclaim Needle staffers with childlike glee. In the gift shop, visitors clamor for ussies with Saint Nick as others point and wave.

While we ride the elevator to the observation deck for our photo shoot, I ask what draws people, young and old alike. He twinkles, then takes my breath away.

“Unconditional love,” he says gently but firmly.

Long’s metamorphosis began nearly 30 years ago when, facing early retirement from Microsoft, he felt adrift. A pastor at his church made an offhand suggestion: with his rotund figure, full beard, and kindly demeanor, why not play Santa for the season?

He joined Arthur & Associates, the Seattle company that has supplied Santas for many decades. In 1943, its founder, Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Art French, watched crowds visiting the Frederick & Nelson Santa through his office window and thought, “We should be taking pictures of that.” The following year, French opened a photo studio in the department store and began snapping shots of tots on Santa’s lap. He made over $10,000 in a single month, several times his annual P-I salary. His idea spread nationwide, becoming a holiday tradition that endures eight decades later.

Long dove in. Dyeing his blonde hair and beard white was, he recalls, torturous. “The bleach was so strong, I had to breathe through a hose for half an hour.” A local tailor hand-sewed his first velveteen red suit.

By 1998, Santa Russ was greeting families at Bellevue Square. Later generations followed him from mall to Needle, bringing children and grandchildren to perch on his lap.

The work isn’t without strain. “My cheeks hurt those first few days,” he says. “You don’t realize how much smiling it takes. And you have to train your mustache to curl up — it makes the smile bigger.”

Each appearance begins with a quiet ritual of transformation. “White gloves first, then gold spectacles, then the robe,” he says. “By the time I’ve finished dressing, Santa has arrived.”

The enduring moments aren’t about presents. “One boy, around nine, told me what he wanted most was for his dad to quit smoking,” Long says. “I turned to the father and said, ‘Did you hear that? He wants you to stick around.’ That’s when you realize Santa can touch a whole family.”

He also recalls parents arriving from Seattle Children’s Hospital, bringing fragile children for what might be final photos. “You never forget those visits,” he says softly.

So what’s Santa’s secret? He sparkles. “We all need to give our gifts,” he says. “Everyone has something: time, kindness, love. It does us good when we give it.”

For Santa Russ, the gift is presence itself. “I know how to listen,” he says. “Being heard and accepted — that’s the true spirit of Christmas.”

WEB EXTRAS

First, a bit of shameless self-promotion. Join me for the 18th annual Rogue’s Christmas, this Sunday at Seattle’s Town Hall!

Now back to our regular programming! To watch a narrated 360 degree video of the Santa Russ column recorded atop the Space Needle, click right here.

Also, check out a few extras from Santa Russ himself beginning with 18 sequential annual photos of Isabel Brownlow.

Afterward, you’ll find a half-dozen Seattle Post-Intelligencer news clips detailing the origin of Santa photos here at Frederick & Nelson by P-I photographer Art French in the mid-1940s.

Plus, there’s video of a Dec. 20, 2017, “Eric’s Heroes” story from KOMO-TV, courtesy archivist Joe Wren, covering the Frederick & Nelson Santa-photo story.

In addition, here’s a column from four years ago about Seattle’s 1968-1976 giant Westlake Santa.

And from my column partner Clay Eals, scroll down further to see several more Santa-related extras!

Santa-related extras from Clay

By Clay Eals

First is a charming take-off on a classic holiday poem, “T’was the Plight Before Christmas,” by West Seattleite Sue Barry. It makes for a delightful, read-aloud piece, perhaps best-timed for Christmas Eve. You might call it a union tale, but the message goes much further. To download it, just click the Santa-hat image here:

Next is a repeat from five years ago from this blog — but actually from 40 years ago when it first was published!

I offer this “Black Santa” story of mine that appeared Christmas Day 1985 on the front page of the West Seattle Herald, for which I served as editor. The fine photos were by Herald photographer Brad Garrison. This is posted with the permission of Robinson Newspapers.

I have tried searching online for Tracy Bennett, the subject of this story, who would be 62 today. Alas, I have turned up nothing.

Still, this story about Tracy and his view on the Santa milieu remains timely, powerful and inspiring — at least, that’s my hope.

At the time I wrote it, the story resonated quite personally, From 1985 to 1993, I volunteered more than 100 times to play Santa for children and adults at parties and in schools, community halls and private homes throughout Puget Sound as part of the American Heart Association’s “Santa with a Heart” fundraising program. As any Santa will tell you, it was a uniquely heartwarming and unforgettable experience. (See clippings at bottom.)

Please click any of the images once or twice to enlarge them for easy reading. And if you want to read the transcribed Black Santa text instead of reading directly from the images, scroll down.

Merry merry, and ho, ho, ho!

West Seattle Herald, Dec. 25, 1985

‘Just for you’

Black Santa relishes children’s happiness

Santa Claus, known as Tracy Bennett in the “off”-season, walks into a class of busy fifth- and sixth-graders at Hughes Elementary School in West Seattle.

“Hi, boys and girls,” says Santa.

“Oh, hi Santa Claus!” the students respond, almost in unison.

“Howya doin’?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good. I thought I’d drop in and visit you for a minute.”

“Yeah,” say a couple of students. “You changed colors.”

“Yeah,” answers Santa, “I sure did, didn’t I?”

By CLAY EALS

When most of those who are opening packages under the Christmas tree this morning think about “the man with all the toys,” their vision probably doesn’t look like Tracy Bennett.

That’s because Bennett is Black, while nearly all of the Santas in the world — at least in the United States — seem to be as white as the North Pole’s year-round snow.

Bennett isn’t bothered, however. He keeps an upbeat, optimistic attitude about the seasonal craft he’s practiced for the past 12 years. He says he’s encountered subtle prejudice from adults and skepticism from kids, but he boasts of being able to win over most of the doubters.

Exposure is what Bennett says he needs most. And so do the other Black Santas in America, he says.

Bennett got some of the exposure he desired last week when he walked the halls of both Hughes and Van Asselt elementary schools, the latter of which is attended by some students who live in southern West Seattle and the city side of White Center.

He roamed the halls at Hughes and, with the assistance of teacher Willa Williams, peeked into classrooms and dropped off sacks of candy canes, occasionally stopping for a few minutes to talk to kids on his lap. Bearing a staccato, smile-inducing “ho, ho, ho,” he almost resembled a politician, repeatedly extending his hand for a shake and greeting children with a steady stream of “Howyadoin’? … Howyadoin’, guy? … Hiya guys. Workin’ hard?”

The racially mixed classes responded in a generally positive way. Although one sixth-grader was heard to say, “I thought Santa Claus was white, because I saw a white Santa Claus at The Bon,” for the most part any negative comments centered on whether he was “real,” not on his skin color.

“He’s nice, but his hair’s made out of cotton. Weird,” said fourth-grader Jessica Canfield. “And he has clothes under his other clothes.”

“He’s fine, and I like him,” said fellow fourth-grader Johnny Cassanova. “He said that he would visit me, and he would try to get everything that I want for Christmas and to get good grades.”

Was he the “real” Santa? “Yeah,” said Johnny, “to me he is.”

“It went real good,” Bennett said afterward. “They were very polite. They weren’t skeptical. Mostly loving, you can tell.”

Bennett, who at 22 is unemployed and intends to go to school so that he can get a job either as a police officer or working with handicapped kids, began his Santa “career” at the young age of 10. “I started as a little dwarf and moved my way up,” the Rainier Valley resident said with a laugh.

Over the years, Bennett said, he’s been Santa at private gatherings and community centers in Seattle’s south end, and he’s pieced together a costume he thinks is unimposing. The key part, he said, is his beard, which is a rather flat affair.

“The big Santa Claus beards and hairs are so flocky, so thick, that it scares some children,” Bennett said. “His color of his suit and his beard is so bright already, along with the brightness of his face.

“A Black Santa Claus with a white beard seems to bring out an older look, and the color of my skin makes it look like a normal Black man wearing a suit.”

Consequently, he said, kids warm up to him rather quickly. “Apparently I work out pretty good,” he said.

Children, both white and minority, raise the racial question fairly often, Bennett said. They usually just say, “Santa Claus is white,” expecting a response, he said.

“But I really don’t say nothing. I just look at ’em and smile, or I say ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ and they usually don’t ask anymore,” he said. “I’m used to it, so it’s no problem.”

Bennett does look forward to a day when more Black Santas are around to break the racial ice at Christmastime.

“I’m not the only one, but I never see ’em in stores,” he said. If just one major downtown store would feature a Black Santa, “that would mean the 12 years that I’ve been working on it has started to come through,” he said. “It would be a breakthrough. I want it to happen.”

He also would like to see children exposed to Santas of a variety of races. “If we bring the children Black Santa Clauses, Korean Santa Clauses, Japanese Santa Clauses, the kids will like it after a while,” he said.

For that to happen, however, some prejudices will have to be broken down gradually. “You can feel it’s there,” he said. “You try to believe it’s not there, but you can see it in people’s eyes.”

Like any Santa Claus, Bennett finds it a “thrill” to portray Saint Nick to children. “When kids are happy, I’m happy. When they’re sad, I feel for ’em. I’d like to give ’em more than I can.”

He insists, however, that it’s important not to insist that he’s the “real” Santa when kids challenge him. He tells children, “You don’t have to believe in me. But I’m doing this just for you.”

“Why ruin a kid’s mind and say, ‘I’m real, believe me’?” he said. “He (Santa) is a beautiful man, OK? No one can take that away from him. But we have to tell what’s real from not. We have to tell our kids we play Santa Claus because we love children.”

Bennett also said it’s important not to push the religious aspects of Christmas as Santa. “When we talk about religion, we have to let kids do what they want, do not force them.”

Williams, the teacher, took the same approach in deciding to invite Bennett, a friend of hers, to visit Hughes. While Christmas “is a fun time and should be a time for joy,” she said she’s well aware of the Seattle School District’s policy that’s intended to separate religion from school activity.

Bringing Santa to the classroom — and a Black Santa at that — was an attempt to get students to “understand each other’s differences,” she said.

“When I told them Santa Claus might visit, one student told me, ‘I don’t believe in Santa Claus.’ Another said, ‘Santa Claus is my mom and dad,’ and another said, ‘Santa Claus is Jesus’,” Williams said. “It was just the idea of general thought and letting them express themselves and learning to accept each and every person and their differences as long as there isn’t any harm.”

For Bennett, the delight of being Santa is that “guy is just a giving person, you know?

“He gives away things to make people happy. If a child’s sick in bed, he sees Santa Claus, he’s going to try to smile as much as he can because he’s happy. When they say, ‘Santa Claus, you didn’t give me so-and-so,’ I say, ‘Well, maybe next year, OK?’

“I don’t tell them I’m going to get this (particular item) for them and get their hopes up. I tell them that maybe somebody will get it for them very soon.

“One guy said he wanted to go to college, and I said, ‘Maybe next Christmas or a few Christmases from now, you’ll be going to college and be saying you got your wish.’ ”

Bennett clearly is hooked on his annual role: “As long as I live and as long as I stay healthy, I’ll always be Santa Claus.”

P.S. Clay as Santa

As promised above, here are tidbits from my eight-year volunteer Santa Claus “career” for the American Heart Association: two clippings in which I demonstrate for other Santas the best way to don the uniform, plus a sketch I created to provide step-by-step guidance. Click once or twice on the images to enlarge them. —Clay

A bonus:

Just for fun and to keep with the theme, I also am including a Santa article I wrote that appeared on Christmas Eve 1980 in The Oregonian near the end of my eight-year stint as a reporter and photographer for that newspaper. Again, click once or twice on the image to enlarge it for easy readability. Enjoy! —Clay

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 27, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 30, 2025

Seattle’s Chinese Baptist Church has fostered community for more than 100 years

By Jean Sherrard

It was Friday, June 13, 1952. Fifteen 4- and 5-year-olds gathered for a graduation ceremony at Seattle’s Chinese Baptist Church nursery school, dressed in pint-sized mortarboards and black gowns. The school’s supervisor, Mrs. Harry Ruehlen, handed diplomas to each graduate.

Among them was Betty Lau, who still remembers the

musty basement classroom, the smell of chalk dust and the comfort of belonging.

Seven decades later, Lau stands before the same brick façade, joined by several former classmates. They reminisce about games, songs and afternoon naps, recalling how the church provided a place of warmth and community in post-war Seattle.

Founded in 1892, the Chinese Baptist Church served generations of families who made their homes and livelihoods in the surrounding neighborhood. Originally an outreach mission of Seattle First Baptist Church, it combined prayer services with English lessons for Chinese immigrants.

With no permanent home, early congregants first gathered in private homes and leased halls in old Chinatown. In 1902, they built a modest structure at Maynard Avenue South and South Washington Street. Two decades later, in 1922, the growing congregation purchased property at 10th Avenue South and South King Street.

By the early 1950s, Chinese Baptist served as a

spiritual center and anchor for young children whose parents worked long hours nearby. Its nursery school offered early education, socialization and — perhaps most important — a sense of place and welcome.

Lau recalls her teachers’ patient voices, one in English and one in Chinese, and the joy of receiving her diploma, which she kept for years. “I was very shy in public, but nursery school felt normal, like being in a bigger family,” she says with a smile. “I didn’t know the word ‘community’ yet, but that’s what it was.”

In the decades since, the church building has changed hands, and the neighborhood around it has evolved. Yet for Lau and her classmates, returning to that spot rekindles vivid memories of friendship, faith and beginnings.

Retired after 41 years as a secondary-school teacher, Lau sees clear lines between that early experience and her lifelong devotion to education and youth activities.

“Understanding where we come from,” she says, “gives students confidence and connection. Those who feel seen and supported thrive and carry that forward.”

The basement classroom may be long gone, but its lessons endure. Each reminiscence shared among Lau and her classmates summons cherished childhood scenes of caps and gowns — and parental pride — from a June day more than 70 years ago, when the future felt as bright as a diploma freshly handed to a 5-year-old.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, click through here.

Just to make trouble, I’m appending the initial draft of the column I submitted to The Times. In a Now & Then first, our editors summarily rejected it. It took a complete rewrite to ease it into print. 

Here’s the original version that was, said the Times, not ready for prime time:

Chinatown longtimers shun ‘international’ label: ‘We are Americans’

It was Friday, June 13, 1952. Fifteen 4 and 5-year-olds gathered for a graduation ceremony at Seattle’s Chinese Baptist Church nursery school, dressed in tiny mortarboards and black gowns. The school’s supervisor, Mrs. Harry Ruehlen, handed diplomas to each graduate.

Among them was Betty Lau, who still remembers the musty basement classroom, the smell of chalk dust and the thrill of belonging.

Seven decades later, Lau stands at that same brick façade, surrounded by former classmates and recalling with a smile how the church offered sanctuary in a city that had long drawn invisible lines denoting where Chinese families could and couldn’t live. Those borders, she says, still define a struggle for identity in Seattle’s Chinatown.

It was a pattern etched long before her time.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made Chinese immigrants the first group in U.S. history barred by race and nationality. In Seattle, exclusion persisted through property covenants, housing codes and loan denials that confined Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Black residents to a few downtown blocks.

Redlining maps from the 1930s shaded Chinatown bright pink — “hazardous”— a warning to banks not to invest.

This was coupled by what was labeled progress.

In 1928, the street called the Second Avenue Extension sliced through the second Chinatown, forcing re-location to King Street. The Interstate 5 corridor carved away another section in the 1960s. Construction of the Kingdome in the 1970s further impacted the neighborhood.

Each project promised renewal. Each time, Chinatown’s footprint shrank.

In 1951, a year before Lau’s nursery-school graduation, Mayor William Devin renamed Chinatown by proclamation, calling it the International Center. For the Chinese community, it felt like erasure.

Restaurateur Ruby Chow, who became the first Asian American elected to the King County Council — and become Lau’s mentor — bristled. The city of Seattle, she believed, had created a “reservation.”

“International,” son Brien Chow argues, implies Asian Americans are perpetual outsiders when they are Americans.

The linguistic sleight-of-hand eventually became civic policy, morphing into “International District,” then, as mandated by a 1999 city ordinance, “Chinatown International District” – the collective name of Chinatown, Japantown and Little Saigon.

Retired after 41 years as a secondary-school teacher, Lau says identity is essential to belonging.

“Understanding place and heritage,” she says, “gives students pride and connection. Those who are secure in their self-identity thrive and strengthen community.”

As former classmates gather with her at the church’s entrance, Lau eyes the neighborhood that raised them. Whatever any signs may read, for her it always will remain Chinatown.

So what do you think, gentle readers, on this rainy Thanksgiving? Interested to hear your opinions…

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 13, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 16, 2025

Expresso insight 50 years ago still inspires Cafe Allegro

By Jean Sherrard

Blink and you might miss it. Nestled in a University District alley just off The Ave, Café Allegro is an unassuming temple to coffee — and community.

For the past 50 years, its caffeinated regulars, many from the UW campus one block east, have gathered to study, create, reflect and converse in a locale that seeded ideas and conventions that forever transformed how the world sees and drinks coffee.

The café’s first owner, Dave Olsen, had no grand ambitions when he first opened its doors. After serving as an Army air-defense officer in Seattle, followed by two years as a carpenter, he rode his bicycle to San Francisco in search of direction.

North Beach’s legendary Caffè Trieste, often cited as

the first espresso coffeehouse on the West Coast, offered a roadmap.

“I was completely smitten,” he says, “by the taste and aroma of coffee, the whole vibe of a café.”

Olsen returned to Seattle in pursuit of a dream. In December 1974, he signed the lease for an improbable location — the alley garage of a former U-District mortuary — and, with $17,000 in cash and buckets of sweat equity, he opened Café Allegro in May 1975. He had assembled all the essentials: an Italian espresso machine, fresh-roasted beans, recipes and techniques.

Then the first customer strolled in.

“He walks up to the counter and orders a cappuccino,” Olsen says. “I did the best I could, slid it across the counter, and took his money.”

They made eye contact, and Olsen had a lightbulb moment.

“I suddenly realized it’s all about connecting with people and taking care of them,” he says. “That has served me ever since.”

After 11 years at Allegro, Olsen accepted a job under a

rising young executive at Starbucks named Howard Schultz.

“We really hit it off,” Olsen says. “Howard was the creative force with business acumen and ambition. I was sleeves-rolled-up behind the counter, roasting coffee and training people.”

Schultz bought Starbucks’ original six Seattle storefronts and within a decade expanded to more than 1,000 shops. Olsen served as the chain’s first green-coffee buyer, scouring the world in search of beans.

In 1990, Olsen sold Café Allegro to then-managers Nathaniel Jackson and Chris Peterson, who continue the traditions Olsen established. Peterson juggles his day job as a lawyer with managing

the café and takes pride in roasting Allegro’s signature coffees.

“Our focus has always been the coffee and the community,” Peterson says. “We encourage people to hang out all day — to socialize and connect. And we’ve always been that way.”

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360-degree video featuring the Allegro and environs, click here.

Also, check out a video of Clay Eals’ Steve Goodman biography event held in the cafe’s upstairs room on Oct. 3, 2008. Clay’s book, Steve Goodman: Facing the Music, is now in its updated 6th printing!

Finally, a selection of photos from photographer Bill Kuhns, who’s documented Allegro life and times for decades.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 23, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 26, 2025

‘Secret Sauce’ saves island’s special gathering place, the Nordland General Store

By Jean Sherrard

Just east of Port Townsend, Marrowstone Island — so dubbed by Capt. George Vancouver on May 8, 1792, the same day he affixed “Mount Rainier” to a conical volcano southeast — harbors a bucolic sanctuary.

With a population of just under 1,000 that swells with vacationers each summer, the island’s unincorporated town of Nordland was founded by Norwegian immigrant Peter Nordby (1862-1919) who bought and platted its 187 acres in 1892.

Four years later, in 1896, Congress approved construction of Fort Flagler, a U.S. Army coastal artillery post at the island’s north end.

For more than a century, the Nordland General Store, built circa 1922, has stood at the island’s heart, selling groceries and supplies to locals and visitors alike.

Early records also illustrate a flip side to the business — its centrality to the community as a gathering place. The annual Strawberry Festival, first held a century ago, continues to draw celebrants peninsula-wide.

In recent decades, a lively Tractor Days parade has drawn farmers and lawn jockeys, rumbling their heavy machinery past the store every Memorial Day weekend. Other festivities include a pumpkin-weight guessing contest held before Halloween, a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in which Santa arrives by boat, and a Polar Bear Dip at noon on New Year’s Day.

In the early hours of Nov. 5, 2020, the store was sustained major damage from an electrical fire. The building was declared a total loss. “A little piece of

Marrowstone Island died when the Nordland Store was destroyed by fire,” reported the Peninsula Daily News.

Then-owners Tom and Sue Rose, nearing retirement, made the painful decision to put the business on hold. Townsfolk were unnerved, faced with the prospect of losing the island’s soul.

Longtime Marrowstoner Barcy Fisher and a more recent arrival, Patti Buckland, friends for more than 30

years, collaborated on an audacious business plan. To save this touchstone, why not convert the store to community ownership?

Cue huzzahs and applause. Inspired investors stepped up with nearly $400,000. 592 neighbors and friends chipped in $250 each for lifetime memberships to the co-op. What’s more, dozens of volunteers stepped up to help rebuild. Within 10 months, on May 25, 2024, the Nordland General Store staged its grand reopening. Rain notwithstanding, Buckland says, the event was attended by hundreds of exuberant neighbors.

“At the end of the day,” she says, “what we’re all about is serving our community. It’s not just about groceries. It’s about connection. That’s our secret sauce.”

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on Sept. 11, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 14, 2025

Seattle’s waterfront past can illuminate its future, new book says

By Jean Sherrard

“No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv’d only to discover sights of woe…”

— John Milton, “Paradise Lost“

Had English poet John Milton toured the shadowy underbelly of Seattle’s waterfront — as seen in our 1934 “Then” photo — he might have found his own words apt. Rotting pilings, crumbling fill and the stench of decaying waste lay mostly hidden from public view.

In “Where the City Meets the Sound: The Story of Seattle’s Waterfront” (HistoryLink, 2025), author Jennifer Ott, HistoryLink’s executive director, traces this shifting edge between land and water.

HistoryLink’s 30th book charts the transformation from a Lushootseed crossing-over place, where a tidal lagoon met the Duwamish River’s mouth, to the parks, overlooks, boat tours and civic gathering spaces we know today. In the

1850s, the lagoon’s disappearance, Ott notes, “made it harder for Native people to claim space. Effectively, they were made invisible — a tension that still goes on today.”

While celebrating the waterfront’s feats of engineering, Ott also recovers overlooked stories of marginalized people and events. “Seattle’s urban history,” she says, “is about how the city was built and the choices that were made involving massive transformations of the landscape.”

She cites the many communities — from Native peoples, immigrants, dockworkers, fishers and more —without whom the waterfront would not exist and thrive.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, patchwork seawalls, pilings and landfills replaced tide flats with

solid industrial ground. South of Pioneer Square, more than 3,000 acres of tidal wetlands were filled, dramatically reshaping the Duwamish delta. Along the central waterfront, the plank-paved Railroad Avenue, built on pilings over Elliott Bay, became Seattle’s maritime front door, but also, in Mayor John Dore’s 1934 words, “a death trap” and “a menace to the life of all that use it.”

The waterfront’s Depression-era seawall, built from 1934 to 1936, secured the shoreline from Washington Street to Bay Street. Above it, Railroad Avenue was rebuilt as Alaskan Way. Two decades later, the 1953

Alaskan Way Viaduct loomed over the stretch — a postwar icon that Ott calls a “psychological and visual barrier” separating the city from its bay. “The waterfront became fly-over country,” she quips.

Today, with the viaduct gone and the seawall rebuilt

for seismic safety, the waterfront once again is being reimagined. Ott shows that Elliott Bay’s edge is more than a physical boundary. It’s a mirror reflecting Seattle’s shifting priorities.

Documenting its past, she suggests, can illuminate a path forward, bringing long-buried layers into the light. What’s more, “in understanding these layers,” she says, “we are given a deeper connection to this special place.”

WEB EXTRAS

For a narrated 360 degree video on location at the waterfront, click right here.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 4, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 7, 2025

110-year-old Rhodes Mansion reflects Seattle retail royalty

By Jean Sherrard

When Seattle department-store magnate Albert Rhodes died unexpectedly on a business trip in 1921, a

life’s work may have been interrupted, but his grieving widow, Harriet, took the helm, dauntlessly proving herself in an otherwise male domain.

Up to that point, their lives might accurately have been described as charmed.

The first of four Wisconsin-born Rhodes brothers to arrive in Puget Sound, Albert settled in Tacoma in 1889 and worked as a traveling salesman. He found a

partner in love as well as in work and civic life when he married Harriet Williams from Dallas, Ore.

As the brothers’ Tacoma stores boomed, Albert opened his own Seattle branch, the Rhodes Company, in the Arcade Building at Second and Union in 1907. Its original 20-foot storefront rapidly expanded, cementing itself as a wildly successful retail force.

For their residence, Albert and Harriet enlisted noted Seattle architect Augustus Warren Gould to design a Mediterranean Revival showcase sporting spectacular

Lake Union views from north Capitol Hill. In 1915, the couple moved in permanently. The Rhodes mansion — popularly dubbed “the castle on the hill” — immediately became celebrated as an architectural jewel.

Still standing on busy 10th Avenue East, the gleaming white terra cotta edifice hosted lively social and civic gatherings, while husband and wife were no less committed to their hundreds of employees.

Lauded for paying the highest department-store wages in the United States, Albert also served as wartime president of the Seattle Chamber of

Commerce, promoting the city’s interests nationwide. He took pride in an unwavering commitment to civic duties. “Every man,” he insisted, “owes public service, without pay or reward, to his community.”

During a 1921 trip to New York City, he was stricken with the “Spanish flu,” which culminated in a fatal heart attack. “No death of recent years,” editorialized The Seattle Times, “has stirred the city so deeply as of this widely known merchant prince.”

Flags across town were lowered to half-mast to mark his passing. Dressed in black for years to come, Harriet

assumed the role of company president, and under her guidance the Rhodes department store expanded exponentially, filling an entire block with 10 floors of merchandising.

Significantly, the booming business remained

committed to the general welfare and equitable treatment of employees. With no children of her own, Harriet reportedly knew most of her staff by name. In return, they affectionately called her “Aunt Hattie.”

In 1944, she died after a trip to New York, staying at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where Albert had breathed his last. Her closest friends suggested that “knowing she was ill, [Harriet] made the journey out of sentiment.”

WEB EXTRAS

To watch our narrated 360 degree video, head over here.

For more spectacular interiors, see below:

Last but not least, Cupid!

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Aug. 21, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on August 24, 2025

‘Almost a Paradise’ for settlers was
a paradise lost for Coast Salish

By Jean Sherrard

In times of anti-immigrant fervor, a gentle reminder seems pertinent that most of us are descended from recent arrivers.

Col. Isaac N. Ebey, of Missouri, landed in the Pacific Northwest via San Francisco, seeking a home for his extended family. In the spring of 1850, he hired canoes to explore today’s Puget Sound — a reconnaissance that preceded Seattle’s Alki Landing Party by more than a year. Letters home describe a land of exceptional beauty, suitable for colonization.

Finally, Ebey chose to settle on Whidbey Island, taking full advantage of the Oregon (Territory) Donation Land Law, which granted married couples 320 acres each if they committed to working the land for four years.

Their square mile, Ebey wrote his brother Winfield,

was “almost a Paradise of Nature,” and he encouraged his extended family to follow him and his close friend Samuel Crockett to the island prairie. By 1854, they were joined by nearly 30 Ebeys and Crocketts, lured from across the United States.

While these pioneers quickly established profitable farms, the original Coast Salish inhabitants, living here for millennia, were displaced without compensation — a toxic model being repeated throughout the territory.

Isaac’s 61-year-old father, Jacob Ebey, took up

residence on his own 320-acre spread atop a bluff overlooking his son’s land. Soon, Jacob built an 18-by-40-foot, 1½ story home for eight family members and found success planting wheat, oats and potatoes while raising livestock, including a small herd of dairy cows.

Isaac’s fortunes also rose. Besides farming his land, he worked as a lawyer and customs official and served as a territorial legislator. Sadly, wife Rebecca Davis Ebey, who had joined him with their two sons in 1851, died in 1853 after a difficult childbirth. Ebey subsequently married young widow Emily Sconce.

In 1855, Territorial Gov. Isaac Stevens toured the region, insisting that tribes sign federal treaties to formalize the vast transfer of land from Indigenous to white hands.

Bitter disputes raged as Native populations already diminished by disease and displacement were corralled into reservations.

With tensions rising, the settlers built blockhouses — the mid-19^th century equivalent of “safe rooms” — to protect themselves.

Jacob Ebey erected a thick-timbered blockhouse a stone’s throw from his farmhouse, anticipating confrontation with local tribes. On Aug. 11, 1857, however, the family’s security measures were breached.

In retaliation for the killing of 28 tribal members by the U.S. warship Massachusetts, a raiding party, likely from the Kake nation of Tlingit from southeastern Alaska, killed and beheaded newcomer Isaac Ebey at his home, just above the beachfront landing that still bears his name.

WEB EXTRAS

More scenes from the bluff below Jacob Ebey’s cabin.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Aug. 7, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on August 10, 2025

For 40 years, Pike Place Market newsstand let us read all about it

By Jean Sherrard

We know of at least one canary that thrived in a coal mine against the odds. “From the start,” says Lee Lauckhart, now 84, “everyone tried to convince me print media was doomed.”

For 40 years, however, he ignored the naysayers, owning and operating “Read All About It,” his beloved newsstand in the Pike Place Market, beginning in 1979.

“Every day, we’d see dozens of regulars who became good friends,” he recalls warmly, singling out longtime

co-workers for special praise. “We were just like family.”

Born in Seattle, Lauckhart graduated from the University of Washington in 1968, signing on with Thurston County as a “registered sanitarian” before joining the “back to the land” movement: “I spent four years as a Snohomish dirt farmer.”

Stints selling newspapers in New York’s Gramercy Park then driving taxis in Seattle “were pretty nip and tuck,” he says. Then one of his cab fares offered him a job making “horseshoe nail” jewelry in the Pike Place Market. It felt like coming home.

Just divorced, he found housing for himself and his young daughter in the Market’s newly renovated Leland Hotel, “the one with the ‘Meet the Producers’ sign on it,” Lauckhart recalls.

In 1979, after four years as a “crafty,” he had a lightbulb moment. Friend and longtime newspaper hawker Sebi Nahmias had a coveted license to sell local dailies from his stand at First and Pike.

Lauckhart, then in his late 30s, made Nahmias an offer:

that together they open a general-interest newsstand in the Market offering publications from around the world. Soon joined by partner Steve Dunnington, they comprised an irrepressible entrepreneurial trio.

“Read All About It” opened Oct. 25, 1979, on a 10-by-30-foot pitch in the Market’s southeast corner.

The newsstand was an unqualified success — and its location didn’t disappoint. “First and Pike,” Lauckhart says, “was the busiest intersection in the Pacific Northwest.”

A slew of innovations followed. The partners arranged for daily New York Times deliveries (before dawn each

morning via Flying Tiger Airlines) while negotiating contracts with newspaper and magazine publishers across the globe.

After four decades, however, the final curtain. Thousands of newspapers had been shuttered, writing the final epitaph for purveyors of print media.

Lauckhart, by then the sole owner, stubbornly held on as a matter of principle. For 10 years, he paid employees out of the newsstand’s dwindling profits while surviving solely on Social Security.

On Dec. 31, 2019, the “Read All About It” canary, one of the last of its kind, finally sang its swan song.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video, captured on location in Pike Place Market, click here.

Billy King, noted NW muralist — once voted Mayor of the Market– is a longtime pal of Lee Lauckhart’s. He created the print of “Read All About It” featured above.

When we prepared this column, Billy was hard at work restoring a mural painted years ago for Maximilien, a French restaurant in the Market. Check out a few pix of Billy at work:

Finally, Lee Lauckhart’s favorite photo of the newsstand in situ, taken for a now-defunct rag called Endless Vacation.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on July 31, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on August 3, 2025

What’s the big deal? A longtime Seattleite finally catches Hydro Fever

By Jean Sherrard

After two hours this spring at Stan Sayres Pits on Lake Washington, I finally flipped for the hydros. The impossibly sleek, brightly colored, vintage unlimited hydroplanes streaking across blue-gray waters on a cloudy morning sent my aging heart all a-flutter.

When I grew up in Seattle, the hydros’ throaty roar left me underwhelmed. I never leashed a plywood model

of Miss Bardahl to my Stingray and raced through puddles trying for a roostertail. Crossing the Lacey V. Murrow floating bridge during the Seafair races was the closest I got to the action.

David D. Williams, executive director of the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum in Kent, hooked and landed me during the museum’s spring testing event.

“Our mission is to honor, celebrate and preserve the legacy of hydroplane racing,” Williams  says, and it’s only after seeing them “on the water bouncing around at 160 mph that you will truly understand how they captured the imagination of an entire city.”

With a lifelong passion for the sport and a breadth of knowledge of history, technology and the culture of speed, Williams is head torch carrier for a golden age of hydroplanes. “My childhood,” he says, “was a tent raised on two tent poles. There was Christmas and there was Seafair.”

After World War II, hydroplane racing scaled up exponentially, inspiring and transporting legions of fans. By 1955, Seattle’s population reached 457,000. That year, 500,000 people from across the state crowded the shores of Lake Washington to watch the races live.

In his seminal 2007 book, “Hydroplane Racing in Seattle,” Williams details what might be described as an inevitable arranged marriage. “We were the boating capital and the aviation capital of the country — and the best of both of those worlds coalesced into hydroplanes.”

Before Seafair and its “hydro fever,” there were only two games in town: Husky football and Pacific Coast League Seattle Rainiers baseball. Today’s deep civic pride in the city’s major sports franchises, Williams says, “was born and bred … when Seattle sports fans first found their collective voice cheering for the hometown’s Slo-Mo-Shuns.”

Today’s turbine-driven hydroplanes, while safer, quieter and faster, somehow sidestep the intimate if raucous sensory nostalgia — and admittedly lethal

danger — of an earlier age, documented by the Hydroplane Museum and its dedicated volunteers.

“These [older] boats were the heart and soul of our community for the better part of 40 years,” Williams says. “In noise and spectacle and goosebumps, they win hands down.”

Seeing and hearing the vintage boats do their thing in person goosed my own bumps. Who knew a rooster tail could make this boomer crow with joy?

WEB EXTRAS

To check out our narrated 360 degree video shot in the Stan Sayres Pits, speed on over here.

More photos from the pits — plus some other extras!

And a few from the Hydro Museum:

Several contributions from Seattle historian Peter Blecha:

Several contributions from Dina Skeels, Seattle Times designer:

(Above) A friend of Dina Skeels pilots the same hydro in a canal at Ocean Shores in 2021 before the boat was restored.

Plus a neighborhood, handmade hydro contest that spans 60 years.

And a final blast from the past: a Bob Hale Gold Cup preview that ran Aug. 10, 1958, in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on July 17, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 20, 2025

In 1898, their grandfather and a school chum answered the cry of ‘GOLD!’

By Jean Sherrard

On July 17, 1897, after the steam ship Portland docked in Seattle bearing treasure from the Yukon, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s front-page-topping headline incanted, “GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!”

A day later, the New York Times ran its own front-page article, “Wealth of the Klondike.”

With the rest of the country, two Cornell Law School students, Mark Odell and Ellis Aldrich, read these accounts of vast easily acquired wealth and tossed their hats in the ring.

By March 1898, the ambitious chums had secured funding from a syndicate of investors, likely including Syracuse’s Lyman C. Smith, after whom Seattle’s Smith Tower was named. They dropped out of school and boarded a train for the Northwest.

In their just-released book, “From Cheechakos to Sourdoughs: Two Ivy Leaguers’ Quest for Yukon Gold,” Odell’s maternal grandsons Steve and John Lundin tell a compelling tale drawn from journal entries, letters and 12 rolls of photographs found in a shoebox.

Hot on their grandfather’s trail to the Yukon, the Lundins offer an indelible portrait of the young “stampeders” and their transformation from greenhorns (“cheechakos”) to veteran prospectors (“sourdoughs”).

Within a week of arriving in boomtown Seattle, the industrious Odell and Aldrich purchased more than a ton of supplies from local outfitters and booked passage on the S.S. Alki to Skagway. Throughout, Odell’s observant voice enlivens the narrative.

Steaming up the Inside Passage, he marvels at the “wonders of the sea” whose “delicate changing azure tints” seemed to conceal “mermaids [who] had just slipped off into the dark green waters.”

Arriving in lawless Skagway on April 3, the pair prepared for the first of their countless ordeals — many days of hauling their mass of supplies over

legendary Chilkoot Pass. “From a distance … it looks much like a string of ants creeping up a small mound,” Odell wrote. “Such scenes I never saw nor imagined.”

Over grueling months, the partners continued their northbound journey, often narrowly skirting disaster. Building a cabin near Wolverine Creek, a Yukon River tributary, they mined and prospected throughout a brutal winter, digging 30-foot deep

“placer” shafts through permafrost in forbidding temperatures. “Holy Smut!” Odell noted on Nov. 11. “It was 51 degrees below last night!!!!!”

Approaching mental and physical exhaustion, the two ended their quest for treasure, making a laborious

return from the Yukon February-March 1899, a full year after setting out.

After 126 years, the Lundins write, one mystery remains. Contemporary newspaper accounts suggested that Odell and Aldrich arrived in Seattle laden with gold. But both sourdoughs firmly denied it to the end of their lives.

WEB EXTRAS

For a narrated 360 degree video of this week’s column, click right here.

For a fascinating 90-minute PNW Historians Guild lecture by the Lundins, head in this direction!

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on June 26, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on June 29, 2025

Lake Sammamish town’s fiery 1925 demise echoes today

By Jean Sherrard

History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. Accordingly, burning 100 years ago were conflagrations whose embers rekindle today with the threat of literal and figurative five-alarm fires.

On Thursday, June 25, 1925, the thermometer atop Seattle’s18-story Hoge Building recorded the then-warmest temperature in Northwest history. As the mercury climbed to 98 degrees, the city’s two major dailies sported banner weather headlines.

Although “numerous small fires” had broken out across Western Washington, the Seattle Times assured its readers that “they were reported under control.” Further, “fire wardens [will] exercise every precaution as long as the dry weather remains.”

The next day, however, hopes evaporated when the Lake Sammamish mill town of Monohon, four miles north of Issaquah, went up in smoke. The fire began just after noon, reported the Post-Intelligencer’s R.B. Bermann, when “a cigarette tossed aside in the [sawmill’s] washroom started a conflagration which raged unchecked until the whole settlement was virtually destroyed.”

Along with dozens of homes, Monohon’s railroad depot, hotel, general store and the J.E. Bratnober sawmill were “blotted from the earth,” Bermann said, “as though some gigantic monster had stepped on [them], crushing everything to the ground.”

The intense heat had shriveled vegetables on their vines and blackened trees within hundreds of yards. Young chickens in their coops were “baked to a crisp.”

Firefighting efforts were stymied when the road running through town was engulfed in flames. Inadequate hoses and pumps having failed, “attempts to check [the fire] with dynamite … blew blazing timbers all over town, starting dozens of new fires.”

Historian Phil Dougherty, whose HistoryLink essay offers a thorough and colorful account of the disaster and its aftermath, wrote, “The mill rebuilt and survived

in various incarnations until 1980, but Monohon itself was gone.” Though no deaths or injuries were reported, “everything that had made this little town of 300 souls almost the Valhalla of Lake Sammamish — gone.”

A century later, these events continue to send up smoke signals.

The National Forest Service, whose hotshot crews of firefighters have battled wilderness infernos for the past hundred years, has been decimated by workforce cuts from the Trump administration.

As recently detailed in The Seattle Times, significant personnel losses are reported by individual forests across Washington state.

Forest Service officials privately predict disaster for the upcoming fire season, one Washington manager saying that without experienced employees, “the West will burn.”

This is one rhyme we can only hope against hope not to repeat.

WEB EXTRAS

Noting a compass correction: As several readers have commented, Monohon is not 4 miles west of Issaquah, but due north. I was misled by the P-I article printed the day after the fire, which sent me in the wrong direction!

Click on through for our narrated 360 degree video.

A fascinating and somewhat alarming side note: only two weeks later, on July 10, 1925, the Scopes “monkey trial” was about to commence, in which the pugnacious perennial populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan prosecuted a science teacher who broke a Tennessee law forbidding mention of evolution in the classroom. On the Scopes trial centennial, a bell tolls for scientific inquiry and education, ringing out another rhyming echo.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on June 12, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on June 15, 2025

Tallest US Masonry Dome stands as our state’s homage to democracy

By Jean Sherrard

A visit to Olympia, which I highly recommend, is a tonic for what ails us. From the lofty architecture of the Legislative Building (aka the Capitol Building) to the generous, Olmsted Brothers-designed landscape, the sense of uplift is palpable.

As in our nation’s capital, the edifices of government were designed to reflect neo-classical themes of the Enlightenment, plus a shout-out to ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy.

In an era when, increasingly, questions arise about the legitimacy and efficacy of our democratic republic, these soaring expressions of harmony, proportion and humanism offer enduring comfort.

First, a few pertinent facts:

Our state Capitol building, at 287 feet, is the tallest masonry dome in the United States and among the tallest in the world. The dome itself weighs 30.8 million pounds. The building’s exterior is made of warm-colored Wilkeson sandstone from Pierce County. Built to last, the structure has survived three major earthquakes, most recently the Nisqually Earthquake in 2001, followed by three years of seismic upgrades and structural rehabilitation.

In their authoritative overview, “Temples of Democracy: The State Capitols of the U.S.A.,” architectural historians Henry-Russell Hitchcock and William Seale suggest that in Olympia, “the American renaissance in state capitol building reached its climax.”

The long road to achieving this ideal began when Olympia founder Edmund Sylvester donated a 12-acre

bluff as a site for the territorial Capitol. In 1856, the Legislature moved into a two-story wood-frame building on the site, which served first the territory and then the state until 1903.

Early plans for the capitol campus had been shelved following the 1893 financial Panic. The governor

authorized purchase of the Thurston County Courthouse, in whose cramped quarters the Legislature met beginning in 1905.

In 1911, a new State Capitol Commission held a nationwide design competition, enlisting Seattle architect Charles Bebb to serve as lead judge. Out of 30 mostly local submissions, two architects from New York City seized the prize.

For Walter Wilder and Harry White, junior architects in their mid-30s, designing the group of capitol buildings was their first and only major commission. Unexpectedly, their work stretched over the next 18 years.

When announcing the award, the commission also wired the Olmsted Brothers — the renowned Brookline, Mass., landscape firm already known for its many Washington state contributions — asking if they could “prepare plans for Capitol Building grounds.”

The Olmsted designs were adopted and installed by 1930. Their addition of verdant gardens, trees and wide boulevards completed our state’s graceful, human-scaled homage to nascent democracy in a city quite fittingly named Olympia.

WEB EXTRAS

Here’s a “now” of the Thurston County Courthouse, purchased for use by the legislature.

For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, click on through here, pardner!

(click to enlarge photos)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Thank you, Roseanne!

(click to enlarge photos)

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.

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.

“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.”

WEB EXTRAS

To see our narrated 360 degree video captured on location, click here!

Click here for a video of the Mister Roger’s theme song, sung by participants.

Full statements from contributors:

Marcia Sanders:

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.

(click to enlarge photos)

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.

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.

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!

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.

“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.

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.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on April 17, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 20, 2025

Should Seattle’s Klondike museum close? Just ask its visitors

By Jean Sherrard

On a blustery, mid-March weekend, at a beloved federal facility targeted for closure by the current administration, it was time to strike it rich with opinions.

At Seattle’s Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, inside Pioneer Square’s restored Cadillac Hotel, I launched a poll.

My first prospect was a tall, bearded, mountain of a man. Formerly a Lake Tahoe-area ranger, he was touring the Northwest. He shook his head, declining to identify himself. But as he watched a Gold Rush video, he seethed.

“Nothing I say would be printable,” he said. “If I told you what I really felt, it would ruin my vacation.”

No less passionate, others eagerly went on the record.

Theresa Lacey and Tom Calder of Redmond had just heard of the potential shuttering and made a beeline downtown.

“It feels just like burning books,” Lacey said.

“If we don’t know about the past,” Calder added, “we don’t know where we’ve been or where we’re going.”

Jason Hein, with daughter Vivian, said the museum provides a parallel lesson for today. In a dig at AI and

its investors, he said of the Gold Rush, “For the vast majority seeking the mirage of promised wealth, it was a complete bust.”

The lessons also are generational, Vivian noted: “Kids can come here and see how their ancestors lived and see how the city they live in was built.”

Connie Wall and Dawn Walker, longtime Olympia pals and “national park geeks,” said between them they’ve visited 30-plus national parks. They took the possible closure personally.

“It threatens who we are as people,” Wall said.

“As Americans,” Walker chimed in.

Ex-rangers David Monroe and Jenny Dyste, who ferried across the Sound to visit, saluted the museum’s organizational context.

“The national parks,” Monroe said, “are the greatest thing America has done. It’s a gift to the people of the United States.”

Wiping away tears, Dyste added, “It’s our shared history.”

Lifelong Northwesterners John and Sandi O’Donnell were making their first visit.

“I’m celebrating my 63rd birthday by buying a National Parks Senior Pass today,” John said.

Sandi lamented the “heartbreaking” prospect of closure. “This place is a national monument.”

Could I find supporters of closure? Try as I might, it just didn’t pan out.

Theresa Werlech of Mercer Island has worked as a tour guide for 35 of her 88 years. Escorting dozens of student choir members from Arizona, she summoned a hopeful analogy.

“This place is an absolute jewel,” she said. “I’d be devastated if it closed. Let’s hope that the Klondike continues to go in search of gold.”

WEB EXTRAS

A handful of photos show off the museum’s lovingly designed interior, upstairs and down.

For our narrated 360 video of this column, please head over here!

Help create a fun and timely Now & Then column featuring the local history of Social Security!

The Alaska Building was home to the first Social Security Administration offices in Seattle in 1937. Its enthusiastic regional director was the aptly named Frank Messenger.

Join us Sunday, April 13, at 2pm at the northeast corner of Second and Cherry in front of the Alaska Building to demonstrate your support for a strong and healthy social security system.

Bring your SSA cards  (or facsimiles) to hoist in the air for the group photo. All are welcome!

Also, another opportunity to make your voice heard. Send us your succinct thoughts about Social security for possible use in the upcoming column. All comments will be posted here on the blog as well. Please email seattlenowandthen@gmail.com with the subject line “Social Security.”

Published in The Seattle Times online on April 6, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 3, 2025

Cruise along Chuckanut Drive – ‘an incomparable panorama’ since 1916

By Jean Sherrard

For my Grandpa Jean, a truck driver originally from Stillwater, Oklahoma, the journey was the destination.

In the 1930s, he crisscrossed Washington state in his trucks and was eager to share his scenic discoveries with a growing young family.

Hugging the steep sides of Chuckanut Mountain south

of Bellingham, Chuckanut Drive offered breathtaking vistas across Samish Bay and must have attracted the ex-Okie flatlander like a bee to honey.

Parking along the two-lane road and scrambling down to a small Pigeon Point cove for picnics became a family tradition. Sandy beaches, busy crab pots and massive Burlington Northern trains (and the pennies they flattened) colored childhood memories.

Chuckanut Drive has always taken the “drive” part of its name seriously. It can be traversed by car,

motorcycle or a particularly intrepid bicycle, but its narrow curves chiseled into precipitous sandstone cliffs leave scant margins for error (or photographers!). Likewise, its creation story boasts twists and turns worthy of dime-store novellas.

Primitive and undependable, the earliest north-south passages along the west side of Chuckanut Mountain were subject to falling rocks and high tides.

After the Great Northern Railway bought the right-of-way along the shoreline in 1893, road improvements were stalled to prevent landslides that might impede rail traffic.

In 1910, a nascent state highway department took control, hiring inexperienced convict crews to carve out stone ledges watched over by guards with shotguns. After 5.5 grueling miles, money ran out, and labor ground to a halt. With a further injection of state funding, contractors finally completed the task.

Hailed upon its spring 1916 opening, the road boasted a slew of firsts. A glowing Seattle Times account proclaimed it “the first link of the Pacific Highway from Vancouver B.C. to San Francisco to parallel salt water.” The route also handily connected Skagit Valley farms to Whatcom County ports, “proving its utilitarian value” while providing “an incomparable panorama of Western Washington.”

What’s more, Bellingham’s Charles Larrabee, encouraged by Gov. Ernest Lister, donated 20 acres of forested land along the road’s northern stretch, which became Washington’s first state park. Proclaimed the Times, “It will undoubtedly be appreciated by tourists desiring an ideal picnic spot.”

In 1919, Chuckanut Drive began to be paved and widened, attracting even more sightseers. By the mid-1920s, tourist-filled buses with observation windows shared the highway with Prohibition-skirting smugglers of liquor and drugs from Canada.

The Larrabee family gifted the state another 1,500 nearby acres in 1937. Today’s 2,683-acre Larrabee State Park is one of the state’s largest and most popular — and just one of the many hallmarks of spectacular Chuckanut Drive.

WEB EXTRAS

To view our narrated 360 degree video of this column, click right here.

And for ultimate enjoyment, check out this hand-tinted photo from the same prospect (but a different photog) supplied by the legendary Ron Edge.

Below, a few more photos of Larrabee State Park beach and environs.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on March 20, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on March 23, 2025

113-year-old Roosevelt District jewel houses tiny shops ‘of hope’

By Jean Sherrard

What do storybook characters Ferdinand the Bull, the Little Engine That Could and the subject of today’s column have in common? All are plucky, dignified survivors in a seemingly indifferent universe.

“It’s like a reverse ‘Up’ house,” says Ryan Donaldson, adding to the trope and referencing an unassuming two-story structure anchoring the corner of 65th and 16th in the Roosevelt district.

His grandmother, Lucille Moreau Mrozcek, lived and

worked here beginning in 1980. Built in 1912, the combined house and shop, once Jewel Grocery, today stands isolated in what resembles a war zone, strewn with graffiti-covered broken concrete foundations.

“For years, my grandmother refused to sell,” Donaldson says. “This place was her home, full of family history, and she wanted to preserve it.”

“Mom’s my idol,” adds daughter Barbara Donaldson. “She never let up.”

In the early 1960s, Lucille and then-husband Conrad Mrozcek opened an artists’ supply shop on “The Ave,” serving university art students and professionals. Within several years, they opened a complementary business, Seattle Auction Palace, dealing largely in art and antiques.

Following their divorce in 1968, Lucille continued working full time while raising seven children. Buying the corner house and shop near Roosevelt High School made juggling life as a working single mother tenable. For nearly 40 years, she helmed Silhouette Antiques downstairs while nurturing children and grandchildren above.

“She had a signature saying,” Barbara recalls. “ ‘You do what you’ve got to do.’ Simple as that.”

Even as investors snapped up nearby properties, Lucille was adamant, refusing to move out. “She was definitely a thorn in their side,” Ryan says.

After her death in 2020, hoping to preserve the

existing structures, her family sought a sympathetic buyer. “We put up a for-sale sign,” Barbara says, “and in walked a young couple who lived just up the street.”

The two, Jenny Gerstorff and Josh Frickberg, were thrilled at the idea of opening a business in a location with neighborhood history. After many months of DIY renovation, repair and re-use, their shared vision bore fruit.

Ravenna Rocks, featuring crystals, gemstones and a host of geologic marvels, is housed in the Silhouette Antiques space, while just upstairs, Ravenna Refills offers organic shampoos, soaps and lotions in reusable containers.

For Lucille’s offspring, the preserved place provides the perfect coda. “We get to come and visit whenever we want,” Barbara says. “It’s like adding another branch to the family.”

“With so much bad news these days,” Gerstorff says, “we’re really happy to be good news for the community.”

Ravenna Refills partner Robin Dreisbach agrees: “We’re like a little shop of hope.”

WEB EXTRAS

Ravenna Refills will be having its official grand opening celebration on Saturday, March 29th, 3-6pm. We’ll be on hand to document the event!

Click right here to watch our narrated 360 degree video of this column.

Scroll down for more photos telling this fascinating story.

And here’s an interesting coincidence, discovered by Josh Frickberg’s dad. The Pingreys – Albert and Kittie – (pictured below) who also once owned the structure and ran a grocery there, are Josh’s 7th cousins, 3 generations removed.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on March 6, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on March 9, 2025

At this 1938 Seattle cathedral’s blue domes, ‘heaven and earth meet’

By Jean Sherrard

For a first-time visitor, Sunday services at St. Spiridon evoke elaborate ritual.

After the ringing of eight bells mounted on the church’s side porch and tower, worshipers of all ages assemble in the square nave, most standing throughout the hour-long liturgy.

Priests perform a complex choreography before the altar, featuring arrivals and departures through multiple doorways, curtains that open and close, and mesmerizing recitations accompanied by a choir. Throughout, the delicate musk of frankincense wafts through the cathedral.

“We believe in the literal power of the sacred,” says John Cox, the church’s official zvonar, or bellringer. Cox relinquished Episcopal roots to join the Russian orthodox congregation in 1998. “For us, faith is not just a metaphor.”

This includes the physical church itself, which presides half-hidden amid high-rises on a slope just west of Interstate 5 in South Lake Union. For orthodox believers, Cox says, it is “a place where heaven and earth meet.”

St. Spiridon was founded in 1895 by Russian, Ukrainian, Greek and Serbian immigrants working in Seattle’s lumber and fishing industries. The congregation initially erected a wooden New England-style meeting house at the foot of Capitol Hill.

Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, great

numbers fled the new Soviet Union, and St. Spiridon’s congregation swelled to accommodate the new arrivals. The Bolshevik government, however, while shuttering churches across Russia, also sent out “church” representatives who attempted to seize ecclesiastical properties worldwide.

In 1924, ignoring the protests of church members, Seattle courts ordered that the building be ceded to the Soviet emissaries. In the dead of night, irate parishioners broke into their sanctuary and stripped it bare, removing icons, altars and religious art.

For 12 years, St. Spiridon met in rooms donated by the sympathetic Episcopalian archdiocese nearby. By 1936, members had raised enough capital to purchase another plot of land and erect a traditional Russian parish church.

They hired Russian-born architect Ivan Palmaw (1896-1979), also noted for designing Capitol Hill’s St. Nicholas Cathedral and the art deco Renton Fire Hall (now the Renton History Museum). Palmaw had fled post-revolution Russia, eventually landing in Seattle to attend the University of Washington School of Architecture.

“Orthodox churches are not built this way just because it looks cool,” Cox says. “Every aspect holds meaning.”

St. Spiridon’s nine domes — all robin’s egg blue —

represent the nine orders of angels and archangels. Their onion-like design is significant. “They are shaped,” he says, “like the tongues of fire that appeared over the apostles’ heads on Pentecost.”

On a blustery Sunday, he adds a wryly practical, if secular note: “They also shed snow really easily.”

WEB EXTRAS

A cool photo collage from St. Spiridon’s basement foyer illustrating significant moments in construction.

And to view our 360 degree video of the column, please wander over here.

For a short video of the Sunday service complete with choir and bells, click on the YouTube below:

And here’s a video treasure bell ringer John Cox just alerted me to:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb.20, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 23, 2025

Seattle Ski Park of 1934 (at Snoqualmie Pass) was ‘close to heaven’

By Jean Sherrard

Every Saturday morning during bleak winter months in the late 1960s, when weather cooperated, my parents would drop me off at the parking lot of Bellevue Junior High School to catch a yellow school bus bound for Snoqualmie Pass and a day of skiing.

In the mountains, I joined hundreds of other students, learning to negotiate rope tows, chair lifts and snowy slopes until some measure of prowess and confidence bloomed. Though not a natural athlete, I discovered I was a passable skier.

By late afternoon, aching and weary, all of us student skiers boarded the buses home. We could hardly wait for the next Saturday.

I only recently discovered the early origins of the exuberant civic spirit that championed school and community participation on the ski slopes.

“In 1934, the Seattle Parks Department opened the first municipally owned ski facility in the country,” says   ski historian John Lundin, author of “Early Skiing on Snoqualmie Pass.”

“Efforts were led by Seattle Mayor John F. Dore, a skier who envisioned the project as one that could lift his city’s spirits during the midst of the Great Depression.”

Ten acres of forest were cleared of trees by laborers provided by the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps, who also added a “warming hut” for chilled skiers.

To prepare Seattleites for this unfamiliar recreation, Parks offered lessons to neophytes in the old Westlake Ice Rink. “The indoor school,” reported The Seattle Times, “is an innovation in ski training.”

The Seattle Ski Park opened Jan. 21, 1934. Though it was a drizzly Sunday, newly minted skiers, however, were scarcely discouraged. More than 1,000 turned up

to celebrate opening day, which featured the North End Community Band and Dore himself, who awarded a prize for the day’s best skier.

“This park is yours,” the mayor proclaimed. “We hope to expand it … and give you a ski instructor so that your children may learn to ski.”

Hardy enthusiasm saved the day. Because the park’s snowy incline had no rope tows or lifts (the first wouldn’t be installed until 1938), every skier made the long climb up Municipal Hill on foot, rewarded with thrilling if brief downhill glides.

City Council skeptics questioned creating a city-run park 60 miles from Seattle limits. Most councilors pronounced “ski” with a long “I.” Commented a wag, “ ‘Sky’ Park is rather descriptive when you consider how close Snoqualmie Pass is to heaven.”

Parks relinquished the ski park in 1940, but not before instilling an enduring love of snow sports in Seattle devotees.

WEB EXTRAS

For a 360 degree narrated video of this column, please join us on the snowy slopes!

Click here for historian John Lundin’s delightful HistoryLink essay. Much more of John’s work can be found at his personal website.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 6, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 9, 2025

This 12,500-year-old fossil found on Valentine’s Day 1961 got heart’s pounding

By Jean Sherrard

Without doubt, today’s “Then” photo is of the oldest — and largest — pelvis ever featured in this column.

Its original owner is a giant ground sloth that lived during the early Holocene era, soon after the retreat of the 3,000-foot-thick Cordilleran ice sheet. Its Puget Lobe, extending from Canada to just south of Olympia, left behind glacier-carved inland seas, lakes and rivers that still define this region’s topography.

As the ice melted, abundant life returned to the ’hood. Lowland bogs and swamps, including ample flora, supplied megafauna from mastodons to giant sloths with full larders.

Skip forward 12,500 years to Valentine’s Day 1961. Preparing to pour a concrete foundation for a Sea-Tac Airport expansion project, construction workers encountered an obstacle. Lean and compact, pile driver Gordon “Gordy” Simmons lowered himself into a 14-foot-deep hole to investigate.

“We were about 500 feet from the end of the runway,”

he recounted in a 2021 interview, “making these landing towers to guide planes in.”

At the bottom of the pit, Simmons saw what appeared to be a giant skunk cabbage, covered with rounded veins. But it crumbled away to the touch, exposing a huge hip bone. “I thought, ‘Gee, that must be an old cow or something.’ ” But it was buried too deep to be a cow.

He shouted up to a co-worker. “I got a dinosaur down here. Better call the university!”

And the paleontologists came running.

Construction was suspended while University of Washington scientists from the Burke Museum sifted through mounds of wet, unstable soil. What they unearthed was astounding.

“The Sea-Tac sloth provided the first evidence of these animals in the state,” notes David B. Williams, co-author of “Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales: Fossils of Washington State.” Just as thrilling, “it illustrated that interesting stories of natural history are everywhere, even in the heart of cities.”

The determined team recovered nearly 60% of the fossil’s remains, transferring them to the Burke Museum for further evaluation, inspiring years of rewarding research.

For Simmons, who continued working in construction until his retirement in the mid-1990s, the story of his find became a well-burnished family chestnut. Not until 2014, however, did he re-unite with his prehistoric pal, by then a featured exhibit.

In February 2022, daughter Dianna Johnson contacted the Burke with a request. Would it consider naming the giant sloth after her ailing father, then in his final weeks? Museum staff enthusiastically agreed.

Today, 11-foot tall “Gordy” welcomes visitors to the Burke Museum’s third-floor paleontology exhibit, its nickname invoking a serendipitous discovery and its intrepid discoverer.

WEB EXTRAS

First off, thanks are in order. Devlin Donnelly of the Port of Seattle greased the skids – as well as transporting the entire Simmons clan in a Port van making multiple trips to the photo site.

For a superb Port of Seattle video featuring Gordon and the sloth story, follow this link.

Here are a few more of Devlin’s photos:

Also deserving thanks and kudos, Patrick Webb, journalist for the Chinook Observer, who was first contacted by Dianna Johnson. Patrick wrote a moving account of Gordon’s fossil discovery, published shortly before his death in March, 2022.

And for a magisterial history of the Port of Seattle – which includes Gordy’s story – check out ‘Rising Tides and Tailwinds: The Story of the Port of Seattle‘ by Casey McNerthney, Kit Oldham and Peter Blecha.

More miscellany to share:

Finally, for our narrated 360 degree video, captured on on location, click right here.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 23, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 26, 2025

Lakeside Denny manor falls victim to religious landmark loophole

By Jean Sherrard

Turns out the mission was impossible.

Readers may recall our caper last March, attempting to visit Loch Kelden to capture one last photo before its approaching demolition. The three-story Spanish Mission Revival mansion overlooking Lake Washington had been completed in 1907 by Rolland Denny, the youngest member of the pioneer Denny Party.

We requested a final tour from the Unification Church, which had used the 1.7-acre property as a domicile and retreat since 1974. With its $6 million sale to developers still “pending,” the church turned us down.

So we took to the water. Accompanied by Rolland’s

great-grandniece Maria Denny, we boarded a cabin cruiser and, floating offshore, took “now” photos of the mansion gleaming over her shoulder.

Demolition was delayed, but sadly only by months.

Days before Christmas, we received news that the end was nigh. Mere minutes remained before the main structure of the house would be leveled. I grabbed a camera and made a bee line to Loch Kelden.

Unattended, I toured the denuded mansion, snapping photos. Soon I was joined by Aaron Blanchard, director of operations of EarthWise Architectural Salvage.

“We removed beautiful fir paneling, pocket doors,

leaded glass and stained-glass windows,” he said, along with 8-10,000 board feet of old-growth wood. EarthWise also saved the mansion’s front door, rumored to contain wood from the original 1851 Denny cabin.

“Incredibly cool,” Blanchard said, “was the horse-hair terra-cotta cornice above the door in the shape of a clamshell.” (The clamshell could be a sly reference to infant Rolland Denny’s survival, credited to Duwamish-provided clam nectar.)

After our spring caper, readers expressed shock and dismay over the pending demolition. Many asked how such a historic structure could be torn down without public input. What about city landmark status?

University of Washington architecture professor Jeffrey Karl Ochsner notes that the state Supreme Court affirmed in 1990 a claim by Seattle’s First Covenant Church that landmark designation infringed on religious freedom.

“The First Covenant ruling created a loophole in landmarks law,” Ochsner says. “Now what happens is a consecrated church building owner reaches a deal with a developer while the church is still consecrated. Then they get a demolition permit. This bypasses the landmarks process. Next the church deconsecrates and sells to the developer. The demolition permit transfers along with the property.”

For Maria Denny, the razing feels “like the loss of a family member, and it’s sad to think that a little piece of history is gone.”

Some may quarrel with “little” — in this specific case, and as an example for our city’s future.

WEB EXTRAS

Click through for our narrated 360 video featuring the demolition.

For those interested in a public discussion of the issues raised by this demolition, please join us on Feb. 4th at the Good Shepherd Center.

Also, a few last views of the mansion’s interior and exterior, minutes before destruction.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 9, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 12, 2025

Seattle’s new Overlook Walk conjures up a ‘people’s viaduct’

By Jean Sherrard

For those who recall magician David Copperfield’s temporary vanishing of the Statue of Liberty, I have another disappearing act up my photographic sleeve.

Our “Then” photo, snapped just west of the Pike Place Market, shows the Alaskan Way Viaduct, torn down beginning in 2019.

For the forgetful or those unacquainted with this simultaneously beloved and detested ribbon of elevated highway, the viaduct’s double decks provided commuters with incomparable two-minute vistas of the city and Elliott Bay. The sinuous concrete structure bisected the city for 66 years, its traffic-induced bang, clatter and roar, amplified by concrete, thwarting normal conversation on the waterfront.

But presto change-o!

In our “Now” photo, the vanished viaduct is replaced by the newly

inaugurated Overlook Walk, an elevated park redefining Seattle’s relationship to its waterfront. Generous curved walkways, wide staircases and ample terraces allow visitors to freely wander and appreciate the marvels. And the loudest sounds are the cries of gulls.

But don’t take this conjurer’s word for it.

On a December visit to the Overlook, palming a copy of the 2019 photo, I polled locals and tourists alike, asking them to comment on the abracadabra. Many pulled insightful rabbits out of their lined winter hats.

Jenny and Peter Stuijk often have hiked the area from their Ballard home, but rarely made it past the Port of Seattle’s Centennial Park on the north waterfront. “For us, the Overlook is like a front door to the Pike Place Market,” Jenny says, and Peter finishes her sentence: “And the setting is breathtaking.”

“It opens up right in front of you,” says Seattleite Andrew Mosoreti, “and you can feel the living city on the Sound.” Workmate Gunnar Brent concurs. “For the first time in my life,” he says, “downtown and the waterfront are connected.”

Rosemary Koenig and her visiting mom Teresa appreciate the Overlook’s gentle curves. “I prefer a meandering path to a straight shot,” Rosemary says. “Add in a cello,” Teresa says. “I’d love music to amble to.”

French-born Seattle resident Sandrine Morris would conjure up street artists and musicians “to fill the big open space.”

Enchantment struck Tacomans Judy and Paul Rietmann. “This is a real gathering place,” Paul says. Judy slyly adds, “It’s a people viaduct.”

“I’m very impressed,” says Port Townsend’s Joe Breskin, comparing the Overlook to New York’s famed High Line park. “It’s the first investment in public space of this scale since Century 21’s World Fair campus.”

“It’s fabulous,” Leilani McCoy says, “with or without a kid.”

No mere sleight-of-hand here. To quote David Lee of Bellevue, “Quite magical!”

WEB EXTRAS

For a 360 degree narrated video of the column, click here!
More photos from the Overlook and environs:

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 18, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 22, 2024

2 uplifting updates: Progress on Seattle library and totem poles

By Jean Sherrard

We have encouraging news about two cherished public spaces highlighted in “Now & Then” — the Green Lake Library and Victor Steinbrueck Park.

After a 20-month renovation, the library branch was reopened Oct. 28. Thanks to a 2019 levy approved by Seattle voters, this historic building is re-imagined for future generations.

Inaugurated in 1910, the landmarked Carnegie-built structure “had become obsolete,” says project architect Matt Aalfs. The necessary seismic retrofit incorporated an exposed structural steel frame, intended to “find visual composition with the existing historic elements.” And an electric HVAC system replaced a gas-fired boiler, saving an annual 30 tons of carbon emissions. The newly air-conditioned building also will provide refuge for patrons on hot days and fresh air during incursions of forest-fire smoke.

Access also has been improved with a new elevator

and an exterior ramp. Interior spaces have been decluttered to create a sense of airy light.

Patrons are delighted and relieved to have a community treasure available once more. “On reopening day,” says Elisa Murray, digital communication strategist, “people were just coming in and hugging staff.”

In January, the University Library, another Carnegie building, will close until late 2026 to begin a similar project. The citywide system aims to be “a safe space where all are welcome,” says Tom Fay, Seattle Public Library’s chief librarian. “One of our priorities in coming years will be connecting people and giving them a sense of belonging. There’s only so much you can do on social media.”

Meanwhile, at the north end of Pike Place Market, a sense of belonging still awaits after a two-year renovation at Steinbrueck Park. Two poles originally commissioned by the park’s namesake architect/activist and created and installed by Quinault/Isleta Pueblo carver Marvin Oliver in 1984 were “an homage to the Northwest Coast Indians who were here long before we were,” Steinbrueck said at the time.

In 2019, the Pike Place Market Historical Commission permitted Seattle Parks and Recreation to proceed with the much-needed restoration. The commission mandated that the poles, also needing repair, be reinstalled upon the park’s reopening.

Delayed by the pandemic, the project commenced in December 2022. Oliver’s totem poles were removed in April 2023 and delivered to Discovery Park, where they languished for 18 months.

Throughout, Marylin Oliver-Bard, the carver’s sister, and members of the Steinbrueck family have sought the poles’ restoration and reinstallation over Parks’ resistance. But Parks reversed itself in October, committing to the poles’ return and assuring that repairs would be transparent and expeditious.

But patience is still required. Until Oliver’s totem poles are restored and reinstalled on their plinths, the park will remain closed until at least summer 2025.

WEB EXTRAS

A few more interiors of the remodeled library and the poles in Discovery Park.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 12, 2024
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 15, 2024

The inside story of Seattle’s Mama Lil’s Peppers is spiced with grit and grins

By Jean Sherrard

If you live in the Northwest, chances are you’ve eaten Mama Lil’s Peppers whether you know it or not.

From pizza chains to fine restaurants, the spicy condiment has added its unique flavor to our regional fare. What’s more, Mama Lil’s

peppers are not the creation of a corporate team, but the brainchild of one man who loved his mom and parlayed one of her recipes into a culinary sensation.

In a rollicking, tell-all book, owner Howard Lev unspools his roller-coaster ride to national acclaim and back again. In “A Pepper for your Thoughts: How NOT to Start a Gourmet Foods Business,” he combines local foodie history and personal episodes with a cautionary tale of narrow scrapes, near disasters and hardscrabble victories.

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Lev headed west at age 16, hopping freight trains and hitching rides. The peripatetic youth found work as a laborer, carpenter and deckhand, occasionally stopping in at colleges and universities to study literature and film.

No matter where he found himself, his mother Lilian Lev’s homemade jars of hot peppers in oil followed. A regular side dish in Youngstown restaurants, the condiment was a savory reminder of her maternal affection.

Living in Seattle by the mid-1970s, working as a cab driver while writing spec screenplays, Lev began pickling small batches of Yakima-grown Hungarian goathorn peppers using his mother’s recipe. Every jar was eagerly snapped up by friends and family — and a nascent business was born. Soon followed a moment of truth.

Visiting a Hollywood film set, Lev distributed copies of his latest movie script along with jars of peppers to the A-list cast and crew. Within days, an eager studio boss called. Never mind the script, where could he get more of those pickled peppers?

In his often rib-tickling if heartfelt memoir, Lev charts his decades-long attempt to establish Mama Lil’s first as a local, then a national brand, caroming among canneries, Yakima pepper fields, restaurants and national food shows. “And I could never have imagined,” he writes, “the heartbreak and joy of the wild rollercoaster ride this business took me on.”

A one-man band and self-described schlep, Lev finally scored a breakthrough contract with Panera Bread to supply 700 stores with product. The Food Network shot a segment about Mama Lil’s, and Newsweek magazine ranked it among the top five artisanal food products nationwide.

Lev’s book brims with wry business acumen as well as dozens of recipes from Mama Lil’s fans such as chefs Tom Douglas, Matt Janke, Mike Easton, Jim Watkins and Dylan Giordan.

Also, several from Mama Lil herself, seasoned with love.

WEB EXTRAS

Two book events coming up:

• Dec. 19: Book launch/Cocktail party at OOLA Distillery in Georgetown (4755 Colorado S), 6-9PM.
  Reading begins at 7.
• Dec. 20: Reading at European Vine Selections on Capitol Hill (522 15th E). Event begins at 7PM.

For more info or to order the book online visit http://www.chinmusicpress.com.

Now, a few more photos from Mama Lil’s past:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 28, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 1, 2024

After 115 years, Wenatchee names the first cross-Columbia bridge

By Jean Sherrard

Sometimes a rose by another name does smell sweeter, suggests Teri St. Jean, a retired elementary school teacher from Wenatchee. An amateur historian and preservationist, she has devoted considerable time and effort to restoring historic homes. She’s also served on local landmark boards.

Like many Wenatchee-ites, St. Jean has enjoyed strolling across the 1908 pipeline bridge —  the first to cross the Columbia River south of the Canadian border. But she’s lamented that it bore no official name.

“It was just called the Pedestrian Bridge,” she says, “or the Black Bridge, or the Old Bridge.”

St. Jean believed that the graceful, cantilevered structure, beloved by locals, might be even more appreciated if it bore a name reflecting its storied past.

With a group of like-minded history buffs, she turned

for advice to Waylon Marshall, manager of the Wenatchee Reclamation District and responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the span.

Perhaps the city’s iconic bridge could be named after its creator? Marshall enthusiastically agreed.

Thus, 115 years after it first opened to traffic, the W.T. Clark Pipeline Bridge was finally christened on Oct. 4, 2023.

Originally from Ohio, William T. Clark arrived in Eastern Washington in 1893 and instantly understood the landscape and its limitations. The fertile soil, suitable for all manner of crops, was constrained only by lack of water.

After cutting his teeth on irrigation canals in the Yakima Valley, “Artesian” Clark (his popular nickname) spied opportunities further north.

The Highline Canal, his most extensive project, tapped the Wenatchee River at Dryden, running 16 miles through rough terrain southeast to Wenatchee. The gravity-powered canal opened in 1903, providing water to 7,000 acres and triggering a population and property boom. Parcels selling for less than $25 per acre climbed to $400 and more.

Just east, across the Columbia River, parched

scrubland stood tantalizingly close but mostly unirrigated. Clark’s solution: a bridge that could carry not only a pipeline extending the canal but also vehicle traffic.

He enlisted investors including James J. Hill, director of the Great Northern Railroad, and Seattle business leader Thomas Burke, both eager to further expand — and profit from — arable land.

Completed in 1908, the combined highway and pipeline bridge reclaimed 4,000 acres of East Wenatchee, luring another 6,000 settlers within months.

“The pipeline opened up development in Douglas County,” Marshall says, “and still serves water six dry months of the year, 24 hours a day, at 24,000 gallons per minute.”

Now part of Wenatchee’s 11-mile Apple Capital Loop trail, the W.T Clark Pipeline Bridge adds a name to a sweet bloom of regional history.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, click right here.

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 14, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 17, 2024

‘People of the Salmon’ totem pole celebrated at Lake Union Ivar’s

By Jean Sherrard

Seattle restaurateur Ivar Haglund heard that property he owned along the north edge of Lake Union had once been an Indigenous gathering place, an invigorating vision was born.

The seafood salesman scuttled plans for a Hong Kong-themed restaurant and — with a doff of his familiar captain’s cap — opted to honor those who had feasted on salmon and shellfish for millennia.

His vision took shape at a University of Washington institution. “I wanted to do something legitimate and different,” he recalled for friend and columnist Emmett Watson. “One day at the Burke Museum, there it was: a replica of an authentic Indian longhouse, big places where Indians met, lived and ate.”

By the late 1960s, the inspired Haglund launched plans to build his own longhouse, fill it with Northwest art and artifacts and serve customers salmon cooked over a huge fire pit. Built with split cedar logs and lodge poles, Ivar’s Salmon House became the third restaurant in what is today a legendary Puget Sound chain.

Continuing Haglund’s original vision, Ivar’s recently recruited Alaskan-born David Boxley to replace a deteriorating Northwest Coast-style totem pole in the restaurant’s entry courtyard.

Creativity caught Boxley early on. Raised in the Alaskan community of Metlakatla, on Annette Island near Ketchikan, he knew he wanted to be an artist in third grade. After minoring in art at college, he dedicated himself to re-discovering once forbidden Tsimshian traditions in art, dance and song.

Today, his 86 totem poles stand around the world, with one on

permanent display at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.

“I started carving to bring back a culture that was erased,” he says. “I’m proud to have been a part of its revitalization.”

Boxley’s celebrated carving gifts are amplified by his extended family, including children and grandchildren, who compose the Git Hoan (“People of the Salmon”) Dancers, who use movement and song to revive traditional stories.

In September, more than 100 spectators assembled at the Salmon House to mark installation of Boxley’s latest pole. By turns graceful, joyful and, yes, electrifying, the troupe showcased Boxley’s articulated masks, bringing artistic masterpieces to kinetic life.

Raven-masked dancers wove through the audience, playfully clacking wooden beaks. A heart-stoppingly graceful orca arrived to the crash of drums, its hinged mask swung open to reveal a second hidden face beneath. And a Tsimshian salmon, larger than life, circled the parking lot, flashing ornate fins and tail, while the youngest members of Git Hoan flowed in its wake.

Throughout, Boxley’s red-cedar totem pole stood sentinel above this gathering place.

The purpose was dual and simultaneous: to bless and be blessed.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 video of this column, click here.

One news clip:

A selection of photos from the event are included below (click twice to enlarge):

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 24, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 27, 2024

Tacoma’s Brunswick Hotel offers (goose) bumps in the night

By Jean Sherrard

We’ve all felt fear — of the dark, of the unknown, of those places where the thin veil between light and shadow seems particularly threadbare, where things may well go bump in the night.

In Tacoma’s Dome district, Alfred’s Café owner Scott Wright leads a tour of the historic Brunswick Hotel, its upper stories largely empty since the early 1960s. The ground floor houses Wright’s bustling tavern and eatery, which he purchased in early 2020 after 16 years as bartender. Once a skeptic, he has encountered spine-tingling thrills and chills.

“Sometimes when I’m alone upstairs at night,” he says, “I’ll hear something like a door banging shut and practically hit the floor — it’s pretty nerve-wracking.”

Wright insists it’s more than just goosebumps.

“In the tavern downstairs, I’ve seen coffeepots fly off the shelves,” he says. “The chandeliers start to shake by themselves, each moving independently of the other.” Also par for the course, electronics, particularly tv and radio, turn off and return to life inexplicably.

An employee once complained about someone pulling her hair. “But there was no one anywhere close to her,” Wright says.

In dark, winter months, the eerie events seem to multiply.

Built in 1888 in the Grit City’s rough-and-tumble downtown, the Brunswick was, noted Tacoma’s Daily Ledger, “a fine hotel … well-arranged and nicely furnished.”

While its 38 small rooms, many with adjoining doors, have inspired claims that the hotel operated as a bordello, cramped rooms also meant ready access for railroad and lumber workers and sailors in search of cheap digs.

In 1907, the Chicago, St. Paul and Milwaukee Railroad bought the land out from under the Brunswick as a site for its new freight and passenger terminal. The three-story hotel was sold to new owners from Montana who hoisted the entire 46-by-90-foot structure onto a log “roller skidway” and towed it two blocks to its current location.

Over the years, home to pool halls, saloons and cigar shops, the

hotel’s rough customers often made the local dailies. Stories of con artists, armed robberies and stick-ups proliferated.

In 1914, Harris Halbstein, a tailor, was arrested by the Secret Service for a crude counterfeiting operation in room 37. He spent 10 long years in the pokey for $1.03 in fake coins.

In 1918, Army Private James Carner attacked Annie O’Toole, the Brunswick’s proprietor, when she dumped him. Nabbed running onto the Milwaukee tracks, Carner told police that he had been “rejected in love” before being carted away.

Today’s clienteles are well behaved by comparison, except, Wright says, the occasional mischievous, if harmless, spooky visitor.

WEB EXTRAS

To view our spooky narrated 360 video of this column, click here!

A few more photos of the hotel and cafe:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 10, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 13, 2024

The first Puyallup Valley fair in 1900 set the stage for today’s extravaganza

By Jean Sherrard

Irrepressible 66-year-old Lewis Alden Chamberlain barely slept a wink on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 1900. It was the eve of the first Puyallup Valley fair, which he’d been tirelessly promoting for months. All his efforts were on the line.

Universally known as “Dad,” the Buckley farmer must have knocked on hundreds of doors throughout the valley, drumming up support for his dream of a harvest festival featuring regional agriculture and industry.

Chamberlain wouldn’t take no for an answer, suggested Puyallup grocer Ned Rogers. “He called on me six times,” Rogers said, “I finally gave him a dollar to get rid of him.”

At the turn of the century, Northwest cities boomed. Tacoma was a thriving lumber town of 37,000 and Seattle — where, in Chamberlain’s words, “miners were exchanging gold dust for mackinaws” — had expanded to 80,000. Puyallup Valley farming communities, with a population of 3,500, supplied Western Washington with agricultural bounty but received scant recognition.

“Dad” and his Valley Fair Association hoped perceptions would change with its three-day fair.

Opening day dawned crisp and clear, but the two-acre fairground, originally donated by pioneer Ezra Meeker, was still nearly empty. Chamberlain paced the streets of Puyallup, sweating bullets. By late morning, a caravan of exhibitioners finally arrived. “Dad was so overjoyed,” reported fellow fair official W.H. Paulhamus, “that he shed a good many tears.”

Wagonloads of produce arrived, along with prize farm animals. Twins Bill and Ronnie Nix gave children “merry-go-round” rides on their tame de-horned bull. Several borrowed horses raced around a makeshift track. And the first of many Best Baby contests was held (although no blue ribbons were awarded).

The Tacoma Ledger proclaimed the fair “a veritable Garden of Eden”

in which “the Puyallup Valley … blushingly made her debut in the exposition world.”

Turnout far exceeded expectations, drawing 3,000 people from across the region. The fair’s shoestring operation had netted $583 after bills were paid.

“Dad” predicted a bright future. “In 30 years,” Chamberlain said, “we will have a grandstand, a racetrack and a cow barn,” with other improvements.

124 years later, the 20-day annual September event has surpassed Chamberlain’s wildest dreams. Since 2012, the now-renamed Washington State Fair has expanded to cover 165 acres, featuring hundreds of exhibits. With annual attendance nearing a million, it is the Northwest’s biggest fair and ranks among the largest in the world.

“Dad” would be mighty proud.

WEB EXTRAS

To begin, a huge thanks to the staff of the Tacoma Public Library’s Northwest Room. As always, their research work is incomparable and meticulous!

For a 360 video of this week’s column, please click here!

More photos of the 2024 fair attached:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on Sept. 26, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 29, 2024

A buried maritime treasure sleeps beneath Seattle streets

by Jean Sherrard

It’s safe to assume that Seattle is the only American city with a nearly forgotten sailing ship buried below its downtown streets.

5:45 p.m. on Dec. 30, 1876, the Windward ran aground at Whidbey Island’s Useless Bay, having mistaken a beach fire for the Admiralty Point Lighthouse during what a keeper called “a perfect gale.”

Hauling 525,000 board feet of lumber from James Colman’s mill on Seattle’s waterfront, the 650-ton bark was bound for San Francisco, helmed by Capt. A.E. Williams with a crew of 15.

Williams, wrote the Puget Sound Dispatch, returned to Seattle by canoe on New Year’s Day with grim news. The Windward, he reported, “is now lying, dismasted and on her beam ends … about a mile from the beach.” Owned by Colman (known for Colman Dock) and partners, the vessel was only partially insured, though most of its cargo was saved.

Declared a complete loss, the Windward was towed back to Seattle and deposited on tide flats.

For years to come, its distinctive oak hull photobombed panoramic portraits of Seattle’s waterfront. Colman used it for storage and allegedly maintained a ‘pied-à-mer’ in its deck cabins.

One day, teenaged Charles Kinnear, whose father, George, donated Queen Anne Hill’s Kinnear Park to Seattle, swam to the hulk at low tide. “We boys tore copper from her bottom and dived from her decks,” he later recalled. Though the tall masts had long disappeared, “they provided,” Kinnear said, “many souvenir canes” for local dandies.

On occasion, the derelict hosted festivity. On July 2, 1877, the Daily Intelligencer suggested, “Walking a greased pole, for a ten dollar prize, off the old bark Windward will be very amusing.”

In the late 1880s, with the filling in of then-Railroad Avenue (today’s Alaskan Way), the vessel was buried intact. Debris from the 1889 Great Seattle Fire extended the fill.

Every few decades since then, Seattle historians remembered the Windward’s underground presence.

Clarence Bagley in 1901 reminded readers of the “dismantled craft … [that] still lies in the mud” on Western Avenue “with her stern projecting into Marion Street.”

In 1949, Seattle Times columnist C.T. Conover re-imagined it under the same streets “throbbing with modern traffic, its bow pointed … toward the harbor as if eager to be once again at the scenes of its former glory.”

And in 1982, Paul Dorpat whimsically suggested that the Windward “no longer sways with the tides … [but] permanently jaywalks below Western Avenue.”

Today, aiming time’s arrow once again, we encourage waterfront visitors to take a dreamy breath and envision Seattle’s buried maritime treasure beneath their feet.

WEB EXTRAS

To view our narrated 360 video of this column, please click here!

Quick thanks to Bill Kintner who sent a note that indicates San Francisco also has ships buried under streets.

Also Patrick Poor, who finds evidence that New York does too!

Chalk one up for the wisdom of the crowd.

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on Sept. 5, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 8, 2024

In Suquamish hearts, long-burned ‘sacred’ longhouse lives on

by Jean Sherrard

Last week, we visited the Suquamish reservation, a vibrant stop on the 35th anniversary of an annual canoe journey that began with 1989’s Paddle to Seattle.

For Suquamish elder Barbara Lawrence, the event bracingly reinvigorates her culture. “Today, my children and grandchildren only know canoe life,” she says. “They assume that making canoes, paddles and cedar hats, and bringing back our songs, dances and languages, is just a normal part of their lives.”

But celebrating gains doesn’t negate almost unfathomable losses that devastated Indigenous peoples.

Lawrence, a tribal education outreach specialist, directed me to the site of a legendary longhouse burned to the ground 154 years ago. Although white settlers called it “Old Man House” from Chinook jargon, its original Lushootseed name has not yet been recovered.

Built around 1800, the vast, cedar-plank structure housed up to 600 people, including Chief Kitsap and his close relation, Chief Seattle. It served as a winter village, hosting weighty rituals and potlatch celebrations.

The largest construction of its time in the Northwest, its massive cedar posts and beams supported what historian David Buerge has called “the most remarkable structure ever created on Puget Sound.”

Following Lawrence’s directions, I walked a half mile past waterfront homes (with signs asserting that the beach was private property). I discovered a one-acre park given by Washington State Parks to the Suquamish Tribe in 2004. While nothing remains of the original longhouse, this sliver of land chronicles trauma and erasure.

The decades after its construction exposed its inhabitants to explorers and settlers — “the invasion,” Lawrence calls it — along with disease, religion and broken promises.

When she was a young researcher collecting oral histories for the Suquamish Museum, she elicited a story from elder Bernard Adams about the last hours of the longhouse.

In 1870, federal authorities, intent on removing the symbol of communal living, ordered its destruction.

When Chief Seattle’s daughter, Kikisoblu (aka Angeline), living in his namesake town, heard that the longhouse was burning, “she got into a canoe and came over. As it burned down, she was screaming and throwing sand on the cedar posts in a desperate attempt to save anything, crying out, ‘Me Sapa house!’ [my grandfather’s house] over and over again.”

Defying federal pressures, however, remaining tribal members soon erected a cluster of “little houses … just above and behind where the longhouse had been, as close as they could be to each other.”

While the Suquamish continue to address painful legacies of the past, they are no less committed today to revitalizing community and culture. As Lawrence says, “All the doors are open for us now.”

WEB EXTRAS

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on August 29, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 1, 2024

First ‘Paddle to Seattle’ gave distinction to 1989 state centennial

By Jean Sherrard

When Emmett Oliver, an elder of the Quinault tribe, reviewed plans drawn up for the 1989 state centennial celebrations, something was missing. The state’s rich maritime history would span sailing ships to mosquito-fleet classics. But no mention of canoes.

For thousands of years, canoes plied the lakes, rivers and oceans, carrying fishers, trappers, traders and warriors, besides reflecting the craftsmanship and artistry of their creators.

Oliver’s own background had given him unique insights into the crosscurrents of heritage and tradition. Educated in both Indian and non-native schools, he had joined the Coast Guard during World War II, eventually rising to the rank of commander.

Washington’s director of Indian education since 1971, Oliver was a passionate advocate for engaging and empowering tribal communities, so much of whose culture, language and traditions had been stripped away. Following his appointment to the state Centennial Commission by Gov. John Spellman, Oliver seized a rich opportunity to amplify that mission, which he presented to native councils across the region.

Commemorating a century of statehood, he said, would provide the ideal setting to mark a much longer Indigenous history. And what better symbol than his proposed Canoe Project, featuring a fleet of newly carved, ocean-worthy canoes to demonstrate the ongoing vitality of Coast Salish culture?

Dozens of long, traditional canoes, paddling in convoy across ancestral waters, hadn’t been seen since the state’s founding. With good reason. No new canoes had been carved in half a century. For Oliver, however, relearning traditional skills was not a bug but a feature that would connect tribes to their seafaring past.

It would provide “a chance for apprentice carvers to learn from masters,” he argued. What’s more, the wisdom of tribal elders would be vital, providing “techniques of carving, pulling, the spirituality involved with canoes, and [teaching] the paddling songs which used to ring out across the water.”

Logistic hurdles remained.

To acquire enough ancient red cedar logs of sufficient size, Oliver secured permission from the U.S. Forest Service to harvest two trees for each participating tribe under the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. An unanticipated wrinkle: extra-long transport vehicles had to be contracted to deliver the massive logs.

On July 18, 1989, the dream came true. The “Paddle to Seattle,” the first of many canoe journeys to come, arrived at Golden Gardens Park, the traditional land of the Duwamish.

On a Coast Guard “follow” boat, Oliver oversaw the celebration, joyfully marked by tribes from across the northwest and beyond. And for the first time in 100 years, a flotilla of long canoes skimmed across the Salish Sea.

WEB EXTRAS

For a fascinating lecture about the history of the Canoe Journey by Marylin Oliver-Bard, presented during a recent cruise on the Virginia V, please click on her photo below.

For more photos of this summer’s Paddle to Puyallup.

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on August 15, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on August 18, 2024

Lake Washington buoyed a 19th-century ferry-tale romance

By Jean Sherrard

When Capt. John L. Anderson went a-courtin’ at the age of 24, he had a sure advantage. His sleek Lake Washington steam ferry, the Quickstep, gave the ambitious young boat owner a leg up when it came to romance, suggests Matthew McCauley, marine historian and diver.

Born in 1868 near Goteborg, Sweden, 14-year-old Anderson enlisted as cabin boy on his uncle’s freighter. In a 1990 article in ‘The Sea Chest’ – a journal of northwest maritime history – his nephew Capt. Robert Matson relates what happened next. After six years as a deckhand, Anderson arrived in Quebec, finding work on the cross-Canadian rails. In 1888, at the age of 20, Anderson registered at the Yesler Hotel in Seattle.

It wasn’t long before he joined the crew of the 78-foot CC Calkins, a Lake Washington passenger steamboat commissioned by real-estate speculator Charles C. Calkins. His luxurious, 24-room Calkins Hotel on Mercer Island, built long before today’s connecting bridges, drew eager visitors from Seattle but was accessible only by water.

Anderson, with his years of ocean-going experience, quickly advanced. By 1890, after acquiring his master’s license, he was appointed captain of the new vessel, which offered regular passage to and from the mostly forested eastern shores of the lake.

A milestone for the 23-year-old immigrant came when visiting President Benjamin Harrison toured Lake Washington in 1891. Anderson welcomed him to the Leschi docks with bouquets of roses — and music. The CC Calkins fired up its onboard calliope for renditions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Home Sweet Home.”

Soon the young Swede trimmed his sails and invested wages in buying and refurbishing another lake steamer, the Winifred. Within hours of its relaunch, however, after a successful moonlight cruise and dance at popular Leschi Pavilion, the boat burned to the waterline. His insurance paid off handsomely.

To replace it, Anderson snapped up the aptly named 80-foot Quickstep, built in Astoria in 1877, and founded the Anderson Steamboat Co., transporting customers to ferry landings around the lake.

On its shipshape decks love blossomed. The dapper mariner caught the eye of passenger Emilie Madsen, whose Danish family had arrived in the booming lakeside coal town of Newcastle in 1887. Her regular ferry rides from Newcastle Landing to Seattle to give piano lessons provided the pair with trysting opportunities. Cabin boy Hugh Martin took the helm, discreetly averting his gaze while the couple “went behind the stack or in the stern … and held hands.”

In April 1895, they married, which must have broken the hearts of hundreds of lonely bachelor miners.

The first in a long flotilla of family boats, the Quickstep itself burned in 1898, but not before stoking flames of Anderson ardor.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 degree video version of this column, click here!

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on August 8, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on August 11, 2024

Only forest remains where once stood a lofty, coal-train trestle

By Jean Sherrard

Hellish roads, we understand, often are paved with good intentions.

When column founder Paul Dorpat emailed me a list of “Easy Dozen” column topics nearly a decade ago, featuring this week’s spectacular “Then” photo, he certainly meant well. It would be child’s play to repeat, he insisted.

Taking up Dorpat’s challenge, we enlisted the aid of the Newcastle Historical Society. Turns out the path to the May Creek trestle was one less taken.

Wielding machetes and loppers, we bushwacked along the overgrown rail bed traversing the steep southern shoulder of May Valley between Renton and Newcastle east of I-405. We clambered

over decades of refuse — from ancient washing machines to rusted motorcycles and automobiles — tossed from above into the ravine, muscling toward the former trestle site.

A dizzying 150 feet below flowed May Creek, a Lake Washington tributary wandering a steep canyon floor that was scooped out 10,000 years ago by the receding Vashon Glacier.

Directly east lay vast coal deposits first mined in 1863. Transport from Newcastle took days, employing tramways, wagons and barges loaded and unloaded up to 11 times before reaching Elliott Bay coal bunkers. Most mining profits were devoured by the cost of portage.

But by the late 1870s, steam clouds of change filled the air.

Extending the audaciously named Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad (which never ran beyond King County) would let coal be loaded directly onto train cars from the Newcastle coal face, slicing transport to mere hours.

Gullies were filled, hills leveled and 18 narrow gauge timber trestles constructed. Spanning May Creek Valley was a trestle126 feet tall and 1,070 feet long. At the time, it was hailed the largest in the territory.

The venture soon paid off.

During its first year, exports of Newcastle coal substantially increased, enough to make the 21-mile-long S&WW the country’s most profitable railroad.

By 1897, a New York firm, the Pacific Coast Co, assumed ownership, replacing 20-year-old narrow gauge with more robust standard-gauge tracks.

Contemporary observers, however, still noted the unnerving sway of the trestle beneath coal-laden cars. It would “shake the nerves of the stoutest hearts when they see what is expected to uphold a train in motion,” reported one anxious journalist.

In 1937, the rickety trestle was dismantled, having outlived the shuttered coal mines by nearly a decade. Today the once-ubiquitous rails are absent from Newcastle. But not the ghosts of hard labor.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 surround-sound video version of this column, please click here!

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on July 25, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on July 28, 2024

We still can get ‘stretchitis’ from beholding the tippy-top of the 1914 Smith Tower

By Jean Sherrard

Oh, to have been a fly on that wall in 1909 when firearm and typewriter magnate Lyman Cornelius Smith of Syracuse, N.Y., proposed building a 14-story skyscraper in Seattle. His son Burns, 29, must have nodded patiently before dropping an inspired bombshell.

“Let’s supersize it,” urged the younger Smith (here, of course, we paraphrase). What better promotion for a maker of office machines, he reportedly said, than a record-breaking office building? Rivaling Manhattan’s Singer, Metropolitan and Woolworth buildings — then the world’s tallest — would be front-page news nationwide.

What’s more, Burns reminded his father that speculator John Hoge already had begun planning his own 18-story high-rise. A significantly taller Smith column might thumb its nose at Hoge’s lesser stack for years to come. Fiercely competitive, Lyman Smith gave a hearty thumbs up.

From the get-go, the Smiths applied their powers of persuasion, Lyman dazzling the Seattle City Council with grand visions. The council formally resolved that city government buildings would remain within a four-block radius of the Smith property, clinching its central location and future relevance. A supportive Mayor Hiram Gill made sure that building permits were quickly granted.

A Syracuse architectural firm, Gaggins and Gaggins, completed plans for the $1.5 million steel and concrete edifice — a 21-floor base topped by a 14-floor tower and pyramidal cone that contained, claimed its builders, seven additional (if improbable) floors, for a fish-tale total of 42 stories.

On Nov. 5, 1910, before construction began, the 60-year-old elder Smith died unexpectedly after a short illness. A Seattle Times obituary lauded his “quick insight into the heart of things” and investment of a third of his fortune in “the future possibilities and present desirability of this city.”

His structure climbed to the sky. Crowds of admiring Seattleites (dubbed “sidewalk superintendents”) gaped upward, marveling at “cowboys of the air” who attached glazed terra-cotta panels. A local doctor warned that neck injuries might increase. Wags competed to name potential ailments. Top contenders: “crickitus,” “stretchitis” and “rubberosis.”

Come dedication day, July 4, 1914, Burns Smith welcomed thousands to his “cloud cleaver,” at 522 feet, the tallest in the West. The “gleaming white pile,” said the Times, represented “the confidence … which typifies Seattle spirit and growth.”

At its crest, an 8-foot-wide globe of glass and bronze “flashed the hour and quarter hour in red, white and blue.” Mariners approaching across Puget Sound proclaimed the newly minted icon “a beacon to the world.”

Although it’s dwarfed today by modern giants, can anyone say that the Smith Tower, having just marked its 110th anniversary, has lost any of its opening luster?

WEB EXTRAS

For a narrated 360 degree video of this column, please click here!

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on July 4, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on July 7, 2024

Constant change marks SeaTac as its 75th anniversary takes off

By Jean Sherrard

If there were birthday candles for our premiere regional airport, winds of perpetual change would blow them out.

On July 9, 1949, 30,000 people gathered to dedicate the gleaming $3 million terminal and administration building of Seattle Tacoma (long nicknamed SeaTac) International Airport. Its six stories and 243,000 square feet included eight loading gates and a state-of-the-art control tower. What’s more, its main 6,100-foot-long runway was expected to accommodate the then-burgeoning needs of aviation travel.

“Today we become a dynamic world center,” proclaimed Gov. Arthur Langlie, “and we are justly proud.”

Providing emphasis for the crowd, choreographed swooshes of jets, roaring bombers and lumbering troop carriers soared overhead.

That day, Northwest Airlines christened its first Boeing Stratocruiser, a long-range luxury airliner adapted from the C-97 military transport, using a champagne bucket filled with “mingled waters from distant Pacific ports brought close by air.” Appropriately enough, the plane was named “Seattle Tacoma.”

Throughout the sweltering summer’s day, “ice cream and soft-drink salesmen did a land-office business,” said The Seattle Times, while “thousands … formed lines to inspect United Air Lines, Western Airlines, Pan American World Airways and Northwest planes parked on the loading ramp.”

A super-size airport had been proposed more than a decade earlier, given the limits of then-crowded Boeing Field. County officials originally favored a location east of Lake Sammamish, but Pierce County and Tacoma officials lobbied hard for its eventual site, the Bow Lake plateau midway between Seattle and Tacoma.

“Interestingly, SeaTac gets the most fog of anywhere in the Northwest,” notes longtime aviation consultant Oris Dunham. SeaTac’s director of aviation until 1983, Dunham was on hand for its ambitious remodel throughout the 1970s. (In 1971, then in training, he was on duty when D.B. Cooper infamously hijacked and bailed out of a SeaTac-bound 727.)

During Dunham’s tenure, the terminal expanded, a parking garage materialized, and runways doubled in length. “We hoped our refurbishment would last through 2030,” he says. “But we were a couple decades off. Now it’s like stuffing 50 pounds in a five-pound bag.”

He points to planes’ increased passenger capacity and longer range as one culprit. A post-pandemic surge in travel has only added to the pressure. And it’s not just SeaTac. Airports across the country – and the world – continually strive to meet ever-increasing demand.

“Here’s my definition of an airport,” Dunham says with a wry twinkle. “A permanent construction site you happen to land airplanes at.”

On July 13, to celebrate SeaTac’s 75th anniversary, the Museum of Flight will set up a fusillade of figurative candles with a lively panel discussion — including Dunham!

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 video of this column, click here!

Also, a late-breaking contribution from our state archives – thanks for the head’s up, Midori Okazaki! Click through to explore an engineer’s scrapbook featuring photos of the construction of SeaTac!

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on June 20, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on June 23, 2024

We sign in with a sweet discovery, revealed by a local sleuth

By Jean Sherrard

To paraphrase a classic advertising slogan, when Ron Edge speaks, local historians listen.

A collector of historical photographs and ephemera, Edge is referenced in reverential tones usually reserved for celebrities or minor deities. Longtime “Now & Then” readers may have encountered his contributions without knowing it.

Which is why, when the Lake Forest Park resident told me that he’d found visual proof of something I’d been seeking, the hairs on my neck stood up.

He forwarded his scan of a photo bought several years ago. Small and hand cropped, it was credited to itinerant photographer Hiram Hoyt. The photo, from 1875, captured a familiar scene: the heart of thriving Seattle looking north up Commercial Street — today’s First Avenue south of Yesler.

The proverbial three little pigs might have sniffed out a cautionary note: buildings made of sticks don’t last long. But these wooden shop fronts lining the unpaved street represented a lively downtown core.

They included iron and tin mongers, realty offices, clothing shops, jewelers, and drug and grocery stores. Henry Yesler’s Pavilion, two blocks north at the corner of Front Street and Cherry, a popular venue for concerts, theatrical events and dances, can be seen just left of center.

Directly above stands the squarish white Central School, partially blocking the graceful outline of the Territorial University (today’s University of Washington) hovering at the corner of Fourth and University.

Further study reveals two coal gas streetlights, installed a year earlier by newly formed Seattle Gas Light Company. Canvas sunshades hung from the west-facing shops. Long shadows suggest a balmy summer’s afternoon.

“Proof of your favorite confectioner,” Edge announced with typical

cryptic brevity. I zoomed in, and a rectangular, one-word sign atop a roof near the center of the image swam into hazy focus: “CANDY.”

Two years ago, I wrote about the Puget Sound Candy Manufactory, Seattle’s first candy shop. Frustratingly, no photo of the business could be found. Edge’s intriguing tidbit, however, provides definite proof.

Proprietor Andrew Piper (1828-1904), who emigrated to America from Bavaria at age 19, arrived in Seattle in 1873 to a robust welcome. His shop’s unique confections and his personal charisma ensured popular success, catering to Seattleites’ sugary appetite.

Each winter, with Lake Union frozen several feet deep, the industrious confectioner carved out and stored huge ice blocks of ice, whipping up ice cream for delighted customers on hot summer days.

Today, thanks to Edge’s keen eye and detailed knowledge of regional history, “Now & Then” once again can fill in a missing puzzle piece and offer us all a satisfying sweet.

WEB EXTRAS

First off, let’s revisit our Andrew Piper column from a couple years ago, featuring a “then” photo of the candy maker with his son Walter on Front Street (First Ave).

And here’s the column Ron worked on with Paul Dorpat and me, finding the precise location of the cabin of Princess Angeline (Kikisoblu) below today’s Pike Place Market.

Some have remarked on the repeated cold winters which seemed to predominate in the Northwest during the latter half of the 19th century. Lake Union, in particular, froze to a depth of several feet, allowing Piper’s venture into ice cream.

Evidently, the Little Ice Age, which ended globally around 1850, was prolonged in the PNW by several decades, say local geologists.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on June 6, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on June 9, 2024

Can cars and walkers coexist in the Pike Place Market’s ‘honest place’?

By Jean Sherrard

First, an admission

As a teen in the early 1970s, I fell hard for the rough-and-tumble Pike Place Market. I knew it had just been rescued from developers’ wrecking ball. But it was the unvarnished marketplace itself — a seeming chaos of intermingling vendors and customers — that repeatedly drew me to this multi-chambered heart of Seattle.

A “circus crowd” was how the wowed Seattle Times described the Market’s exuberant opening on Saturday, Aug. 17, 1907. With spirits undampened by rain, thousands of eager consumers, weary of overcharging for fresh produce by a syndicate of unscrupulous middlemen, flocked to Pike Place to buy directly from farmers.

By mid-morning, farmers’ wagons were stripped bare. Noted the Times, the public market’s “great success proved that … Seattle was not only willing but anxious to support such a venture.”

Surviving Prohibition, the Depression, two world wars and a viaduct bypass, the aging Market in the mid-1960s faced certain demolition. A federally funded urban-renewal plan envisioned high-rise office buildings and parking lots to replace what Seattle architect Fred Bassetti famously called “an honest place in a phony time.” Fellow architect Victor Steinbrueck and other passionate preservationists arose to protest the scheme.

In 1971, their years of work paid off when Seattle voters agreed, by a landslide, to pass an initiative creating a Market “preservation zone.”

Today, the “honest place” faces a new question. Post-pandemic crowds, bolstered by cruise ships, often transform busy Pike Place — the street that bisects the Market — into a frenzied three-ring circus. To ameliorate such pressure and potential dangers, the city is evaluating whether to close the Market to vehicle traffic and create a pedestrian-only “event street.”

Such a step would disrupt the Market’s “controlled spontaneity,” says John Turnbull, recently retired from the Pike Place Preservation and Development Authority, which has operated the Market for the past 50 years. He cites a unique character 117 years in the making.

“We’re unlike any other neighborhood in the city,” Turnbull says, “with a blurring of public and private space.” He says the traffic question goes beyond maintaining accessible loading zones. “We need fire lanes and emergency and handicap access for residents. Closing to traffic is not a workable scenario.”

The Market Foundation’s Nick Setten knows much is on the line, and he welcomes conversation on the topic. “The Market is a living place,” he says, “with a unique historical context. Whenever a decision of gravity is made here, the ripples expand exponentially.”

Preserving this “honest place” with rough edges and heart intact will be a hard-won road. And worth the journey.

WEB EXTRAS

For a 360 video featuring elements from this column, please visit us here.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on May 16, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on May 19, 2024

San Juan Island’s 1859 Pig War brought home the Canadian bacon

By Jean Sherrard

Just as with classic fairy tales, any mention of the Pig War brings lessons to mind: folly, courage, arrogance, the wisdom of restraint. Add an enchanted setting — San Juan Island — and this compelling slice of Pacific Northwest history is well worth revisiting.

Once upon a time, on June 15, 1859, 27-year-old Lyman Cutlar, a squatter on the island, discovered a pig pillaging his potatoes. The lanky Yank had driven the spud-loving critter off his land more times than he could count and the $10 he’d invested in a peck of potato seeds was disappearing with every bite. “Upon the impulse of the moment,” he later wrote, “I seazed my rifle and shot the hog.”

To Cutlar’s credit, he immediately admitted the offense. His 160-acre stake stood on disputed land operated by Canada’s Hudson Bay Company as a sheep farm, managed by its agent Charles Griffin, owner of the deceased pig. Cutlar offered to replace the animal with one of his own or pay cash for it.

This infuriated Griffin: “You Americans are nothing but a nuisance on the island, and you have no business here.” More heated words followed, as did a threat to arrest Cutlar and try him in Victoria. To this, the American provocatively patted his Kentucky rifle.

This seed of what rapidly became an international incident had been planted 13 years earlier.

In 1846, the Treaty of Oregon established the 49th parallel as the international boundary between America and the British Crown colony, exempting Vancouver Island. The nationality of dozens of San Juan Islands, however, had been left unresolved.

The boar’s demise in 1859 brought that prickly stalemate to an end, with American settlers seeking protection from the U.S. military.

From Fort Bellingham on July 27, bellicose U.S. Brig. Gen. William Harney dispatched 66 troops, led by an eager Capt. George Pickett, who was prepared to fight to the last man. In response, three British warships were sent by James Douglas, the truculent British Columbia governor, also spoiling for a fight.

Only the restraint of cooler-headed associates, refusing to go to war over a pig, prevented further bloodshed.

Several months later, the two countries agreed to a joint occupation until a border settlement could be negotiated. To that end, “American Camp” was established on the south side of the island while “English Camp” occupied the north end.

Finally, in 1872, with Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm arbitrating, the San Juan Islands were granted to the United States. A fairy tale ending, perhaps, if only for Uncle Sam.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 video, recorded on location at English Camp, please click on through.

For a few more views of the San Juan camps, a couple of lighthouses, and a boat or two, see attached.

English camp:

A marker commemorating the decision of Wilhelm awarding the San Juan Islands to the U.S. – located on the hilltop above English Camp.

American Camp, overlooking Haro Strait.

Double click to see the perched eagle. Or scroll down for a close-up.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on May 2, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on May 5, 2024

To open the Aurora Bridge, the president and a telegraph were key

By Jean Sherrard

One of Seattle’s most spectacular — and tumultuous — celebrations began with the presidential push of a historic telegraph key.

Studded with Yukon gold mined by prospector George Carmack, the key had first been pressed by William Howard Taft to open Seattle’s 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. On the day of our “Then” photo, Herbert Hoover’s finger hovered over the button in the other Washington, waiting for the appointed minute to arrive.

The six-lane George Washington Memorial Bridge, yet to acquire its Aurora Bridge moniker, stood empty on Feb. 22, 1932, the bicentennial of our first president’s birth, but thousands of eager celebrants waited at its north and south ends, waiting for the signal.

Among them were jubilant Fremont and Wallingford residents, who had lobbied for years for a north-south highway to bypass the oft-opening Fremont Bridge.

Representatives from Mexico and Canada also paid homage to this vital link in the Pacific Coast Highway chain. Washington Gov. Roland H. Hartley (1864-1952), though a longtime opponent of state highways (he once described them as “hard surface joy rides”), nevertheless prepared a lengthy speech extolling the hugely popular venture.

On Lake Union, 167 feet below, the fireboat Alki also waited, water cannons at the ready, while fieldpieces of the 146th Field Artillery were primed to release an ear-splitting volley.

Among the dignitaries, Caroline McGilvra Burke, widow of Judge Thomas Burke, prepared a time capsule to be sealed into the bridge containing messages from 1932 Seattleites to those 100 years in the future.

At precisely 2:57 p.m. Pacific time, Hoover poked the golden telegraph to kick things off. Almost instantly, trumpets blared, a 21-gun salute roared, streams of water arched into the air and a giant flag unfurled from above.

Interrupted mid-speech, a bloviating Hartley cried into his microphone, “The president has just pressed the key!” But his words were lost in the crowd’s huzzah.

With Canadian emissary Vancouver alderman W.H. Lembke, Hartley sawed through a 1-foot-wide, 68-foot-long Douglas fir (jokingly called a “ribbon” by the assembled) that extended across the bridge’s northern approach. Mexican consul W.P. Lawton enthusiastically squirted oil onto the crosscut blade.

The “ribbon” finally severed, a siren signaled that the bridge was open to foot traffic.

“Youngsters, galloping ahead, were the first to meet across the great span,” reported The Seattle Times. Soon, “the bridge was a black mass of citizens, joining and intermingling across its length and width.”

An estimated 20,000 people had gathered to mark its dedication.

In its final hurrah, the gold-studded presidential key was tapped by President John F. Kennedy to open the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 video, shot on location, click HERE!

Also, here’s is Paul Dorpat’s original column on this topic from 24 years ago: 2000 06-11 N&T Aurora bridge

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on April 18, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 21, 2024

Light overcame darkness for pioneer kidney patient Clyde Shields

By Jean Sherrard

I saw my physician father cry only once. At his retirement party, he completely choked up when speaking about a man named Clyde Shields. The admiration was not misplaced.

Neither doctor nor researcher, Shields was the world’s first-ever ongoing kidney dialysis patient, here in Seattle. His contributions helped improve and extend millions of lives.

The Northwest Kidney Centers, founded in 1962, celebrated its 62nd anniversary with a Shields-related double act. On March 14, the long-anticipated Dialysis Museum opened in Burien, and the annual Clyde Shields Award for Distinguished Service, bestowed since 1991, was given to Rich Bloch, former Centers board chair.

Before 1960, a diagnosis of end-stage renal disease had only one possible outcome — death. Existing dialysis machines offered temporary relief from accumulated toxins, but repeated use permanently destroyed blood vessels.

Then Seattle nephrologist Dr. Belding Scribner (1921-2003), agonizing over the loss of a young patient, had a “Eureka!” moment.

“I literally woke up in the middle of the night,” he recalled years later, “with the idea of how we could save these people.”

The solution? A surgically installed tube providing a loop between artery and veins might be opened and closed as needed for repeated dialysis without destroying blood vessels.

With the help of UW mechanical engineer Wayne Quinton, Scribner created the “Scribner shunt,” a U-shaped Teflon device whose non-stick surface helped to prevent blood clots.

Scribner’s first patient was Shields, a 39-year-old machinist dying of kidney failure. On March 9, 1960, the newly improvised shunt was implanted in Shields’ arm and attached to a dialysis machine.

The results were immediate and dramatic. “As the waste was filtered from my body,” Shields said, “it was just like turning on the light from the darkness.”

“We took something that was 100 percent fatal and overnight turned it into 90 percent survival,” Scribner said.

For the next 11 years, Shields underwent dialysis, which entailed three 12-hour sessions per week.

Until his death from a heart attack in 1971, Shields, a skilled machinist, served as research partner as much as patient. “Time after time,” Scribner said, Shields was “the observant patient who

put us onto a new solution.” His courage and insights proved invaluable in solving problems as they arose.

Today, Shields’ son Tom injects a personal note of gratitude for the treatment that extended his father’s life. “Those 11 extra years were so important to me,” Tom says. “If dad taught me one lesson, it’s don’t give up. Get back to work and get her done.”

WEB EXTRAS

Just a couple this time round.

And ending on a personal note – a portrait of Jean’s dad, Dr. Don Sherrard, who choked up talking about his favorite patient Clyde Shields. It’s displayed on the wall at the museum.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 22, 2024
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 25, 2024

Think you have a long wait for state ferries? So did Seattle!
By Jean Sherrard

Waiting in line for a ferry, whether in the eight-lane lot of our 1936 “Then” photo or in today’s hugely expanded parking areas, we all have ample time to reflect on the state of Puget Sound car ferries. Their turbulent history began long before our own pandemic-induced cross-Sound woes.

In 1936, the family-owned Puget Sound Navigation Company (PSNC), aka the Black Ball Line, had become the largest inland ferry system in the world. Incorporated in 1900, the ambitious firm already had converted many of Seattle’s passenger-only “mosquito fleet” boats into car ferries, operating from its Colman Dock base. Having just snapped up its main rival, the Kitsap Transportation Company, after a crippling strike the year before, PSNC utterly dominated Puget Sound ferry traffic in the depths of the Depression.

But for owner and company president Capt. Alexander Peabody (1895-1980), storm clouds brewed. With a booming voice and imperious if dapper manner, “Cap,” as he was known to his friends, was notably contentious.

His ferry monopoly — which would last for more than fifteen years — would be eventful, buffeted by labor unrest, a disgruntled riding public and an exasperated state government.

Sneak a glance back at Colman Dock where patient motorists wait to cross the Sound. If Bremerton bound, they might be in for a treat, boarding the Black Ball’s sparkling new flagship Kalakala, whose streamlined design and Art Deco interiors reflected a hopeful future. (For $10, “Cap” had acquired the Peralta, a California ferry burned to the waterline, and built the maritime marvel).

With the openings of Oakland’s Bay Bridge in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge the following year, PSNC snapped up surplus wooden-hulled ferries on the cheap from California. Soon, 17 more Bay Area vessels joined the Black Ball fleet, their Golden State yellows repainted in northwest green.

Peabody’s combative instincts were tamed patriotically during World War II when, by U.S. government request, he had kept fares low. Early in 1947, however, he refused to negotiate with Black Ball engineers demanding better pay and shorter hours. Their response: a six-day strike, leaving 10,000 commuters stranded.

Several months later, to recover lost revenue, Black Ball raised rates by 30%, further enraging ferry riders.

When the state rolled back fares, a truculent “Cap” pulled the plug, halting operations for more than a week. Seen as extortion to leverage higher fares, the cutoff triggered increasing calls for public ownership of the ferries. Widely criticized, “Cap” eventually accepted the state’s offer of $4.9 million to buy the Black Ball Line — dock, stock, and ferry.

On June 1, 1951, Washington State Ferries was born.

WEB EXTRAS

More photos of the newly remodeled Colman Dock.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 25, 2024
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 28, 2024

From cramped corners to dizzy heights, ‘Supertunnel’ story shines

By Jean Sherrard

Though a young Catherine Bassetti ran away to join a circus aerial act, nothing prepared her for the dizzying altitudes she encountered documenting Seattle’s most audacious construction project of this millennium.

Her dazzling illustrated book, “Supertunnel: Building Seattle’s State Route 99 — Journey from Light to Light,” provides a backstage view of the project’s colossal scale. As a re-imagined waterfront nears completion on the tunnel’s fifth anniversary, Bassetti’s luminous photos illustrate trials, tribulations and triumphs.

“It provides a detailed analysis of the complete ‘design-build’ of the tunnel,” she says, “as well as the groundbreaking engineering and complex problem-solving that took place.”

First, the backstory. The 2.2-mile-long Alaskan Way Viaduct opened April 4, 1953, immediately becoming Seattle’s most traveled north-south corridor. The looming double-deck highway, while dividing the city from its waterfront, also offered drivers a spectacular unfolding vista — the loss of which is still lamented.

In 2001, the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake shook the region, causing widespread destruction, including alarming damage to the viaduct’s support structure. After long debate over possible fixes, the state Department of Transportation, King County and the City of Seattle announced in January 2009 that the viaduct would be replaced by a tunnel.

Construction began in July 2013 with the arrival of Bertha (named after Seattle’s first woman mayor, Bertha Knight Landes), then the world’s largest tunnel-boring machine. After significant delays, boring ended in 2017. Two years later, the tunnel opened.

Fittingly for the project’s visual documentarian, composition and design run in Bassetti’s family. Her grandfather, Joseph W. Wilson, helped create downtown’s Northern Life Tower (1929), an art-deco landmark. Her father, architect Fred Bassetti, is responsible for several of our region’s greatest hits, from the Seattle Aquarium (1971) to the Seattle Municipal Tower (1989).

Bassetti’s own early Barnum & Bailey stint and career as a European commercial photographer honed physical and pictorial skills that landed her the job of photographing the full tunnel project. She wound up in places she’d never anticipated, from squeezing into cramped corners underground to dangling from cranes.

With dozens of vertiginous and expansive views, “Supertunnel” details the unique journey of documenting a vast, structural tour de force of engineering. By revealing views hitherto unseen, it finds beauty in the depths and heights. From start to finish, the book follows the tunnel’s breathless path — as the book’s optically attuned subtitle aptly states, from light to light.

WEB EXTRAS

Let’s add another link those interested in Catherine Bassetti’s remarkable book. Click through to check out her gorgeous jigsaw puzzle as well! Head on over to:
thesupertunnel.com

And nearing the fifth anniversary of the tunnel’s inauguration, maybe a 360 degree video voyage on the Alaskan Way Viaduct’s last day would be apropos. Clay and I shot it through a friend’s sun roof.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 7, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 10, 2023

A controversial streetcar line — ‘Tramzilla’ vs. First Avenue?

By Jean Sherrard

Sometimes, as with this week’s “Then” photo, an image is worth at least a hundred words of caution, beginning with “been there, done that.”

Today the city is pondering a proposed $300+ million streetcar line to fill the center lanes of First Avenue. Catchily branded by its supporters as the “Culture Connector,” it would unite two long-dangling streetcar lines between Westlake and Pioneer Square.

Part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan, the new line aims to be “a catalyst for economic vitality,” revitalizing arts and entertainment and improving access to museums, concert venues, galleries and businesses.

Unanswered questions linger, however. Several arise from our striking 1919 “Then” photo. Streetcars crowd First Avenue’s center lanes where they cross Pike Street while early automobiles jam into single lanes north and south.

As we pore over the old image, we hand today’s community talking stick to business owners such as Jim Harvey, proprietor of Pike Place Flowers in the Market, whose small shop delivers bouquets around the city. For Harvey, downtown congestion already is a huge concern. First Avenue reduced by half, he posits, inevitably would crowd other streets. “Delivery will become a traffic nightmare.”

The proposed 1.3-mile line also would eliminate most left-hand turns from First Avenue and remove 194 of 230 street parking spaces. What’s more, 29 commercial vehicle load zones would disappear.

That would leave Rob Thomas, vice president of the Showbox, Seattle’s iconic, oft-rescued concert venue, in a quandary. “Producing 180 shows per year, each with its own tour bus and trucks full of equipment, seems impossible without streetside parking,” he says. “This could put us out of business.”

A mile south in Pioneer Square, Phil Bevis of Arundel Books worries over the upheaval of a $300 million project so soon after completion of nearby waterfront redevelopment. “Three more years of construction,” he sighs. “We call it Tramzilla.”

Our bustling 1919 photo offers a deep lesson to longtime downtown developer Howard Anderson. “First Avenue has always been one of our most lively downtown streets then and now,” he says. “It’s a historic street, filled with thriving businesses and friendly locals, that connects two historic districts.”

Yet in 1941, the city’s last “antiquated” orange streetcar had been replaced with diesel buses and electric trackless trolleys. More than 230 miles of steel tracks were torn out and scrapped. Roads throughout the city were repaved for rubber-tired vehicles.

Anderson’s point is, simply, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. He nominates an alternative “culture connector,” comparatively inexpensive and more quickly achieved: “No streetcars needed. Just add buses.”

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 23, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 26, 2023

Sam can no longer play it again at torched University Theater 

By Jean Sherrard

Recently, sad news came from Nick Collecchi, a buddy who had toiled for decades in Seattle-area movie houses. After projecting movies at the University Theater, 5510 University Way N.E., he managed the Seven Gables, Landmark Theatres and Sundance Cinemas until the pandemic ended those reels.

He asked me about the site of his first gig: “Did you hear the University Theater burned down?”

This undistinguished box was where I first encountered silver-screen classics — directors from Frank Capra to Alfred Hitchcock, actors from Humphrey Bogart to Bette Davis. Another Seattle movie house bit the dust.

It also was “the oldest surviving movie theater in northeast Seattle,” says cinema historian David Jeffers. Erected by U-District booster and developer Charles Cowen in 1915, the vaudeville/silent movie house was an attractive addition to the neighborhood. Its name, Cowen Park Theater, reminded locals of Cowen’s generous, 8-acre donation to the city west of Ravenna Park.

The 250-seat gem drew enthusiastic crowds, including 10-year-old Ronald Phillips, future Seattle Symphony principal clarinetist (and cigar aficionado), who earned four bits a night playing reeds in the house band.

The venue, however, had a limited run. In the early 1920s, it was repurposed as the Cowen Park Garage, then as a real-estate office and home-improvement store.

Rarig Motion Pictures, a producer of educational and promotional films, took up residence in the 1950s, converting the erstwhile auditorium into a sound stage.

In 1971, William DeNault, a former revival-house owner from Berkeley, Calif., leased the building from owner Andy Shiga. DeNault, a skilled carpenter, began restoration from the ground up. Removal of flat flooring revealed the raked concrete slope of the original theater, buried for 50 years. “We just put down tarpaper,” son Bryan recalls, “and dropped the flat floor right onto the sloping cement.”

The theater’s rebirth cheered film enthusiasts citywide. For another two decades, Sam played it again.

In 1999, the Paradox Theater, an all-ages haven for punk rock, occupied the joint until Jet City Improv took over in 2003, painting the building canary yellow. Its exuberant theatrical offerings reprised the location’s vaudeville origins until March 2020.

Abandoned since COVID, the theater was torched four months ago, on July 24.

“After it burned,” Jet City artistic director Mario Orallo says, “I felt a deep-rooted grief at the loss of a wonderful place to perform, but also a sense of reverence for the thousands of people over the decades who shared the vibe of art and community. For me, it will always be a sacred space.”

WEB EXTRAS

In the late breaking additions category, historian Pete Blecha shares a couple of rare delights. One, from a newspaper clipping, reveals the names of early Cowen Park Theater managers and their clever ploy to increase attendance.

The second is a remarkable, time-worn poster from the theater’s heyday:

Canadian-American actress Billie Burke is better known to modern audiences for her role as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz. Twenty years earlier, she was a romantic lead.

In addition, a detailed comment from theater historian David Jeffers, who’s inestimable aid is always keenly appreciated:

“More sadness. I have a good deal of personal history with this theater, mostly from the mid-1970’s through the 80’s when I lived in the neighborhood. Many, many midnight movies were seen here. I watched numerous films for the first time in this theater. There are fond memories of waiting in line with friends, most of the time slightly intoxicated, late at night in the cold and rain to see shows for a dollar. One of the local FM album rock stations (KISW?) sponsored Friday and Saturday night “99¢” movies. In those days, college towns across the country had a play list of old and new films they’d offer on a repertory schedule. A few examples I saw at University Cinema were: Little Big Man (1970), 200 Motels (1971), A Clockwork Orange (1971), North by Northwest (1959) and countless others. For a couple of years, I also did my laundry next door.

“5510 14th Avenue Northeast (later re-named University Way NE) first appears in the 1915 Polk’s Seattle City Directory as the New Home Theatre. Polk’s shows a name change to Cowen Park Theatre from 1916 to 1917. Christopher Skullerud’s unpublished Seattle theater catalogue also supports these dates. Tax records show a build date of 1920, which suggests either the latter date is incorrect, or prior to 1920 there was another structure at the same location showing motion pictures to the public. I am inclined to believe 1915 is the correct date of the surviving structure. 1920 may have been the date of a significant building remodel. Considering the highly combustable nature of cellulose nitrate film stock and the frequency of fires it caused, it’s possible the theater closed after a booth fire and never reopened. After 1917 this movie theater disappears from directory listings. I recall reading it existed as an auto repair shop for many years. An entry in the 1925 Sanborn Fire Atlas for Seattle lists this building as roofing material storage. Many years later, following renovation and remodel, this address re-appears in 1971 as University Cinema, through the late 1980’s, followed by a decade of abandonment. In 1998 the building was purchased and renovated. From 2000 to 2003 it was opened as The Paradox, an all ages music venue. The lease was assumed by Wing-It Productions in 2003 and the theater was reopened as Jet City Improv, with occasional movie screenings. All this would seem to indicate this structure is the oldest surviving movie theater in northeast Seattle. Despite those facts, 5510 University Way NE has virtually no architectural significance itself. My recollections are that of a large, moldy, dump of a place with broken seats and filthy carpeting. Its primary importance is longevity and the fond memories of innumerable college kids. The building had been scheduled for demolition prior to the fire, to be developed as yet another ugly block of cheaply made, overpriced tiny apartments.”

Also,  Nick Collecchi shares photos of the recent demolition of the Guild 45th, another lost movie house he served as manager.  (thanks for the correct attribution, Gavin MacDougall)

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 2, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 5, 2023

For forty years near Walla Walla, a winery schools itself in success 

By Jean Sherrard

When Baker and Jean Ferguson acquired Walla Walla’s historic Lowden Schoolhouse in 1977 and registered a name for their nascent winery — L’Ecole No. 41 — they eyed it as a retirement project. They began by adding a penthouse atop the two-story structure.

“It’s a great place to live,” Baker said in a 1979 interview with the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. “Magnificent view. A very high proportion of the history of the Walla Walla area took place right underneath these windows.”

He was not exaggerating.

Less than two decades after the Lewis & Clark expedition’s 1805 passage nearby, French-Canadian fur trappers established one of the Northwest’s earliest settlements and intermarried with native tribes at this spot 13 miles west of Walla Walla. Originally called “le village des Canadiens,” it soon became Frenchtown. Christian missionaries arrived, heightening cultural tensions while thousands of westward-bound Oregon Trail emigrants streamed through.

Following the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, newcomers — at first mostly white men — flowed into the valley, establishing farms and residences. In 1855, a four-day battle raged across Frenchtown after a bitterly contested treaty restricted tribes to a 510,000-acre reservation, ceding 6.4 million acres to settlers.

Meanwhile, in 1869 in nearby Walla Walla, Baker Ferguson’s great-grandfather, Dorsey Syng Baker, founded Baker Boyer Bank, the state’s oldest financial institution.

By 1870, Frenchtown had its own one-room school. In 1915, the town renamed itself Lowden, constructing the larger schoolhouse in our paired photos. In 1974, with only eight students remaining, the school was shuttered. Still, history forged a path there.

Neither Baker Ferguson, who had just retired as president of Baker Boyer Bank, nor his wife, Jean, had prior experience in winemaking. But both were quick studies. With a chemistry background, Jean assumed the role of winemaker, with Baker as general factotum.

Their dedication paid off when, in 1983, L’Ecole No. 41 became the third winery (after Leonette Cellars and Woodward Canyon) to open in the Walla Walla Valley. First-year production yielded a modest 500 cases. It was, Baker said, “a mom-and-pop operation. … At best, we earn maybe 35 cents an hour.”

In 1986, the Fergusons’ 1983 merlot received the sole gold medal awarded by the Pacific Northwest Enological Society. Decades of national and international acclaim followed.

Celebrating its 40^th anniversary, the winery is still a family affair. Under daughter Megan and son-in-law Marty Clubb, who took the helm in 1989, L’Ecole No. 41 produces 50,000-plus cases a year, with worldwide distribution. Their children, Riley and Rebecca, foresee a robust path for generations to come.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 26, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 29, 2023

Ghost stories arise from horrific Georgetown steam plant casualty

By Jean Sherrard

You might say they see dead people.

As Cari Simson and Elke Hautala researched the Seattle Electric Company’s Georgetown steam plant, erected in 1906, they found grim accounts of a horrific accident.

One of the first West Coast reinforced concrete structures, the steam plant originally powered the Interurban Railway between Seattle and Tacoma and supplied direct current for Seattle streetcars and alternating current for Georgetown.

In April 1908, a defective steam pipe burst in the boiler room, hurling two Georges — George Tucker, chief engineer, and George Love, oiler — 25 feet to the concrete floor below. Despite their gruesome injuries, observers reported that Tucker coolly directed workers coming to their aid with “wonderful nerve.”

The men were taken to nearby Seattle General Hospital, where Tucker, 32, lingered for 10 days before succumbing to his burns. Love was sent home three months later, finally able to walk again.

Here, Hautala and Simson introduce spine-tingling elements to the narrative.

Since Tucker’s demise, they assert, tales of paranormal activity have proliferated. Pallets of tools and equipment have moved inexplicably. Plant visitors have been startled by footsteps on vacant stairs and machines springing to life on their own. Talk about Halloween-ish things going bump in the night!

Simson, an event producer and environmental consultant, has a hair-raising but benign explanation.

“We believe that George Tucker’s ghost is benevolent,” she says. “He may be stuck with unfinished business, trying to make sure his men complete their work safely.”

Puckishly, Hautala, visual anthropologist, filmmaker and performer, adds, “Call us ghost-curious.”

Skeptics might note that this knowing credulity serves a purpose. “Covering these hidden histories and coming up with ways to share them with the public is part of what inspires us,” Hautala says.

“We think of these as echoes of history,” Simson says, “here to remind us of something important.”

Their spirited partnership began during the pandemic, when they researched a lost cemetery at the nearby Duwamish River. From 1876 to 1912, impoverished and dispossessed locals were buried in the Duwamish Poor Farm Cemetery, most in graves unmarked. In 1912, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, before dredging and straightening the river, disinterred this Potter’s Field.

“There were 3,260 people buried there, of whom 855 had names associated with them on headboards,” Hautala says. “All of them were cremated and essentially erased to history.”

Dedicated to unearthing and documenting these forgotten lives, neither researcher is shy about their goal.

“We aim to create a visceral thrill and engagement surrounding history,” says Simson.

“The haunted, spooky and paranormal,” Hautala adds, “provide the perfect framework.”

WEB EXTRAS

To view our narrated 360 degree video, click here.

A few photos from this year’s Georgetown Haunted History Tour below:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 28, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 1, 2023

Amphitheater has hosted stirring sounds and stories since 1915

By Jean Sherrard

If the Volunteer Park amphitheater could talk, oh, the tales it might tell. Its successive bandshells have born witness to countless civic, religious, musical and theatrical events spanning more than a century.

The site’s first bandshell, designed in 1915 by eminent architect Carl F. Gould, proved an instant draw. The generous lawns north of the park’s reservoir handily accommodated large crowds.

An inaugural sunset concert on June 20, 1915, featured hugely popular T.H. “Dad” Wagner’s 40-piece marching band. Thousands clapped to waltzes, operatic excerpts and selections from the farce “High Jinks,” as well as a medley of Sousa-esque marches.

Besides summer concerts, the amphitheater has hosted a wide array of civic and religious events.

The local Moose Lodge #211 promoted White House-inspired egg-rolling contests in the early 1920s. Local children were exhorted to “bring their own spoons” until soggy April grass dampened enthusiasm.

Easter sunrise services, undaunted by inclement weather, ran from 1926 through the late 1960s, often commencing with a lone bugler before dawn. Faithful crowds once reached 50,000, reported The Seattle Times.

In September 1927, more than 30,000 grade-schoolers gathered on the greenswards to welcome “their greatest modern day hero” Charles Lindbergh after his trans-Atlantic flight to Paris. The Times also boasted about his monoplane’s locally grown spruce struts.

Our main “Then” photo, from June 12, 1932, features a Flag Day commemoration of George Washington’s bicentennial. Prize-winning essays about the first president’s “Youth and Manhood” (with cherry tree, we presume) were read by Queen Anne and Garfield high-school students.

From 1945 to 1961, the amphitheater annually observed “I Am an American Day,” honoring new citizens. (In 1962, the ceremony moved to the Seattle World Fair’s Flag Pavilion.)

By the late 1960s, countercultural summer “Be-Ins” entered the park’s mix. Column founder Paul Dorpat might occasionally be found cavorting with favorite local band Formerly Lamarr Harrington.

In 1974, the site celebrated the first Seattle Pride Week festivities, which continue at the amphitheater today.

Carl Gould’s by-then-crumbling bandshell was torn down in 1947 and replaced by a makeshift wooden stage until the early 1970s, when landscape architect Richard Haag erected a roofless brick structure in its place.

In our “Now” photo, its stunning $2.7 million replacement, designed by architect Owen Richards — noted for Seattle Center’s Chihuly Garden and Glass and the SIFF Film Center — opened in July 2022.

“We tried to find an appropriate scale which was of a piece in the landscape,” Richards says, “while providing a welcoming performance space.”

The new structure’s graceful, sweeping roof, reverberant acoustics and spacious stage surely will tell stories for generations to come.

WEB EXTRAS

To view our “live” 360-degree video of this column, click right here.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 7, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 10, 2023

Sudsy stories flow from a rowdy Georgetown saloon

By Jean Sherrard

Belgian-born Jules Maes (1867-1939), whose namesake saloon we feature this week, arrived in rambunctious Georgetown in the early 1900s and felt right at home.

Then unincorporated, Georgetown could claim a slightly longer history than Seattle, its northern neighbor. Homesteaders Henry Van Asselt, Jacob Maple and Luther Collins and their families had settled along the next-door banks of the winding Duwamish River on Sept. 16, 1851, almost two months before the Denny Party arrived at Alki Point.

Within 50 years, the settlers’ farmland transformed into a one-company town, housing the Seattle Brewing & Malting Company, largest brewery west of the Mississippi, whose famed Rainier Beer was wildly popular throughout the country.

Hundreds of brewery workers, including many recent immigrants, lived in nearby company-owned houses. In contrast to strait-laced Seattle, where suds stopped flowing at 2 a.m. and never on Sundays, Georgetown’s unregulated taverns, eateries and roadhouses were open round-the-clock, serving laborers the hoppy product of their labors. Visiting rowdies looking for trouble often found it here.

Confident, shrewd and tenacious, Maes (pronounced MAZE) thrived in the lawless town, first as a scrappy bartender. Soon he took over the notorious Maple Leaf Saloon (one of several he managed) described in the Seattle Times as “one of the toughest dives in King County.” Gunplay and knife fights were common.

While reputedly generous to a fault, Maes was no saint, repeatedly facing arrest and fines for running illegal gambling operations and slot machines. Following Washington state’s early adoption of Prohibition in 1916, he often was charged with selling spiked “soft drinks” and ciders from his former taverns.

After repeal of Prohibition in 1933, Maes promptly resumed selling beer to loyal customers who christened him Georgetown’s unofficial mayor. Noted for his largess, he helped relieve Depression hard times with rarely repaid loans. In 1936, he opened the Jules Maes Saloon at 5919 Airport Way S., slyly backdating its founding to 1888.

The enigmatic chameleon begs a question: Was he a community pillar or lovable rogue? Modern-day Robin Hood or scheming Soapy Smith?

Enter West Seattle impresario Kevin Finney, who will probe this mystery in a program of drama and song. His Drunken Owl Theatre operates on a shoestring while mounting exuberant variety shows in the Jules Maes Saloon’s tiny performance space, where earlier patrons once played backroom poker.

The troupe’s Sept. 16-17, 2023, performances will feature original plays, poetry and musical interludes playfully examining the life and times of Jules Maes, who reportedly never let truth get in the way of a good story. For more info and reservations, visit DrunkenOwlTheatre.org.

WEB EXTRAS

For our on-site video 360, recorded in July, click here.

To see Clay Eals’ video of T.J. O’Brien, grand-nephew of Jules Maes, recalling family stories about his great uncle before the June 24, 2023, Drunken Owl audience, along with other videotaped segments from that show, visit the YouTube links below.

And scroll down further for more photos by Jean of the Drunken Owl Theatre in performance in July.

Here are more photos by Jean of the Drunken Owl Theater in performance in July:

Published in The Seattle Times online on August 31, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 3, 2023

A rehabilitated ‘brute’ finds respect via a celebrated windjammer

By Jean Sherrard

The city of Troy. King Tut’s tomb. Sunken Spanish Armada gold.

The efforts of historians and explorers compelled to discover lost treasures are the stuff of legend — as well as popular film and fiction.

For Bremerton-born Michael Jay Mjelde, a passionate maritime quest began at age 17. That’s when he stumbled upon a yellowing periodical recounting the intentional burning of Glory of the Seas, a legendary windjammer just off the shore of West Seattle at Fauntleroy one century ago. The story of that immolation fueled his lifetime of research and writing.

The majestic 1869 clipper ship, constructed by renowned Boston shipbuilder Donald McKay, spanned an impressive 300 feet. Celebrated for its size, speed and beauty, it served faithfully for 40 years, hauling cargo across the world’s oceans under multiple masters.

One figure stood out in its eventful history: Henry Gillespie, the last captain to helm the ship during its final voyage as an American flag vessel.

In 1874, Gillespie (also at age 17) ran away to sea, bluffing his way aboard a New Bedford, Mass., whaler with false claims of experience. When the truth emerged, he faced relentless bullying and beatings from the crew, leading him to desert the ship the first time it reached port.

The big, burly youth had learned a rough-and-tumble lesson aboard the whaler. “A product of brutal times,” Mjelde says, “he became a brute.” But what most intrigued the longtime writer, editorial board member and former editor of The Sea Chest, journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, was the story of Gillespie’s gradual evolution to civility.

Mjelde’s meticulously researched, 456-page biography, “From Whaler to Clipper Ship” (Texas A&M University Press) details the seafarer’s career straddling decades of technological change, from wooden sailing ships to propeller-driven, steel-hulled schooners.

With wide-ranging primary sources, Mjelde charts Gillespie’s transformation “from a profane, brutal and sadistic chief mate [who used] belaying pins to enforce discipline … to a highly respected shipmaster fully suited to command.”

Mjelde credits much of Gillespie’s rehabilitation to his wife, Catherine, a Liverpool-born milliner “who helped him change his violent ways.” Within three years of their marriage, the reformed sailor was appointed to his first captaincy in 1895.

His three-year tenure (1906-09) with Glory of the Seas, then consigned to “the boneyard” of Bainbridge Island’s Eagle Harbor, proved bittersweet. Despite the ship’s continued seaworthiness, it was converted to a barge then burned for scrap metal.

Undaunted, Gillespie became captain of a U.S. Navy tanker during World War I. The helmsman made repeated trips across the Atlantic through submarine-infested waters. Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones.

WEB EXTRAS

To see our 360 degree video of the Eagle Harbor boneyard site, please click here.

Published in The Seattle Times online on August 20, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on August 17, 2023

Civil war and a king’s execution come alive in early London photo

By Jean Sherrard

Intrigued by an extraordinary portrait of 19th century London, I joined this summer’s post-pandemic hordes and ventured to the historic spot to attempt a repeat.

Within a year of Louis Daguerre’s groundbreaking first photo of a cityscape (in Paris, 1838), the French government acquired the rights to his daguerreotype process and magnanimously offered it “free to the world” on Aug. 17, 1839. Just days later, this week’s “Then” photo was captured. It’s the earliest extant image of London, within the first two years of Queen Victoria’s reign.

A French photographer identified only as M. De St-Croix offered Londoners a public demonstration of the new technology. Positioning his bulky box camera at Charing Cross, a conjunction of six thoroughfares just south of today’s Trafalgar Square, he exposed a silver-coated copper plate for several minutes.

The resulting daguerreotype captured an equestrian statue of Charles I (1600-1649) framed by buildings lining Whitehall, several of which fell victim to the London Blitz of 1940-41.

Nearly 184 years later, Derry-Anne Hammond, a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide, met me beneath the king’s statue — the oldest bronze in London — to provide historical context.

Cast in 1633 by French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur, the bronze was designed to massage Charles’ ego, elevating his short stature atop an imposing war horse. But his reign soon was overshadowed by civil war between supportive royalists and Oliver Cromwell’s “roundheads,” also known as puritans.

“Charles I very much believed in the divine right of kings, and when Parliament disagreed, he shut them down,” Hammond said. “Then things went a bit awry.”

After years of confrontation, a frustrated Parliament accused the obstinate king of treason and sentenced him to death. He is the only English king ever so charged. On Jan. 30, 1649, at Whitehall’s Banqueting House, the king mounted a scaffold below a second-floor balcony.

“Thousands of spectators waited on the street below,” Hammond said, “hoping his blood would spatter onto their handkerchiefs to keep as a macabre memento.” However, the anonymous executioner removed Charles’ head with a single, spatter-free blow.

For the next nine years, Oliver Cromwell ruled Britain as “lord protector,” replacing the monarchy with the Commonwealth of England until his death in 1658. By 1660, the royal line was restored with the accession of Charles II, who installed his father’s equestrian statue at its Charing Cross location. The statue faces in the direction of the still-standing Banqueting House, site of Charles I’s execution.

In the shadow of De St-Croix, attempting to repeat his time-ravaged daguerreotype, I could just make out these echoes of history, muddled by light and shadow, lingering right beneath the surface.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on July 20, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 23, 2023

Gas Works: a belching hellscape turns post-industrial paradise

By Jean Sherrard

There was a time when gas lighting had no ulterior motives. The steady golden flame was an assurance of illumination on demand and a promise of innovations to come.

When the Seattle Gas Lighting Company lit up 5 city streets and 42 private homes on New Year’s Eve 1873, the sound of corks popping must have been accompanied by sighs of envy from denizens of darker Seattle.

For the fortunate few early adopters, the first gas, converted from Eastside coal, was delivered through hollowed-out cedar logs.

The nascent utility of settlers Arthur Denny and Dexter Horton grew rapidly to match increased demand, supplying more than 1,200 customers by 1892. By then, gas increasingly provided both light and heat for home appliances.

Eastern investors further expanded the utility, moving its production facilities to Brown’s Point on north Lake Union in 1906. Coal gasification was an immensely filthy process, requiring vast quantities of water that the then-undeveloped 20-acre lakeside tract could accommodate.

Over the next 50 years, belching out smoke, flames and fumes while contaminating soil, groundwater and sediment, the plant was an unwelcome neighbor, even after converting to marginally cleaner oil gasification in 1937. Many Wallingford houses were built to avoid the hellish view of tower effluvia. Complaints about the facility poured in throughout its half-century tenure.

Relief greeted the plant’s closure in 1956 when the Trans Mountain Gas Pipeline opened, bringing natural gas from Canada to Washington state. The utility, renamed Washington Natural Gas, left 20 noxious acres behind. Given the view location, however, calls soon mounted to convert it into a city park.

Enter noted landscape architect and University of Washington professor Richard Haag (1923-2018). His 1962 proposal for adaptive reuse was revolutionary — and initially controversial. Following cleanup of the polluted site, Haag advocated preserving the 5-story cracking towers while converting the plant’s boiler house to a picnic shelter and its exhauster-compressor building into a brightly painted children’s play barn.

A 45-foot high Great Mound (aka Kite Hill), made of construction fill, would cover polluted soil while providing breathtaking vistas from what had been a choking hellscape.

In October 1973, Gas Works Park began opening in stages, and was immediately acclaimed as one of Seattle’s favorite parks. Designated a Seattle landmark in 1999, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Today, park cleanup is ongoing. Reducing toxic lake sediment is next in a series of environmental remediations. But this rough diamond in the crown of Seattle parks is worth the effort — no gas lighting required.

WEB EXTRAS

For Paul Dorpat’s original 2015 column featuring an interview with landscape architect Richard Haag, click here!

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on July 6, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 9, 2023

Renovations will bolster Green Lake’s ‘heart of the community’

By Jean Sherrard

While today’s billionaires are blowing up rockets in Earth’s lower atmosphere and dreaming of colonizing Mars, one of the richest men in the world at the dawn of the 20th century devoted himself to building an enduring legacy of brick and mortar.

Industrialist, bibliophile and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) emigrated from Scotland to the United States with his working-class parents in 1847. At 13, he worked in an Allegheny cotton mill, changing bobbins 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. From these unlikely beginnings, Carnegie’s industrial innovations and political machinations resulted in a vast steel empire.

A notorious strikebreaker noted for paying his workers abysmally low wages, the complicated robber baron also publicly supported progressive tax laws, including estate taxes. Famously he insisted, “The man who dies rich, dies in disgrace.”

Indeed, by the time of his death, Carnegie had donated 90% of his wealth, largely in funding construction of 2,509 libraries throughout the English-speaking world — 1,689 in the United States alone.

Moreover, committed to wide accessibility of literature and reading, Carnegie promoted unrestricted “open stack” policies, encouraging library patrons to browse freely among shelves of books.

One of 7 extant Carnegie library buildings in Seattle, the Green Lake Branch was built on land purchased chiefly by neighborhood contributions. Carnegie’s foundation fronted $35,000 (around $1.2 million in today’s dollars) for construction of the two-story edifice.

Designed by Seattle architects Woodruff Somerville and Joseph Cote in French Renaissance Revival style while hewing to Carnegie’s prescriptions, the elegant structure has more than held its own, nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and designated a Seattle landmark in 2001.

Dawn Rutherford, the Seattle Public Library’s interim northwest regional manager, and Elisa Murray, digital communications specialist, provide reflections at the branch, the first of three unreinforced masonry Carnegie library structures to be shuttered for seismic retrofitting, ADA accessibility upgrades, conversion to an electric heat pump system and significant interior renovations.

Will Carnegie’s investment in libraries continue to yield dividends in today’s digital era? “The more we’re online,” Rutherford says, “the more we need a physical place that we can come together.” For young and old, she says, seeking to understand and adapt to changing technologies, libraries remain “the beating heart of the community.”

Besides, Murray adds, “People still love their books, and at the library, books are our baseline.”

Not having died with the most toys, Carnegie, a man of seemingly irreconcilable contradictions, left behind gifts that will enrich and enlighten terrestrial communities for generations to come.

WEB EXTRAS

More interior photos of seismic and facility improvements:

(As ever, click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on June 22, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on June 25, 2023

The flouring Fisher family legacy–from scones to silver screen

By Jean Sherrard

A Now & Then pop quiz: What do the once-mighty Fisher Communications Company, the Puyallup Fair and recently crowned King Charles III have in common? A hint: It’s dense, fragrant and dolloped with butter, clotted cream and fresh jam.

Kudos to all who came up with (drum roll) … the scone.

James Erickson, author of the lavishly illustrated “Washington’s Fisher Scones: An Iconic Northwest Treat since 1911,” records the pastry’s Scottish origins. He guesses that the medieval town of Scone (also noted for the Stone of Scone, atop which all British monarchs have been crowned for 800 years) may have baked an eponymous prototype in the early 1500s.

In his new book, Erickson documents the entrepreneurial, non-royal Fishers, who, seeking opportunities in a booming port city, relocated in 1911 from Montana to Seattle.

Just-completed 350-acre Harbor Island at the mouth of the Duwamish River, constructed of fill from dredging and recent Seattle regrades, with ready access to shipping and room to grow, proved the ideal location for their flour mill.

Largest in the western United States, the Fisher plant was “equipped to grind about 10,000 bushels of wheat … [and] create 2,000 barrels of flour a day.” But in the fiercely competitive flour business, Erickson writes, effective ads were key. Reaching into its Scotch ancestry, the family decided “to make scones and give them away or sell them for a nickel.”

In 1915, the “sweet treats” were debuted to acclaim at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, followed that year with the first annual appearance of a Fisher Scone booth at the Puyallup State Fair.

A decade later, another promotional brainchild beckoned. Fans of the then-new medium of radio, the Fishers purchased a broadcast frequency — available following the arrest of its previous owner, notorious Seattle bootlegger Roy Olmsted. The station, KOMO, went on the air Dec. 31, 1926, promoting Fisher Blend Flour.

In years to come, the family built a local media empire comprising dozens of radio and TV stations. Phelps Fisher, today a vigorous 90-year-old, worked his way up from the flour mill to chair the board of Fisher Communications.

For Fisher, it’s always been about family. “We worked together, supported each other and managed to get along,” he says. The result: “a wonderful, honest, productive business for the better part of the 20^th century.”

The flour mill was sold to Pendleton Flour Mills in 2001 and recently was transformed to a film studio. Meanwhile, Fisher Communications was acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group in 2016. The Fisher Scone, notes Jim Erickson, “has outlived the very brand it served to promote.”

WEB EXTRAS

No 360 this week. However, we offer this illuminating interview with the delightful Phelps Fisher.

Plus a few more photos from the former Fisher Flour/now Harbor Island Studios site:

Published in The Seattle Times online on June 8, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on June 11, 2023

Downed totem poles in Market’s Steinbrueck Park will rise again

By Jean Sherrard

There’s a temporary gap in Seattle’s smile. If you’ve visited the Pike Place Market recently and strolled its northern limits, you may know that something’s missing.

On a blustery Sunday in April, two 50-foot-tall totem poles that stood in Victor Steinbrueck Park for nearly 40 years were painstakingly detached from their steel and concrete supports. The weather-battered sentinels were lowered by crane to waiting truck beds on the new Elliott Way and hauled into city storage for the duration of the now-shuttered park’s reconstruction.

The history of these colorful and beloved works of art begins with one man’s passion.

Architect, designer and preservationist Victor Steinbrueck (1911-1985), credited with saving Pike Place Market from the wrecking ball, sought a work of art to crown a small park just north of the Market, co-designed with Gasworks Park creator Richard Haag. The goal “was to honor the people who have come before,” says daughter Lisa Steinbrueck, “on land formerly occupied by Coast Salish people.”

In 1982, Steinbrueck commissioned Quinault artist Marvin Oliver (1946-2019) to produce two contrasting totem poles. Then in his mid-30s, Oliver was a University of Washington professor, acclaimed for his innovative application of traditional forms.

In two years, Oliver and carver James Bender completed both poles. The first, topped by back-to-back male and female figures, honored founders of the Market’s Farmer’s Market. The second, of traditional design, arranged figures, from bottom upward, of bear, orca, human and a raven clutching a Coast Salish spindle.

Their installation in 1984 was marked by the entire city. Mayor Charles Royer spoke to an appreciative crowd in then-Market Park, covered widely on TV and radio and by both daily newspapers. Following Steinbrueck’s death in 1985, the park was renamed for him.

By contrast, the poles’ recent removal was unheralded, leaving onlookers perplexed. “I grew up with them,” said one Market regular. “Aren’t they city landmarks?” (They aren’t.)

Steinbrueck family members kept vigil, with Oliver’s sister Marylin. She monitored progress throughout the day, ensuring that the poles never touched dirt (if they had, by tradition, destruction must follow). She has embraced a mission —  that her brother’s faded artwork “be restored by other Native artists and carvers.”

Shannon Glass, Seattle Parks senior project manager, says the poles likely will be reinstalled with fanfare when Victor Steinbrueck Park reopens.

For Marylin Oliver, this cannot come too soon. “History cannot be taken away,” she says. “It can be renewed.” A return of the poles, she says, will “bring healing to the city.”

WEB EXTRAS

Lots of extra photos with details of the poles’ removal. And for those interested in hearing more from artist Marvin Oliver, click through to the following video, recorded by Jean Sherrard at the Pike Place Market in 2018.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on May 25, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on May 28, 2023

The oft-rejected Montlake Bridge finally connected Seattle to a field of dreams

By Jean Sherrard

In the stirring 1989 blockbuster “Field of Dreams,” a 30-something farmer is driven to build a seemingly chimerical baseball venue in his cornfield.

A similar drive might have inspired Darwin Meisnest, the University of Washington’s youthful graduate manager (athletic director in today’s parlance) as he lobbied for a permanent crossing of the Montlake Cut, which divided the UW’s new stadium from points directly south.

The final — and easternmost — bascule (French for teeter-totter) intended to traverse the Lake Washington Ship Canal (1916) was, for Seattle voters, a bridge too far. They already had funded completion of the Ballard, Fremont and University bridges but repeatedly balked at $500,000 to span the Montlake Cut.

Meisnest (1896-1952, popularly known as “Dar”) already was instrumental in the 1920 erection of the UW’s majestic new outdoor bowl, today known as Husky Stadium. He opted to bend his shoulder to the Sisyphean task of bridge-building.

For the stadium’s inaugural football contest on Nov. 27, 1920, between Dartmouth and the UW, Meisnest installed a footbridge atop a row of barges that straddled the canal. Thousands of grateful south-side gridiron fans crossed over, packing just-christened Washington Field. (Dartmouth’s “Hanover horde” won, 28-7.)

Though teased by the temporary span, voters in 1921 continued to point thumbs down for the bascule.

An undaunted Meisnest then pulled out all stops, invoking school spirit. UW alums were encouraged to twist the arms of tight-fisted friends and neighbors. Throughout the city were posted dozens of printed signs bearing the slogan, “You have your bridge, let us have one, too!”

A twist of fate — unforeseen, or was it? — turned the tide.

Less than a week before a 1924 election in which a Montlake bond issue appeared on the ballot for the sixth time, the University Bridge malfunctioned, stranding thousands of unhappy motorists in a 20-block long traffic jam. Opined The Seattle Times, “Seattle should build the Montlake bridge now. Already it has been delayed too long.”

On May 8, voters finally and overwhelmingly agreed.

In little more than a year, the Montlake Bridge was completed, opening June 27, 1925. Its graceful Gothic design mirrored the architecture of the university, as well as the nearby stadium.

A hyperbolic Seattle Post-Intelligencer heralded its opening as an “epochal event” and a “milestone in the city’s forward march.” It singled out Meisnest (“not long out of his teens”) for his “mighty and untiring efforts,” even calling for a statue to be raised in his honor.

Not bad for the young booster who dreamt up a field and a bridge to reach it.

WEB EXTRAS

To see our narrated 360 degree video of the Montlake Cut, CLICK HERE.

Also, here is a one-minute video taken from the air on Feb. 27, 2021, focusing on the ASUW Shell House and Husky Stadium but that features the Montlake Bridge and Cut as part of the context:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on May 11, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on May 14, 2023

Fireproof ‘Cruel Castle’ rises on Profanity Hill after big blaze

By Jean Sherrard

In a popular Middle Eastern folktale, the magic words “Open Sesame” provide poor woodcutter Ali Baba entrée to a treasure-bedecked robber’s den.

After Seattle’s devastating June 6, 1889, fire, which burned nearly 30 downtown blocks, the incantation “fireproof” conjured access to a hopeful future. As smoke rose from the ashes, residents assembled in a surviving Armory unanimously voicing their intention to rebuild “in brick and stone.”

When precocious, if prickly, architect Willis Ritchie (1864-1931) arrived in the scorched city a month later, a few days shy of his 25th birthday, he shrewdly adopted “fireproof” as his watchword, opening doors to rich opportunities.

After taking an architectural correspondence course and apprenticeship in his teens, the cocksure Ritchie had designed banks, opera houses and courthouses throughout Kansas by his early 20s. Overseeing construction of the Wichita Federal Building supplied on-the-job training in the latest fire-resistant techniques.

It wasn’t long before the newly arrived fire-proofing architectural prodigy won over Seattle — and King County — planners.

By late summer, his designs for a new, flammable King County Courthouse were adopted, and construction soon commenced atop First Hill. Proclaimed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Nov. 3: “It will undoubtedly be the finest building of the kind on the coast.”

Local competitors were less enthusiastic. Decades later, noted architect John Parkinson disdainfully recalled Ritchie: “With his hard, slick looking face… [he was] someone we all despised, but he managed to get the public buildings.”

When the courthouse opened on June 6, 1891, precisely two years after the Great Fire, lawyers and clerks dismissed the structure as “The Gray Pile,” the “Tower of Despair” and the “Cruel Castle,” reached only by climbing “Profanity Hill.” Opined The Seattle Times, “[It] deserves its bad name… Struggling up a steep hill with armfuls of law books [is] not conducive to judicial dignity.”

The new courthouse, despite its graceless tower, became Ritchie’s calling card. Commissions for “fireproof” public buildings poured in, and his mostly Romanesque revival designs soon dotted the state. Port Townsend’s Jefferson County Courthouse (1891), Olympia’s Thurston County Courthouse (1892) and the Spokane County Courthouse (1895), modeled after France’s Loire Valley chateaux, all survive.

The King County Courthouse’s ungainly profile photobombed countless Seattle cityscape portraits for four decades. But on Jan. 8, 1931, the flammable pile was dynamited, making room for King County Hospital, now Harborview.

To quote column founder Paul Dorpat, “In the moment it might take an exhausted barrister to mouth a monosyllabic indecency, the old embarrassment was leveled.”

Nine days later, Willis Ritchie died without so much as a “Close Sesame” to mark his passing.

WEB EXTRAS

First, a link to our 360 video of this column.

Next, an edifying contribution from the inimitable Stephen Edwin Lundgren, longtime friend of the column:

The pile of standing rubble that was the old courthouse  had a magnificent 360 view which I once saw captured in a series of Frank Nowell photographs taken from the bell tower level (found in an estate sale salvage,  whereabouts now unknown but believed to be in good hands)

The former King County Courthouse wasn’t quite levelled in an eyeblink (it took a while to disassemble) when the structure was demolished in the early 1930s, and thefoundations remained, visible in aerial views of the site and causing nearly $100,000 in additional expenses to remove when the current South Viewpark Garage you have pictured, (apparently forgotten by the planners) when the garage and helipad were constructed in the late 1990s as the project architect once told me.  

The site was vacant during the Yesler Terrace housing era (surrounded by those buildings 1941-1964) until the west side of Yesler hill was regraded (yes, that’s the word) for the freeway cut), and used for a MASH chopper landing site at the beginning of the trauma hospital era in the 1970s, the ER entrance then still being on the back (west) side. 

You might not know that Yesler (southwest First Hill) was proposed to be more fully regraded in a secret 1929 Seattle City Council ordinance, which obviously didn’t happen. David Williams missed that one. 

Also, the King County supervisors, after a poll of Seattle Times readers, accepted their vote to name the new hospital HARBORVIEW, in a 1929 resolution. At its 1931 dedication it was referred to as “Harborview Hospital” (photograph is of the envisioned campus, rather than the center tower and nursing dorm, the rest not built until decades later). There was a brief consideration by trustees (still County appointed) to rename it simply “County Hospital” in late 1931 but that didn’t happen. 

Its current name is Harborview Medical Center, after the council suggested last decade that their ownership rights be more fully recognized, and the operator UW Medicine and owner King County, and MLK’s image were added to our logo.

The former late 20^th century  version of our logo, after the UW Medicine inception, with the center tower and cloud swoosh

or this reverse version: 

Also, if you ever do a column on the former 1910 public safety building (Yesler), note that the City Hospital there was merged into Harborview in 1931.  Per advise from the Municipal Archivist (Scott Cline) email of March 25 2015: 

According to records in the City Clerk’s Office, arrangements were made for Harborview to take over the City Hospital once the former was constructed. The transfer of operation must have taken place in March or April of 1931, as we have correspondence from the County in early April indicating the Harborview construction was finished and the transfer of operations complete. In addition, in June, the City transferred physical therapy equipment that had belonged to the City Hospital to Harborview for the consideration of one dollar.

Thanks, Stephen!

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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 27, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 30, 2023

Harvesting history, trivia – and a whole stable of animal phrases – from a pastoral photo of 1891 Renton

By Jean Sherrard

When historian Ron Edge forwarded this week’s picturesque portrait of the farm of Renton founder Erasmus Smithers (1830-1905), I melted into a sentimental puddle.

Like many Americans long removed from pastoral life, I still use its idioms, from “Hold your horses” and “stubborn as a mule” to “till the cows come home.” Also, I began life near this spot. So to complement our 1891 “Then” photo, I’m all in on making hay while the sun shines.

The young Smithers was lured from Virginia to the Northwest by the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850. Upon arriving in 1852, he secured 160 acres near the confluence of the Black and Cedar rivers. Following the death of neighbor Henry Tobin, Smithers expeditiously married Tobin’s widow Diana in 1857. Their combined holdings totaled 480 acres, displacing the Duwamish village that had straddled the rivers for millennia.

Reputedly guided by Duwamish chief Jimmy Moses, Smithers discovered a seam of coal on a nearby hillside. Soliciting investment from a wealthy Port Blakely lumberman, Capt. William Renton, he founded the Renton Coal Mine, soon providing right-of-way for the nascent Seattle-Walla Walla Railroad. The site became a thriving rail hub, its huge bunker serving mines throughout the eastern foothills. A grateful Smithers deeded Moses a single acre on the Black River (dried-up today).

With mining partners, Smithers platted the town of Renton in 1875. His original grid of streets and avenues remains largely intact south of the Cedar River.

This spring, I met fraternal twins Lydia Della Rossa Delmore and Linda Della Rossa outside vast McLendon’s Hardware, near the farm site, on which, in 1945, Renton Hospital opened. It was where the three of us were born.

Aptly nicknamed the “wagon wheel” for its hub-and-spoke formation, the hospital was designed by Seattle architect George W. Stoddard (1896-1967), also noted for Seattle’s Memorial Stadium (1947) and Aqua Theater on Green Lake (1950).

While layers of concrete and box stores offer few links to the past, the Della Rossa sisters, peering over a seemingly endless parking lot, had a story to tell.

At 4 a.m. New Year’s Day 1953, the two were born to Eddie and Angelina Della Rossa. Aiding the family’s fortune, the Toni hair-products company — whose popular “Which twin has the Toni?” ad campaign had swept the country — awarded them $500 for producing the year’s first set of twins born in the United States.

In one shake of a lamb’s tail, the Della Rossas were living like pigs in clover. On that, you can bet the farm.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 video of this column, mosey on over here.

For a video interview with twins Lydia and Linda Della Rossa click here.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on April 13, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 16, 2023

A paved path around Lake Union honors a Duwamish chief and his beloved homeland

By Jean Sherrard

In May 1906, while his second wife, Tleebuleetsa lay dying in their Portage Bay cabin, John Cheshiahud honored her final wish. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported, it was “that in her last days … she be surrounded by her kinsfolk … and the friends of her youth.”

Lake Union John, as Cheshiahud was known to his white neighbors, sent messengers throughout the Duwamish diaspora, and during three days of celebration and solemn farewell, family and friends came from the Port Madison, Puyallup and Muckleshoot reservations to pay last respects.

A Duwamish chief, Cheshiahud is noted for remaining in Seattle long after the influx of white immigrants. Born circa 1820, he came of age before the settlers’ arrival. In a 90-year life, he witnessed unimaginable change.

His close friendship with a prominent newcomer fueled his drive to remain on ancestral land near his birth village. A sympathetic David Denny (1832-1903) sold him five forested acres on Portage Bay for a dollar.

While hunting, fishing, trapping and occasionally serving as tour guide, Cheshiahud straddled two worlds, one on the verge of certain annihilation.

Given earlier encounters with white homesteaders, Cheshiahud may have anticipated coming troubles, having narrowly escaped execution by a lynch mob. Denny’s daughter, Abbie Denny-Lindsley, provided the harrowing details in a newspaper account decades later:

She wrote that in 1854, her father, with David “Doc” Maynard and Henry Yesler, discovered the remains of a murder victim in a shallow grave near Lake Union. Advanced decay prevented identification. “When the murder became known,” she wrote, “three young Indians were arrested and imprisoned … although no more guilty than the rest of their tribe.”

An angry mob gathered and hung two of the men. As they strung up the third, Sheriff Carson Boren arrived and ordered them to stop, but they refused. In response, “he cut the rope,” noted Denny-Lindsley (Boren’s niece), “just in time to save [Cheshiahud]’s life.”

Found innocent of any charges, Cheshiahud “never ceased to be grateful” to his rescuer, who happened to be the same person who initially detained him without cause. Leaders of the lynch mob also were tried, Denny-Lindsley wrote, but it “never amounted to anything.”

In summer 1906, distraught after Tleebuleetsa’s passing, Cheshiahud sold the last piece of his Lake Union land for a significant profit, making him one of the wealthiest Native Americans in Puget Sound. He joined his daughter Jennie Davis in Port Madison, where he remained until his death in 1910.

In his honor, Seattle Parks in 2008 opened Cheshiahud Loop, a paved path circumnavigating his beloved Lake Union.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 video version of this column, head over here.

To boot, a couple of additional photos provide context and location. Thanks to Caleb and Rob Wilkinson for their inestimable help exploring Portage Bay by boat.

Abbie Denny-Lindsley’s 1906 account of the near lynching of Cheshiahud:

(please click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on March 30, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 2, 2023

‘Meet me at the Pig’: A newcomer’s guide to Seattle’s quirky codes

By Jean Sherrard

Forty years ago, on our honeymoon, my girlfriend and I — oops, “wife” was still a new and foreign concept — stopped in Salisbury, England. Hiking ancient Roman roads, we encountered a friendly gent.

“Are you a local?” we asked.

“Oh no,” he confided, “I was born four miles from here.”

Today, to help relative newcomers navigate potential April Fool’s foibles, our crack “Now & Then” team shares some quirky codes and stubborn semaphores from “Then” days that persist in the “Now.” Of course, only a small subset of Seattleites can truly claim lifelong residence. For the rest, here’s a helpful cheat sheet.

Grammar and pronunciation

Telltale tyro signs include adding definite articles to freeway names. It’s never “the 5” or “the 405.” Plain I-5 and 405 suffice. And “just Puget Sound,” says writer Adam Woog. He also recommends learning to pronounce a few place names. Puyallup (rhymes with “you gallop”), Sequim (“Skwim”) and Duwamish (“Doo-WOMM-ish”) for starters. Try not to giggle when old-timers occasionally still say, “Warshington.”

The mountain

Though we are surrounded by mountains, “the mountain” refers only to Rainier. Historian Robin Walz suggests a handy conversation starter: “The mountain is out today.”

(Column partner Clay Eals notes that when he was young and the mountain was “out,” as in the above photo, and when his mother, Virginia, would drive him and his brothers across the Mercer Island floating bridge, she would point south and exclaim, “Get out your ice-cream spoons!”)

Rain

Former Port of Seattle commissioner Peter Steinbrueck observes that while many other large cities have more rainfall than Seattle, we have more words for it, including “mist, sprinkles, showers, drizzle, sleet, snowy mix and downpour.”

On the road

“We don’t know how to drive,” insists column founder Paul Dorpat’s friend Pam Heath, “particularly at four-way stops.” But she and photo archivist Ron Edge agree on jaywalking. “Just don’t walk,” demands Edge. Heath adds, “I’ve seen folks at crosswalks waiting for the light to change at 2 a.m. Did I mention it was pouring rain? And they didn’t have umbrellas.”

Umbrellas

Don’t need ’em. Stalwarts revel in “liquid sunshine.” Wags jest, “It’s a dry rain.”

Kid stuff

Carol Wilkensen (Seattle-born on April 1) suggests arrivistes seek out YouTube clips of J.P. Patches or Stan Boreson, two bright stars of local children’s TV. Boreson’s home-spun ditties include the apropos: “Zero dacus, mucho cracus / hallaballu-za bub. / That’s the secret password that we use down at the club.”

Places we visit — or don’t

“The Market” (never “Pike’s Market”) where we meet “under the clock” or “by the pig,” suggests Vanya Sandberg.  Visits to the top of “The Needle” are rare.

All preceding suggestions need be taken with a shaker of salt. And it’s time to fess up: I’m not a Seattle native. This April Fool was born miles away — in Renton!

WEB EXTRAS

No locals wait in line at the Market Starbucks–what’s more, it’s a mystery why anyone would!

Below we also add a few more helpful suggestions from our locavore correspondents. Please feel free to send in a few of your own!

ROBIN WALZ:

VANYA SANDBERG:

PAM HEATH:

There are a few words that are at least west coast local when I grew up.

ROB & CAROL WILKINSON

1. “Zero dacus, mucho cracus / hallaballu-za bub / that’s the secret password that we use down at the club/ Zero-dacus, mucho-cracus / hallaballu-za fan / means now you are a member of KING’s TV club with Stan.” And No Motion Shun” This was our go-to TV program in the fifties and sixties. Stan played the accordion – He inspired my first expression of musical interest and within minutes my parents bought me one. They said I would be popular at parties. I was. But theirs not mine. By the way No Motion Shun was the name given to Stan’s lethargic dog named after the Slow Motion IV, the hydroplane that set a speed record. No one outside of locals have ever heard of Stan or No Motion Shun. Speaking of hydroplanes…
2. Miss Thriftway, Miss Bardahl, Miss Wahoo, Miss Hawaii Ki, Miss Pay n Pak, Miss Budweiser etc. were all household names for the hydros we worshiped as kids. If you were to mention Bill Munice or Miro Slovak to anyone outside of Seattle, they would have no idea who you were talking about. Still on Hydros…
3. Thunder Boats. This was the name all hydros were given for the deafening sound they made from unmuffled Alison and Rolls Merlin 3000 hp engines. It was wonderful! If you said to an outsider “let’s meet at the Pits”  they would immediately know what you were talking about. It’s now the Stan Sayres Memorial Park. We watched the hydros from:
4. The Floating bridge (the name before the 520 bridge was built but lasted for a long time). After 520 was as built it remained The Floating Bridge for “natives” and 520 was “the toll bridge” ($.35 tolls. No one took it because it was too expensive).
5. Pill hill was, of course, the name given to the hospitals on Capitol Hill.
6. For those with money they might going to the Golden Lion for dinner. It was in the Olympic Hotel and featured décor (highly inappropriate at any time in history), of the British Colonialization of India. The waiters even wore turbans. Back to kids TV programs…
7. Wunda Wunda is my name.oh boys and girls, I’m glad you came. We’ll have fun and we’ll play games. Won’t you play with me?
8. If you owned a boat in Seattle in the olden days, Doc Freeman’s was your place to buy gear for your boat. It seemed like everyone owned a boat. “Boating Capitol of the World” we were called. Sadly, this landmark went the way of Hardwicks, Jensen Motorboat Company and many others, but long before.
9. Kalakala was the go-to ferry to Vashion Island as I remember. An awesome ride with its classic rattle and Art Deco streamline design. Outside of Seattle few would know about the Kalakala.
10. If someone today asks me where Lowe’s Store is located I tell them it’s down where Sick’s Stadium used to be, until I realize they are either too young or not from around here.
11. Let’s meet at Dag’s. Dag’s was the favorite before Dick’s and Burgermaster for a cheap burger, fried and a shake. It’s long gone but those of us of a certain age remember it well.
12. The Aqua theater at Green Lake
13. Chubby and Tubby where we bought cheap Xmas trees, shoes and jeans. It was a favorite place to go for discounted everything.
14. Boo-boo and Fifi, Duh..
    (Jean comments: Rob and Carol are recalling Bobo, our local–and beloved–gorilla. Not to be confused with Yogi Bear’s adenoidal sidekick Booboo)
15. Maynard hospital named after David Maynard, Seattle pioneer. Where Carol was born.
16. Armory now MOHAI.
    (Jean comments: Of course, R&C are referring to the Naval Reserve Armory.)
17. RH Thompson expressway. Few outside of Seattle would remember this transportation mistake, but if you lived around here this was a big deal in the 1960’s.
18. Mossback was often how my parents described what it was like living in the rainy, cold  (mossy) Pacific Northwest. Of course, it’s also what conservative, curmudgeons are called as well but I believe we defined it differently back then. Although, I’ve definitely developed some curmudgeonly qualities as time marches on –  to go along with the moss!

PETER STEINBRUECK
Hmmm giving some thought to this, I can easily identify non-Seattle natives by a number of traits, behaviors such as those impersonal footwalkers who never look at you, let alone give a friendly “hello” as they pass by and are the same people who like to complain about the so-called “Seattle Freeze,” which we real natives know as a unusual cold wind that blew in from somewhere else!

Another dead giveaway is “Pike’s Market,” which of course is confused with “Pike’s Peak,” and has nothing to do with the Pike Place Market.

And our neighbor state to the south of Washington is mis-pronounced “Ore-gone.”

People not from here are under another big delusion that it rains alot in Seattle. In fact, many other large cities such as New York City, Boston and Washington DC receive more rainfall than Seattle does, which just have more names for than most other places, including “sprinkles, showers, drizzle, sleet, snowy mix, and downpour.” People from the east and other cold places usually like to wear scarves,  heavy wool button down overcoats in winter, which are unnecessary, impractical for drizzle, and can make you too hot in our mild climate even in winter.

Then there’s the Seattle hipsters, so into the “lumberjack metro“ look, beards and all, particularly popular among high income techies who can afford $350 flannel shirts from Filson’s, once the working man’s Alaskan outfitter established in Seattle in 1897 during the pioneering days of the Klondike Gold Rush.

COLLEEN CHARTIER

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Published in The Seattle Times online on March 16, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on March 19, 2023

Colonnade of continuity lights up Portage Bay in Montlake

By Jean Sherrard

In 2019, photographer Colleen Chartier and urban planner Rob Wilkinson, neighbors in an elongated oval that divides the Montlake Cut from the SR-520 corridor, learned that their street’s beloved but decrepit 100-year-old lampposts were soon to be removed and replaced with modern counterparts.

For the two, the pending loss was personal. With their spouses, both had raised children in the neighborhood, and each of the 14 columns — though dinged, rusty and layered in peeling paint — was a repository of community memory.

What’s more, the gently tapered, cast-iron lampposts, installed circa 1920, were identical to those still lighting the Olmsted Brothers-designed Volunteer Park on nearby Capitol Hill. Destined for the scrap heap, these historic artifacts just had to be saved.

Former partners in Art-on-File, a small photography business, Chartier and Wilkinson had traveled the world for decades, documenting public art and architecture and changing cityscapes. From their explorations, the two understood that the colonnades (literally, rows of columns) of ancient Greece potently symbolize strength, endurance and importance.

Brainstorming a rescue plan, they recalled the colonnades in the disparate cities of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Moline, Illinois. “These,” Chartier says, “are urban spaces where land and water meet, enhanced by necklaces of lampposts.”

Erecting a similar colonnade in nearby West Montlake Park, fronting Portage Bay, appealed to them both. “The idea was beautiful and simple,” Wilkinson says. “Elegantly laid out, we thought it would be irresistible.”

Seattle City Light, however, was hesitant, citing legal liability. But Wilkinson persisted, eventually tracking down Dan Peters, the contractor tasked with disposing of the old fixtures. After hearing the pitch, Peters responded, “No problem, dude. Where do you want them?”

But where to temporarily cache 14 lampposts, 600 pounds each? Nearby Seattle Yacht Club offered storage for six months, which became an even more generous three years. The rest of the neighborhood was equally supportive, many enthusiastically underwriting restoration of the columns and erection of the colonnade.

More hurdles followed, some bureaucratic, others pandemic-related. Progress slowed. Wilkinson and Chartier prepared an exactingly illustrated 40-page proposal that kept inspiration alive while shepherding the project from permitting through bidding and construction.

Today, after 3-1/2 years and hundreds of hours of donated labor, the colonnade stands. Was it worth the trouble? Without a doubt, asserts the pair.

“It’s about presenting these commonplace artifacts in a way that honors their inherent beauty,” Chartier says.

“We’re battle-scarred,” Wilkinson adds with a rueful grin. “It turns out that building something so simple and lovely is really, really hard.”

WEB EXTRAS

Fascinating extras, this time round. First, check out our 360 on-site video of the column, read by Jean.

Then scroll down for some remarkable documentation of this amazing project. To begin with, the PDF of their 40-page proposal, beautifully crafted to ensure greatest impact.

More photos from Chartier and Wilkinson taken over 3 1/2 years.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on March 2, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on March 5, 2023

Fish stories come true on Ballard’s legendary Emancipator

By Jean Sherrard

Brad Buske’s earliest memories are of old salts playing pinochle, smoking cheroots and telling fish tales on the Everett waterfront, where his family runs a seafood processing company. One story consistently stood out, burnished in the retelling, and Buske knows it by heart.

It happened in the late summer of 1958 after a robust season for sockeye in Puget Sound. Of 400 local purse-seiners vying for salmon, the Emancipator, a sleek 65-foot wooden boat built in 1918 by the Skansi Bros. of Gig Harbor, had finished among the top 10 boats for gross stock. In 28 consecutive days, its nets had hauled in a respectable 25,000 fish.

When the state fish commission offered a last-minute extension, declaring a one-day open season on Fraser River sockeyes, Emancipator owner and skipper Nick Barhanovich jumped at the chance. “And if we happened to catch a few fish,” recalls crew member Ray Fadich in his 2020 book “The Big Run,” that would be “icing on our cake.”

Joining a flotilla of competing boats near Point Roberts, the Emancipator initiated a set and then began pulling in its seines. What happened next was mind-boggling.

Within the enclosed circle of nets, Fadich describes a “frenzy” of teeming fish, “water boiling as if in a huge cooking pot.” The delighted crew filled the hold to the brim, then loaded the deck gunnel-deep till the stern was almost awash. Fadich worked the bilge pumps till he was “blue in the face” just to keep the vessel above water.

That single set comprised 15,000 fish — nearly 80,000 pounds. It was one of the largest single catches in Puget Sound history.

Today, Brad Buske, 36, is the proud owner of the Emancipator, which he bought for a dollar in 2013. “By that time, the boat was basically floating dirt,” he says. “We removed the old fish hold with a shovel.”

The Emancipator was transferred to Port Townsend, where Buske says master shipwrights rebuilt it beam by beam: “We did our best to keep all the lines as original as possible, trying to preserve its history — not to create a dead replica but a working boat with a purpose.”

Buske views himself a caretaker of that history. “To me,” he says, “this boat is a living thing. There’s oil and sweat and fish juice soaked into its timbers.”

Several months a year, with Buske at the helm, the Emancipator continues to ply Puget Sound as a tender, transporting fish between the today’s salmon fleet and his family’s cannery, adding salty chapters to its ongoing story.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 video of this column, narrated by Jean, please join us at  Fisherman’s Terminal.

More photos of the Emancipator included below:

Passing through the Ballard Locks:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 16, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 19, 2023

Coming to our late-night rescue for 69 years: Dick’s Drive-In

By Jean Sherrard

“You don’t know where I’ve been!” the angry guy repeated.

“You don’t know where he’s been!” chimed in his sidekick.

The muzzle of a gun he pointed at me seemed as enormous as a Kalakala ferry porthole on a night crossing.

“I, I don’t know where you’ve been,” I agreed, quaking, my hands raised. What to do? Should I meet his eyes or not? I was fixated on the deadly weapon.

It was the early 1980s. I had just finished performing in an Empty Space Theatre play on Capitol Hill. After a convivial beer or two at the Comet Tavern, I stopped off at Dick’s Drive-In on Broadway. Just as I joined the line to order, a parking-lot scene was coming to a climax.

A young mixed-race couple (black guy, white gal) in a convertible sipped on milkshakes while two white guys in fatigue jackets circled them in a lather, hurling racial epithets.

“C’mon, cut it out,” I called, fortified by Redhook and youth.

That’s when the gun appeared.

The line parted around me like the Red Sea, but someone shouted, “Leave him alone!” Moments later, customers and servers behind the windows took up the refrain: “Leave him alone!”

The gun barrel wavered indecisively, then lowered. The guy and his sidekick hopped in their car and peeled out of the lot. The Dick’s crowd had come to my rescue.

My Deluxe and Fries were particularly tasty that night. In the immortal words of the Bard, all’s well that ends well.

Richard Spady (1923-2016), eponymous co-founder of Dick’s, whose family still owns the small chain of drive-ins, opened his first restaurant in 1954 in Wallingford. He and his partners adopted simple principles: quality ingredients and quick service. They found almost instant success and stuck with the formula.

Sixty-nine years later, long lines continue well past midnight. The oldest fast-food joint in town is still one of its most popular, repeatedly topping polls for the region’s favorite eatery. Afficionados include songsters Sir Mix-a-Lot and Macklemore. Both immortalized Dick’s in rap.

The late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen also was a customer. So, still, is his partner Bill Gates, who, legend has it, once flamboyantly tried to pay for a cheeseburger with a $1,000 bill. But times have moderated the local billionaire, who now seems to prefer anonymity.

Ten years ago, late one weekday evening, Gates and I approached separate windows at the Wallingford Dick’s and coincidentally called out the same order: a Deluxe, Fries and a Coke. He was alone and unassuming, wearing the same sweater he’d worn on “The Daily Show” the night before.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video featuring this column, please head over in this direction.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 2, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 5, 2023

Magnolia Beach offers proverbial wave of the future

By Jean Sherrard

In 1913, below Magnolia Bluff and today’s Discovery Park, a Webster & Stevens photographer captured this revealing pair of images of South Beach. In the northwesterly view, gleaming West Point Lighthouse anchors a sand spit, known to the Duwamish as Per-co-dus-chule or “thrusts far out.”

Early mariners knew the peninsula as Sandy Point and welcomed installation of the lighthouse in 1881, the first on Puget Sound, to warn of the hazardous shoal at the north end of Elliott Bay, site of many shipwrecks.

The lighthouse compound was accessible only by water until the arrival of the Army at nearby Fort Lawton in 1900, when a steep dirt road was cut from the top of the bluff down to the shoreline. Even then, lighthouse keepers and their assistants led an envied if isolated existence.

In 1984, West Point Lighthouse was one of the last stations on the West Coast to be automated. Owned and operated by Seattle Parks since 2004, its beacon continues to guide sailors safely home.

But what of nearby 300-foot Magnolia Bluff, lined with native madrona trees? Theories abound as to its misnaming. Most likely Navy Captain George Davidson erred during his 1856 survey of Puget Sound, confusing one broadleaved evergreen for another.

The beach itself also invites puzzlement. Aside from the absence of color, little seems to distinguish then from now. But Port Townsend oceanographer and coastal hazards specialist Ian Miller begs to differ.

“It’s hard to express how excited I [am] by these 110-year old photos,” he says. “We have so few historical images of these bluffs and shorelines, and I’ve never seen anything like them.”

For Miller, two elements warrant particularly close study: the size and quantity of logs on the beach and the coarsening of its sand and gravel, both of which provide vital environmental clues. Today, with much of Puget Sound “armored” by seawalls, riprap and hard surfaces, natural beach formation has been significantly disrupted.

South Beach, however, nourished by the gradual erosion of its towering bluffs, has maintained equilibrium, rebuilding itself through sedimentation over time. Its sands provide vital spawning grounds for smelt and other forage fish, prey for salmon. “From an ecological standpoint,” Miller says, “these are very important elements of the marine food web.”

What will the next 100 years bring? “As sea levels continue to rise,” Miller says, “this section of beach may provide a microcosm for Puget Sound restoration.”

In other words, reducing coastal “armor” and allowing resilient shorelines to erode and rebuild naturally may be the wave of the future.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 video version of the column, click here.

And here are four related “Now & Then” columns by Paul Dorpat, from 1984 through 1991:

• 1984 01-29 N&T
• 1985 10-13 N&T
• 1986 10-05 N&T
• 1991 03-24 N&T

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 19, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 22, 2023

Single-track minds imagine a Seattle monorail a century ago

By Jean Sherrard

In February 1962, a week after John Glenn orbited the earth and two months before the opening of the Century 21 Exposition (aka the Seattle World’s Fair), the Seattle-Post Intelligencer featured a mysterious photo in its Sunday magazine. Discovered in the archives of a “pioneer” photo studio, it depicted a familiar if antiquated Seattle cityscape but with futuristic alterations.

Skillfully added to the original photo, painted ribbons of monorail track snaked down Fourth Avenue and through Westlake, while cars atop the tracks bore a logo: “Universal Elevated Railway.”

Even keen-witted 93-year-old Joshua Green, from whose eponymous building the portrait had been taken, had no recollection of its provenance.

Challenged to solve the enigma, however, older readers soon supplied answers. A retired patent attorney recalled filing the original designs in 1918, and several early investors trotted out their now-worthless stock certificates.

Turns out the city’s nearly completed Alweg monorail, set to glide between Westlake and the World’s Fair, had been largely envisioned more than 40 years earlier by prescient inventors and entrepreneurs. Uncannily, one of their proposed routes even mirrored that of the Alweg.

This early monorail design was the brainchild of an unlikely crew, including noted physician Dr. Royal McClure, wealthy Sedro Wooley druggist Albert Holland, Capitol Hill garage manager David McClay and Seattle engineering professor Robert Rockwell. In May 1917, they incorporated as the Universal Elevated Railway Co. and declared their intension to make Seattle the world’s monorail capital.

By late 1918, after filing more than a dozen patents, the partners offered stock in the company, intending to fund a demonstration monorail downtown. Surely, the world would soon beat a single-track path to their door.

A bold-faced promotional flyer touted the advantages of elevated transit system: “SURFACE OBSTRUCTION such as floods, snow, railroad crossings, congestion … derailing and THIRD RAIL DANGER” largely would be eliminated by their innovative designs, intended to replace nearly 200 miles of perilous existing railway on Seattle streets.

Yet it was not to be. In the final year of World War I, the federal government imposed austerity measures across the nation, discouraging unnecessary capital investments. To boot, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson was a decided skeptic. The gung-ho backers of the Universal Elevated Railway, though rich in imagination and ambition, could not raise enough out-of-pocket cash. In 1923, the struggling company closed its doors.

It would be another 40 years before a monorail car finally pulled into a station at Westlake.

WEB EXTRAS

For 360 degree narrated video version of this column, click here!

Also, here are several previous related columns by Paul Dorpat:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 5, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 8, 2022

Newly enfranchised women spark 1911 recall of Mayor Hiram Gill

By Jean Sherrard

Seattle was once the Wild West, bitterly divided between an “open city” that tolerated gambling and prostitution south of Yesler Way and a “closed city” that would enforce laws everywhere without exception.

Amid this debate in March 1910, Hiram Gill was elected mayor but soon faced charges of corruption. Female voters, on the verge of acquired suffrage in our state, launched a successful recall petition. The campaign resembled a theatrical play, for which we’ve created a script with actual quotes from key players:

The cast:

Mayor Hiram Gill (1866-1919). Open-city proponent, former city councilman, lawyer noted for defending houses of ill repute, casually smoked a corncob pipe.

Charles “Wappy” Wappenstein (1853-1931). Gill’s police chief, 5-feet tall, walrus mustache, considered genially effective if utterly corrupt.

The Rev. Mark Matthews (1867-1940). Angular 6-foot-5 First Presbyterian preacher, popular denouncer of sin.

Alden J. Blethen (1845-1915). The Seattle Times owner/editor-in-chief, vigorous supporter of Gill.

Erastus Brainerd (1855-1922). Seattle Post-Intelligencer editor-in-chief, Queen City booster, open-city opponent.

ACT ONE 

GILL: I don’t pretend to be a very good man, but I know the law and will enforce it.

WAPPY: People don’t really want a clean city. They just say they do.

MATTHEWS: This city doesn’t want prostitution, gambling, all-night saloons or police corruption.

BLETHEN: Not one iota of testimony … prove[s] that Wappenstein has taken money as a public official.

BRAINERD: He would make a model chief of police were it not for his one known weakness — graft.

WAPPY: There will be a chance for all of us to make some money.

BRAINERD: [Gill] has allowed enforcers of the law to enter into lewd partnerships with breakers of the law.

BLETHEN: All the ranting of the P-I gang will never cause The Times to turn against these two men.

MATTHEWS: This is a campaign of decency versus indecency.

GILL: Public decency is not the issue. What do you care [about] some cuss shooting craps?

WAPPY: Mayor Gill is one of the most popular mayors Seattle has ever had, and there’s little danger of his recall.

GILL: If Charley Wappenstein had committed 100 murders, I will see that he holds his job.

MATTHEWS: Every ballot cast will be either for or against righteousness, civic purity and law enforcement.

BLETHEN: Gill’s fate lies with the women of Seattle.

ACT TWO

To his lasting regret, Blethen was correct. On Feb. 7, 1911, Seattle’s female voters resoundingly ousted Gill in the first mayoral recall election in U.S. history.

In 1914, Gill was re-elected mayor. Flexibly repentant, he had campaigned on a closed-city platform. Meanwhile, Wappy wound up in the state penitentiary in Walla Walla.

WEB EXTRAS

A few more photos to amplify:

Zoom in on the following astonishing portrait of the audience awaiting Hiram Gill in the Seattle Theater. The women are few though their voice would be heard days later.

For our narrated 360 degree video shot on location, click right here!

And here are two related installments by our column founder Paul Dorpat:

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 8, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 11, 2022

To grandmother’s house we swerve — around Lake Keechelus

By Jean Sherrard

“Lewis!!!”

This scream from my grandmother-to-be was followed, a split second later, by a swerve from my grandfather-to-be to avoid a head-on collision. He skidded off the gravel road and barreled toward a 100-foot cliff.

Let us freeze that instant of white-knuckled, bug-eyed terror and pause to consider life’s random fragility. From near-miss bullets and plane flights not taken, to Spanish flus and rattlesnake bites, every family history is replete with “what ifs” upon which threads of destiny dangle.

My maternal ancestors’ fate hinged for several seconds on the reaction time of my 21-year-old gramps, who drove a Model-T Ford in the late fall of 1927 on a treacherous switchback of the Sunset Highway, high above Lake Keechelus’s eastern shore.

Heading home to Seattle for the holidays from Whitworth College in Spokane, Lewis Randal and his fiancé —  Dorothy Dailey, then a senior — were taking a much-traveled road with a long and checkered past.

For likely thousands of years, Snoqualmie Pass (elevation 3,010 feet) offered a trail from east to west. In the 1860s, it was expanded to accommodate pack trains and cattle drives and later used by cross-state travelers and nascent automobiles. Early in the 20th century, however, traffic over the pass slowed to a crawl.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had designated Lake Keechelus, a primary source of the Yakima River, as the ideal reservoir to irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres of parched valley farmland. They erected a temporary wooden coffer dam in 1907 at the lake’s mouth, raising the water by 10 feet — just enough to make the existing road unusable.

The recently formed Washington State Highway Department, led by Joseph Snow (who engineered Seattle’s first major regrade) found itself between a rock and a wet place. Travelers on the east/west road, now partially flooded, were hostages to a private ferry operator who offered lake crossings at usurious prices.

Meanwhile, on the west side of the lake, astute managers of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad had planned ahead, carving railbeds well above the dammed waters. By 1909, their trains ran on a busy schedule, taunting bottlenecked traffic on the opposite shore with every steam whistle.

With convict labor, the state’s re-routing of the wagon road, part of the proposed Sunset Highway, was not complete until 1915. It remained unpaved until 1934, years after my grandparents flirted with terror.

A merciful thaw of the freeze-frame reveals that the Model-T was halted by a stump at the cliff’s edge, allowing them to proceed toward their (and my) destiny.

WEB EXTRAS

Just follow the link to watch our 360 degree video version of this column.

For your enjoyment, Jean added a few photos taken on the same late October trip of the eastern side of the Cascades in the Yakima Canyon near Ellensburg.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 24, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 27, 2022

Ninety years before Octavia Butler moved in 1999 from sunny Pasadena, California, to Lake Forest Park, 10 miles north of Seattle, then-real-estate developer and future Seattle mayor Ole Hanson (1874-1940) envisioned a neighborhood that would provide an escape from frenetic city life. In a promotional pamphlet, Hanson described an environment removed from “the sordid commercialism of today.”

In 1909, Seattle was booming. During the first decade of the 20th century, its population had nearly tripled (to 237,194 from 80,671 in 1900) in time to host its first world’s fair, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. The Queen City had emerged as a major metropolis, with accompanying growth pains.

Hanson intended that his proposed development provide an antidote to the urban hustle and bustle: “Forget your schemes for a moment; lay aside your business; let the telephone ring; allow your callers to wait in the ante-room; Read — Ponder — and Dream.”

Butler could have heeded Hanson’s call when choosing her ideal neighborhood. Her mid-century modern home, built in 1957, nestled within easy walking distance of a notable bookstore, grocery stores and Lake Washington. It also offered a green refuge for the nature-loving writer.

Mike Daly, her across-the-street neighbor, moved into the neighborhood within months of Butler’s arrival. “We got to know Octavia little by little,” he says. “She didn’t have a car, which fit with her environmentalism. Sometimes I’d see her walking home from Albertson’s with two bags of groceries and offer her a ride. ‘I need the exercise,’ she’d say.

“We invited her over for dinner on numerous occasions, but she always politely declined. … A great neighbor, very personable but more of a private than a social-type person.”

Deborah Magness of Third Place Books concurred. While Butler attended reading and signing events, she also was a regular customer. “I very clearly recall ringing Octavia up at the cash register,” Magness says, “but between being starstruck and having the feeling she wished to go about her business quietly and anonymously, I did not interact with her at length.”

Susan McMurry, a neighbor several doors north of Butler’s former house, wasn’t aware of her presence in the neighborhood until reading her obituary in local papers. “After she passed, our local book club decided to read her wonderful novel ‘Kindred,’ in which a young Black woman travels through time to the era of slavery. I’m not very well versed in science fiction, but for me Octavia’s books transcend the genre, with their mix of history, philosophy and ethics.”

Matt Milios, who owns Butler’s former Lake Forest Park property and has been a devoted reader of science fiction since childhood, was delighted to discover that a favorite author once shared his home. While little trace remains of Butler’s tenure, several times a year ardent fans show up on his doorstep, seeking posthumous connection.

A nudge from the past arrived in Milios’s mailbox last summer. In a letter addressed to Butler, sent 16 years after her death, a local bank sought overdue payment for a safety deposit box. Milios forwarded the request to her California estate managers, who paid the time-traveling debt.

(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 27, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 30, 2022

As young vampires, ghouls and superheroes prowl our neighborhoods cadging for candy this Halloween, actual monsters roam the deeps — and the shallows.

Hideously transmogrified, they struggle upstream past the banks of Pacific Northwest lakes, rivers and streams in an intricate and terrifying water ballet.

While on the hunt for ghost stories suitable for this shivery season, I thumbed through regional reports of the supernatural, from a haunted Georgetown mansion to the spooky lower level of the Pike Place Market, but each tale seemed more trick than treat.

But I caught a break investigating a potential “Then” photo at the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery when serendipity inspired a question.

“Know any scary stories about fish?” I asked hatchery specialist J.J. Swennumson.

“Soos Creek Hatchery,” J.J. said, referencing an Auburn facility. “That place was super freaky.”

Mysterious, dead-of-night music and an apparition named Homer made regular appearances. After the hatchery’s eerie old building was replaced, however, the spooks fell silent.

“But,” J.J. added impishly with a twinkle, “we’ve got zombies.”

Out of dozens of state, federal and tribal hatcheries, Issaquah with 250,000 annual visitors is our state’s most popular. Built in 1936 by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, the facility aimed to restore historic salmon runs to Issaquah Creek, devastated by decades of coal mining and logging.

The hatchery’s first salmon stock, borrowed from nearby Green River, was released into the creek to general rejoicing, followed by decades of activity.

We’ll get to J.J.’s zombies, but if you have forgotten your salmonid factoids, here’s a quick refresher:

For at least two million years, Pacific salmon have flourished in our cold mountain rivers and streams. From freshwater spawning beds, hatchlings eventually head downstream to the ocean where, after several years of feeding and growth, they chart a course for home.

In what marine biologists describe as one of nature’s most remarkable mysteries, migrating salmon take cues from the Earth’s geomagnetic field to traverse thousands of miles of saltwater and arrive at their natal river’s mouth. Upon entering fresh water, a sense of smell thousands of times more sensitive than a bloodhound’s guides the fish to their original spawning grounds.

With the change in salinity, however, they stop feeding entirely. Their once-sleek silver bodies alter color and shape as their internal organs, save those charged with reproduction, begin to fail.

Battered, scarred, scarcely alive, these “zombie” salmon finally arrive home to spawn a next generation. But their contribution doesn’t end there. Their decaying bodies, strewn along riverbanks, provide autumnal protein for wildlife and nitrogen-rich fertilizer for surrounding trees.

In other words, tricks and treats!

WEB EXTRAS

A few more photos of the hatchery and Issaquah creek below. Also, check out our 360 video featuring a visit to the hatchery.

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 13, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 16, 2022

Bavarian-born Andrew Piper brought sweet treats to 1870s Seattle

By Jean Sherrard

“I scream! You scream! We all scream if we don’t get Piper’s ice cream!”

This advertisement, from May 1874 in the Puget Sound Dispatch, may be the first recorded version of the ever popular ice-cream lovers’ ditty. It was the brainchild of beloved Seattle confectioner, baker, ice-cream purveyor and socialist city-council member Andrew W. Piper.

At age 19, the Bavarian-born Piper had joined the 1848 German revolution, an expression of social unrest sweeping Europe. After its defeat, he fled to the United States to avoid political persecution.

After 20 years in San Francisco, and seeking greener, less-populated pastures, Piper arrived in Seattle in 1873, where he opened the Puget Sound Candy Manufactory, our region’s first candy shop. His large family, including wife Wilhelmina, three daughters and six sons, was welcomed by a community eager for sweets and treats.

Several years of bitterly cold winters provided more opportunities for the ambitious candy man. Hacking great blocks of ice from frozen Lake Union, Piper built the city’s first commercial icehouse. The summertime addition of ice cream to an already booming confectionary and bakery business enhanced his profits and popularity.

His capacious First Hill mansion and a Puget Sound shoreline homestead (today located in northwest Seattle’s Carkeek Park) only confirmed his business acumen.

The heavily accented German also was an artist. His sketches, paintings and sculptures were widely admired. In his spare time, he served as a scene painter to local theaters.

Our “Then” photo features a portrait of Piper in his prime. Posing with his 6-year-old son, Walter, and their dog, Jack, Piper pauses at the southeast corner of Front Street (today’s First Avenue) and Madison circa 1878.

Perched on the balcony of Maddock drugstore, the Peterson Brothers photographer also captured a view of Seattle’s first major public work, completed in 1877: the regrading of a stump-filled, uneven pathway into smoothly graded Front Street, elevated on timbers above the Elliott Bay tideline.

Piper’s businesses thrived until Seattle’s great fire of 1889. His shop and the Manufactory, along with 25 downtown city blocks, were reduced to ashes. Piper did not reopen until two-and-a-half years later, in November 1891. Increasing competition and a fragile economy hobbled his prospects.

Upon his death in 1904, his close friend, journalist and historian Thomas Prosch, offered an affectionate eulogy. Piper was “invaluable … always able and never failed,” someone of great kindness whom “everybody regarded as a friend.”

Today, the eponymous Piper’s Creek, Piper Canyon and restored Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park mark the only extant namesakes of this pioneer. The orchard’s apples reportedly filled his scrumptious strudel.

WEB EXTRAS

We can’t find an earlier version of “I Scream You Scream” than Piper’s from 1874. Here’s a link to Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians and their hit song from the 1920s:

Stay tuned for our 360 video narrated by Jean.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 29, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Oct. 2, 2022)

Jean’s note: We must assign credit where credit’s due. The “then” photo attached to this column–and the original notion to tell the story of Major Cicero Newell–came from the ever-inventive and perpetually helpful photo historian and collector Ron Edge, whose name we praise! Thanks a million, Ron!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *  *   *   *

Stepping ashore on Mercer Island, my friend Mark and I were thrilled by our discovery. Both 13, we were keen to explore and plunder. Before us stretched acres of golden, waist-high grass, dotted with fruit trees and thorny Himalayan blackberry bushes, as well as crumbling old buildings promising untold treasures.

On this early summer 1970 day, we had paddled from Bellevue’s Enatai Beach, passing under arches of the old East Channel bridge (just days earlier, on a dare, we had leapt from the span’s deck) then muscling north to the grounds of evidently abandoned Luther Burbank Park. We did not know we were repeating a journey in reverse made 66 years earlier.

Just past midnight on a cold, wet November night in 1904, 13-year-olds William Kiger and Albert Cook, wearing only their skivvies and chained together with ankle manacles, cradled the shackles to stop them clanking. Labeled incorrigible “bad boys,” they were forging a second attempt to escape from Major Cicero Newell’s Industrial School, which had recently relocated to a dozen rural acres on Mercer Island’s north shore.

Kiger and Cook crept out of the recently built dormitory and down to the water’s edge. Having earlier noted a neighbor’s decrepit rowboat tied up nearby, the boys clambered in and pushed out into the channel.

“For hours they paddled, making little headway,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. “Several times their frail little craft came near swamping, and one of the boys had to bail water to prevent it from going to the bottom. Soon after dawn, the boys, exhausted and all but unconscious, made land opposite the island on the east shore of the lake.”

Sympathetic Northern Pacific belt-line workers used hammers and chisels to cut off the boys’ leg chains and wrapped the pair in borrowed jackets.

Newell (1840-1913), a Civil War veteran commended for bravery by President Lincoln and respected among the Sioux as an Indian agent, had arrived in Seattle in the early 1890s.

With wife Emma, he founded the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society, sheltering “homeless, neglected and abused children.” They garnered strong community support, including a Seattle School Board eager for solutions to a growing problem.

Early in the 20th century, however, Newell’s increasingly punitive methods, including beatings and chaining, drew increased scrutiny and criticism. Following newspaper accounts and public outcry, Newell was quietly replaced as school principal in spring 1905.

William and Albert were not recaptured, according to the P-I story.  “The boys were allowed to go on their way. Nothing has been seen of them since.”

William Kiger became a Seattle truck driver with a large extended family until his death in 1962. No further record can be found of Albert Cook.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 degree video of this column, please visit our YouTube channel.

Here’s several newspaper articles from the digital archives regarding Maj. Cicero Newell.

The first is an open letter from Newell published in 1900 that seems reasonable, laying out methods for addressing the needs of young delinquents which might help rather than harm. Within two years, however (see the next archival article from 1902), the Major’s shocking practices belie his stated good intentions.

Before moving to the Mercer Island Industrial School site in 1904, Newell located in Seattle. The 1902 escape of another boy–this one eight years old, found wandering on the waterfront, raised questions about the Major’s tactics.

The article from which we quote in the column is included below.

And, also courtesy of Ron Edge, a copy of Cicero Newell’s book about his years as an Indian agent. He found much to admire, even venerate, during his tenure with the Dakota Sioux.

Indian_Stories

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 15, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Sept. 18, 2022)

Philip Wischmeyer’s stunning panoramic view of Neah Bay circa 1910 features the Makah fishing fleet at its most active, comprising more than 200 hard-working vessels.

And while today’s protected harbor at the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula is much less busy, particularly after two years of pandemic quarantine, the Makah reservation reopened to visitors on March 15, 2022.

For Brian Parker, who graciously provided access from his Dia’ht Hill rooftop to repeat this week’s “Then” photo, the isolation was difficult but necessary to protect his community. Nevertheless, he welcomes the surge of vacationers who snapped up all summer lodgings in and around the bay.

Two-hundred-and-thirty years ago, this natural harbor, home to the Makah for millennia, briefly hosted another group of outsiders. Geopolitical competition among colonial rivals England, Spain and America to map and claim possession of the sketchily charted Pacific Northwest coast approached a high-water mark.

On April 29, 1792, English naval Capt. George Vancouver guided his vessel HMS Discovery into the strait of Juan de Fuca, beginning his mission to survey the inland waters of today’s Salish Sea.

Just two weeks later, on May 11, American merchant ship Capt. Robert Gray’s Columbia Rediviva negotiated the treacherous sandbars of a huge river and sailed into its estuary. After conducting initial surveys, Gray named the river Columbia after his ship.

On May 29, the Spanish naval frigate Princesa offloaded 70 seamen, 13 soldiers, 4 officers and a chaplain at Neah Bay. The settlers cleared land and built Fort Núñez Gaona, the first non-Native American structure in the future state of Washington.

Just across a stream from the Makah village of Diah, these modest barracks, storehouses, and a bakery — as well as palisades with gun mounts — promised a significant Spanish toehold at the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But unanticipated hurdles proved difficult to overcome.

The bay itself was too shallow to accommodate larger vessels. What’s more, says Makah Museum Executive Director Janine Ledford, the native residents of Diah, upon returning from annual spring fishing and whaling camps on Tatoosh Island, began to actively resist the invaders.

On Sept. 29, after the volatile summer, the fort was abandoned and the Spanish returned to their home port at Vancouver Island’s Nootka Sound, never to return.

At this year’s annual Makah Days festival on Aug. 26-29, the first held since 2019, guests were welcome to celebrate the reinvigorated culture, community and health of these proud people. And the Makah choice to isolate during the pandemic proved wise. Not a single tribal member died during the quarantine.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 1, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Sept. 4, 2022)

In the after-hours during the early 1970s, the Pike Place Market neighborhood was run-down and gritty, even dangerous. Rex McDowell, a young actor who found digs off Post Alley below the Market, kept a knife near his front entrance to thwart would-be intruders. “When they’d bang on our double doors or try to break in, we’d stick the long blade into the gap and waggle it up and down to frighten them off.”

Rent was cheap and youth fearless.

Where Post Alley makes a sharp turn uphill and to the east (just beyond today’s “gum wall”), was wedged a tiny storefront. Reputedly a former speakeasy, it was first home to Seattle’s legendary, 50-seat Empty Space Theatre.

Fresh from the University of Washington theater program, founder M. Burke Walker sought to build a new and vibrant company featuring edgier, often experimental voices. In the underbelly of the then-untouristed Market, the minuscule stage became a hothouse of creative ferment while its somewhat unsavory setting kept costs low.

The seminal 1968 book “The Empty Space” by British stage director Peter Brook triggered the troupe’s name and offered keen theatrical philosophy. “I can take an empty space,” he wrote, “and call it a bare stage.” For a young company cobbling together budget-conscious productions, austerity was a welcome challenge.

“It was the best training ground for the best theater artists this town has ever known,” says musician-composer John Engerman.

“From the start, it was a great ensemble,” adds fellow company member Kurt Beattie, now artistic director emeritus of ACT Theatre. “Great ensembles make great theatre.”

The company also played a vital role in Seattle theater, says playwright Carl Sander: “The Seattle Rep was the living room, ACT was the dining room, but the Empty Space was the kitchen.”

The Space created and presented hundreds of celebrated productions over more than three decades while migrating to Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square and finally Fremont. Though the final curtain fell in 2006, Space alumni continue to serve as chefs de cuisine of Seattle theatre whose savory fare still inspires.

On a roasty July evening, more than 150 Empty Spacers gathered at Seattle Center’s Cornish Theatre to celebrate the company’s Covid-delayed 50th reunion. They included Walker, fellow founder Jim Royce, and other Seattle theater luminaries, sans one beloved ensemble member. Renowned actor John Aylward, who had hoped to attend, died on May 16 at age 75.

“For John,” memorialized Walker in words that readily apply to the Empty Space itself, “play was always a verb first and a noun second.”

WEB EXTRAS

A few photo from the reunion:

(Click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on August 4, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on August 7, 2022)

Municipal portrait makes ‘You’ll Like Tacoma’ a winning slogan
By Jean Sherrard

Distracted by the trio of natural and architectural jewels strewn across the skyline of this 1910 photo of Tacoma’s north downtown, we easily can miss the discreet banner stretched over a roadway in the foreground shadows.

Its crisp caption: “You’ll like Tacoma.”

The year-old slogan originally had been adopted by Tacoma promoters during arch-rival Seattle’s first world’s fair, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, meant to encourage visitors to venture south to the self-styled City of Destiny.

Directly across Lake Union from the fairgrounds (today’s University of Washington campus), boosters had erected their Paul Bunyan-sized solicitation in huge, electrically illuminated letters.

The motto was both “an invitation and a prophecy,” gushed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “and it fit [Tacoma] like a new glove: neat, apt, modest and winsome.”

The $30,000 campaign also included buttons, flyers and paid ads. Even a “patriotic march song” was commissioned to amplify the message:

You’ll like Tacoma
Where rail meets sail,
Where all are prosperous,
Hearty and hale,
Down on Commencement Bay,
A New York’s growing, day by day,
Tacoma, the peer of all.

For Paris-born photographer Paul Leo Richards, his popular “Then” photo, captured a year after the exposition, was a valentine to his adopted city. Fresh off the boat in 1891, the ambitious Frenchman wore many hats — inventor, investor and innovator — but is best known for documenting and celebrating the shining attributes of Tacoma.

This notable municipal portrait also subtly tweaks the Tacoma-Seattle rivalry. Just for fun, let’s keep score:

The Mountain That Was God, a mere 40 miles to the southeast, looms gloriously large. Tacomans persisted in calling it Mount Tacoma or Tahoma, its native moniker, disparaging the Seattle- (and USGS-) approved namesake, English Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. Names aside, Tacoma has always rocked the mountain view.

Point: Grit City.

At center, Northern Pacific Railroad’s Headquarters, completed in 1888, overlooks train-track ribbons and Commencement Bay. The creamy, stucco-covered structure also commemorates Tacoma’s 1873 triumph over Seattle, when the railroad chose the tiny (population 200) unincorporated town as its western terminus, in one fell swoop breaking more than a thousand Queen City hearts.

Point: the City of Destiny for the snub.

At right, just across Pacific Avenue, stands Tacoma’s commanding Old City Hall, built in 1893. A superb example of Italian Renaissance style, its eight-foot-thick foundation walls support a freestanding clock/campanile tower, slightly tapered to emphasize its soaring 10 stories. Seattle, having just erected a more utilitarian flatiron city hall in 1909, might well have expressed envy.

Point: You’ll prefer Tacoma, for the win.

WEB EXTRAS

A 360 degree video will be forthcoming but Jean is in his second day of Covid – not too serious thus far, but his dry cough keeps ruining vocal takes!
And at last here’s the 360 (in the first couple minutes, a cop tries to convince Jean to get out of traffic. Jean nods, and smiles agreeably but continues recording).

We have a handful of extras this week, including more materials featuring photographer Paul Richards.

But this just in! Lane Morgan, daughter of legendary historian Murray Morgan (author of ‘Skid Road’ and many other monumental books of regional history, as well as being mentor and close friend of this column’s founder Paul Dorpat), sends along the following delightful odes to Tacoma, written by her grandfather Henry Victor Morgan between 1912 and the early 20s.

Her favorite:

POULTRY IN TACOMA

Livin’ in Tacoma is one long delight,
Just a been attendin’
Poultry show tonight;
Every hen a-singin’–
Red and white and blue—
“Gee we like Tacoma, Bet your life we do!”
All together sayin’, “Isn’t this sublime?
Don’t you like Tacoma? Ain’t the climate fine?

Ever see such weather on a New Years Day
That is why we’re happy. That is why we lay.”

One Rhode Island biddy
Filled the room with cackle,
Said Tacoma’s Leghorn: “She is from Seattle.”
Answered biddie’s Chanti
Rolling up his eyes,
“Yes, we’re from Seattle,
And we won third prize.”

One lone bird seemed dumpy
At the poultry feast
Said the White Minorka,
“She is from the east;
She is like a trolley, off the beaten track,
Dumpy? She is thinkin’ that she must go back.”

Then the roosters proudly
All began to crow,
“No place like Tacoma! Watch Tacoma grow!”

And, as promised, a bit more about Paul Richards:

After building a life in Tacoma, he joined the US Army as a photographer and documented the First World War in France. Certainly, he also served as a translator as well. In the final months of the war, tragedy struck in the form of mustard gas. Severely wounded, Richards spent three years convalescing but died in 1921 of his injuries.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on July 7, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on July 10, 2022)

A Saloonkeeper’s civic sensibility inspired a lasting auditorium
By Jean Sherrard

James Osborne may have attended late 19th-century touring opera performances at Yesler’s Hall at First and Cherry, only blocks away from his profitable Gem Saloon in Pioneer Square.

And while tapping his foot to the music of Donizetti, Bellini or Verdi, the confirmed bachelor might have conjured an act of civic generosity that ended up supporting arias in centuries to come.

Affectionately referred to by friends as “a great infidel” due to his free-thinker’s rejection of religion, Osborne (1834-1881) bequeathed a whopping $20,000 to Seattle with one condition: The donation could be used only to build “a public hall” with city matching funds.

Nearly five decades passed before Osborne’s bequest was fulfilled. The site was a fertile stretch of glacier-carved swale between Queen Anne Hill and regraded Denny Hill.

Dotted by willows and edged with wetlands, this was a traditional gathering place for the Duwamish, who called it Baba’kwob or “the prairies.” The skillful netting of ducks scared up from Lake Union provided ample protein for potlatches and other tribal festivities.

The land also proved ideal for growing fruit, vegetables and imported roses. Settlers David and Louisa Boren Denny moved there in 1854 with their young family, building a log farmhouse and planting gardens that supplied much of Seattle’s fresh produce for the next quarter century.

In 1886, the Dennys — by then one of the region’s richest families — had donated much of the site to the city, prescribing, with an echo of Osborne, that it be reserved for “public use forever.”

By 1927, Osborne’s invested legacy had grown to $110,000, but repeated efforts to erect a public facility had languished or been thwarted despite popular acclaim.

That year, The Seattle Times lobbied for a civic structure to reflect a reinvigorated “Seattle Spirit.” Added the Post-Intelligencer: Seattle was “the only great Pacific Coast city without … a large municipal auditorium.”

City council members and Seattle’s first female mayor, Bertha Landes, offered vigorous support, proposing a $900,000 bond to fund construction.

However, passage required a turnout of at least 50% of eligible voters, and the March 8, 1927, election became a nailbiter. A Times banner warned on the afternoon of election day: “Light Vote Endangers Auditorium.” But Seattleites heeded the call, passing the proposition.

The 7,700-seat Civic Auditorium was completed by June 1928 and hosted its inaugural event, a national Kiwanis convention.

In 1962, the auditorium was refashioned for the Seattle World’s Fair as the Seattle Opera House. In 2003, with donations and public funding, the structure was largely rebuilt, with improved acoustics and seating, as Marion Oliver McCaw Hall.

WEB EXTRAS

Go for it! Click on through to our 360 video, shot on location and narrated by Jean.

Also Clay reminded me of the centerfold of our 2018 book ‘Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred” which features a spectacular view of the Civic Auditorium from Queen Anne! It’s quite wide, so double click for full impact.

Also, we include a few celebratory photos of the Northwest Folklife Festival, marking its return after a two-year pandemic caesura.

Just for fun, check out the  jam session on the steps of McCaw Hall featured in our “now” photograph.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on June 23, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on June 26, 2022)

Vroom with a view: Bikers still ‘see everything’ 112 years later
By Jean Sherrard

It was, proclaimed the Seattle Times, “the first real endurance tour in the history of the motorcycle in the Pacific Northwest,” hosted July 3, 1910, by the Seattle Motorcycle Club.

In our “Then” photo, 26 club members pause near Volunteer Park before the event, straddling their cycles while wearing leather chaps, sporting mustaches and derby hats.

These early bikes were not dependable, says Tom Samuelsen, historian of the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling. An extended trip demanded equal reservoirs of luck, mechanical improvisation and sheer tenacity. Writer Frank Richardson Pierce retrospectively detailed the riders’ elaborate dance:

“When the photographer finished, the club members shoved belt-tightening levers and pedaled madly until the engines started. Then, loosening each belt so that it slipped on the pulley, they dismounted, [easing] the machine off the stand. … Remounting, they tightened the belt and were on their way.”

The grueling, 2-day run began at 7 a.m. from Pioneer Place (now Pioneer Square) and adhered to a punishing schedule.

Checkpoints included Kent, Tacoma, the Mount Rainier Park entrance and the Nisqually glacier, plus an overnight stay in the town of Elbe. A checkered flag was waved in front of the Seattle Times building at Second and Union at 6 p.m. Independence Day, July 4.

Of the 33 motorcyclists who started the tour — propelling two-thirds of the 50 motorcycles then owned in Seattle — all but four vroomed the distance. Local shops and merchandisers awarded top finishers prizes ranging from headlight lamps and goggles to new sets of tires.

Our “Now” photo was snapped Sunday, May 22, from the same vantage, the steps leading up to the Volunteer Park water tower, looking south along 14th Avenue.

These 30 motorcyclists also participated in that day’s 11th annual Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride. A global event spanning more than 700 cities and 100 countries, it has raised more than $31 million since 2012 for the Movember Foundation, on behalf of prostate-cancer awareness and men’s mental health.

Seattle hosts one of the largest such rides, mainly sponsored by two local clubs, the Vintage Motorcycle Enthusiasts (VME) and the Rainier Ravens (an all-women’s motorcycle group).

While the classic motorcycles featured here are more reliable than their early counterparts, their riders are no less passionate about their choice of conveyance. Samuelsen waxes poetic about motorcycling zen:

“It’s nothing like riding in a car. And if you slow down a bit, you can see everything — farmland, mountains, ocean — and become part of nature. It provides direct immersion into the world.”

WEB EXTRAS

For our usual 360 video, narrated by Jean Sherrard, vroom over here.

In addition, we offer several bonbons of motorcycle memorabilia and documentation, most supplied by the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling, now celebrating its 30th anniversary.

First, let’s supply a few additional details concerning our Now and Then photos, courtesy of Tom Samuelsen, PNWMoM senior historian:

“The THEN photo depicts the Seattle Motorcycle Club (SMC) member’s First Annual Endurance Run that was to be held on July 3-4, 1910. This was the first real endurance tour in the history of the Pacific Northwest. Valuable prizes were offered for the best score. This run was held under the sanction of the Federation of American Motorcyclists. Each rider was credited with 1000 points at the 7am start in Seattle’s Pioneer Place, now called Pioneer Square. Rules stated that for each minute late or each minute early at the control timing points there would be 2 points deducted. The run also included one secret control check. The average speed of 20 miles per hour kept riders safe on the dirt roads and trails up Mt. Rainier and they rode far beyond the highest point reached by auto or carriage. 

“They returned to the town of Elbe where they spent the night. The next morning, they rode to Olympia and checked in at Ashley’s Motorcycle Shop in Tumwater then took lunch at the Carlton Hotel, leaving Olympia at 1:15pm after a pass through several check stations in Tacoma and Kent.

Seattle was reached at 6:00pm with the last check at the Seattle Times Building. Two silver cups and several prizes were awarded to the dusty riders. Of the 32 starters all but four riders made it. Perfect scores were earned by seven riders as follows: C.R. Roy, 6 ½ Yale; Lee Dagner, 7 Indian A.W. Hirsch, 4 H-D; Nels Christopher, Fred Walker, Paul Koch and B.S. Klein all of whom rode 4hp Excelsiors. (Article by the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling)

“The NOW photo features members of the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling, co-organizers of the re-creation of the 1910 Seattle Motorcycle Club photo. It was taken on May 22, 2022, just south of Volunteer Park’s historic Water Tower on 14th Avenue East for the Seattle Times ‘Now & Then’ pages in the weekly Pacific NW Magazine. Jean Sherrard and the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling (PNW MoM) have collaborated to recreate the images of early motorcycle history multiple times. 

“Front row, L-R; Jack Mackey holding the minutes of the Seattle Motorcycle Club’s 1910 ride planning. Most of the motorcyclists pictured are members of the PNW MoM and the Vintage Motorcycle Enthusiast (VME). Tom Samuelsen holds a photo taken in Seattle on July 3, 1910 at the starting point of the Endurance Run; Tammy Sessions (PNW MoM President) hold SMC records from 1910. Tad Dean, Jeff Earle, Chris Sharon, Paul Henderson, Emily Mullens (leader of the all-women’s motorcycle group Rainier Ravens) also appear, l-r. 

“Several motorcycle groups are represented in the current photo, including Mike Coski representing the historic Tacoma Motorcycle Club (also formed in 1910), and Cretin’s MC members, Knuckle Busters MC members, and other prominent members of the motorcycle industry. “

(again, click twice to expand to full size)

Plus a couple of Seattle Motorcycle Club treasures from 1910. Just below, a copy of the actual minutes of the club committing to the endurance tour.

A menu from the SMC 1910 banquet, celebrating a successful summer of touring:

Of special note, the fish entree: “Scallop of Pedal au Spring Fork”. For dessert, “Endurance Run Pudding”.

(Incidentally, the Firloch Club was most likely at the same spot as today’s Seattle’s Tennis Club.)

For both enthusiasts and the moto-curious, here are a slew of candid photos taken of participants in the Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride. Thanks to all the easy riders who joined in!

A late-breaking extra and mea culpa! A photo of the Seattle Motorcycling Club at the start of its 1911 endurance tour, also near Pioneer Square, was misdated as 1910 (due to operator error!).

(Published in The Seattle Times online on June 9, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on June 12, 2022)

All-in-one Denny Hall arose first on UW’s relocated campus
By Jean Sherrard

The proudest day of my great-grandfather’s life was the one marking his graduation from the University of Washington.

Arthur Dailey had arrived in Seattle two months before the Great Fire of 1889 from Kalamazoo, Michigan, soon finding a teaching job. At the advanced age of 30, he hoped that a collegiate diploma would assure his future.

With the rest of his 18-member class of ’97, displaying the school colors of purple and gold, he enthusiastically chanted the school cheer based on Chinook jargon that conveyed bravery and strength:

1. of W., Siah! Siah!
   U. of W., Hiah! Hiah!
   Skookum, Skookum, Washington!

This first graduation on the new UW campus, held May 28, 1897, marked another milestone in its 36-year history.

The school was founded on 10 acres downtown in 1861 by Arthur Armstrong Denny (1822-1899), leader of a 22-member party that had arrived on Alki only 10 years earlier. By 1891, the UW was bursting at its seams. Seattle’s population had exploded to more than 50,000, inhibiting further expansion.

To redress the pinch, the state Legislature approved relocating the UW to the then-rural Brooklyn Addition on the shores of Union Bay. The elderly Denny, still a tireless higher-education supporter, donated most of the 350 acres for a campus with room to boom.

Ground was broken for the university’s first north-end structure in 1894. A French Renaissance design by Charles W. Saunders (1858-1935) topped 24 other submitted sets of drawings. The resulting Administration Building, later renamed Denny Hall, came in well under its $150,000 budget, fed by low labor costs stemming from the depression of 1893.

Its 20,000 square feet housed all six of the university’s colleges and included 10 classrooms, a 6,000-volume library, faculty and administration offices and a 736-seat auditorium, all crowned by a belfry.

In September 1895, the edifice, comprising four floors of light-colored Enumclaw sandstone and pressed brick, trimmed with terra cotta and outfitted with the latest heating and plumbing, welcomed more than 200 students.

Our “Then” photo was snapped using Carrie Coe’s camera, likely in 1895, during a family outing to admire the newly completed building. Her husband, Dr. Frantz Coe, after whom Queen Anne Hill’s Coe School is named, was a future Seattle school-board member and friend of the Dennys. The tangle of bushes and a fresh-cut stump provide evidence of still-undeveloped wilderness on every side.

For his part, my great-grandpa Dailey made good use of the sheepskin, serving as principal to schools across the region. By 1899, he felt secure enough to marry his sweetheart, Ballard schoolteacher Agnes Johnson.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 degree narrated video version of this column, please take a short trip here!

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on May 26, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on May 29, 2022)

Visitors aboard a 1950s waterfront tour had to walk the prank
By Jean Sherrard

During her first visit to Seattle, Gwendolyn Dixon wrote home to her parents in tiny Green City, Mo., that she having a whale of a time. On the backside of this Boyd Ellis postcard, postmarked Aug. 25, 1953, she mentioned plans to take a one-hour boat tour of the harbor.

Would that we could scratch and sniff Ellis’ photo, snapped a year earlier in 1952! A pungent working waterfront would spring to life.

Add the sound of ferry whistles, harbor gulls and the booming voice of Seattle Harbor Water Tours’ barker Rudi Becker (lower left) for full effect. The skipper on the flying bridge is likely Lynn Campbell or Joe Boles, company co-owners.

Campbell and Boles were particularly proud of their recent acquisition, named for a freak swell that nearly capsized the vessel on its passage from San Diego. After a $21,000 repair and facelift, the owners claimed the Wave was unique on the waterfront. Though sporting a conventional, 50-foot-long hull with a 13-foot beam, the cabin featured large, stainless-steel-framed, shatterproof panes of glass, providing spectacular harbor views for its 68 passengers.

And business boomed. Tourists and locals alike took in waterfront highlights, from Coast Guard weather ships and Smith Cove to United Fruit Company’s banana terminal. Most impressive, Campbell said, were the Todd drydocks at Harbor Island, “where you get to see how big a ship really is … and wonder how anything so heavy can float.”

During evening tours, Becker, a self-described “wharf rat,” could be heard tickling eager passengers: “By special permission of the chamber of commerce, we are permitted to include on this trip the sight of the setting sun.”

In the postcard’s background, above Alaskan Way, looming are pale concrete ribs of the nearly completed viaduct, which opened in April 1953. At right, near an octopus mural at the northeast corner of Pier 54, a mounted sign supplies evidence of Ivar Haglund’s aquarium. It drew many visitors for 18 years, until it was shuttered in 1956.

A coda:

Joe Boles (1904-1962) made a late-life career change, improbably becoming the Northwest’s leading recording engineer, famously mastering the Wailers’ cover of “Louie, Louie.”

His partner, Lynn Campbell (1912-2013), offered harbor tours until his retirement, evolving the business into what is known today as Argosy Cruises.

Rudi Becker (1913-1976) served as a tour barker, wag and jokester for more than a decade. Watching tourists fill souvenir bottles with Elliott Bay water, he advised caution. “You better pour some out,” Becker said, “Come high tide, that bottle will break.”

Most tourists took it as Sound advice.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, please head over in this general direction.

And for further life aquatic, here’s a few photos of Ivar Haglund’s waterfront aquarium, courtesy of Ivar’s:

A late addition – the Times article from July 24, 1949 concerning the United Fruit Company’s Banana Terminal.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on May 12, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on May 15, 2022)

A surviving signpost to Belltown’s origins soon will fall
By Jean Sherrard

Some ancient parchment, as historians know, is scrubbed clean and rewritten upon while leaving behind faint traces of the original text. Such a page is known as a palimpsest.

When exploring the crosshatch of Seattle streets and architecture with this column’s founder Paul Dorpat two decades ago, I realized that his X-ray photographic vision of our ephemeral city included similar traces. The residues, like double exposures, appeared in unlikely places and cracked open historical clues and mysteries aplenty.

This week’s “Then” photo revisits an early discovery of Paul’s that cemented his vocation as historical detector and photographic repeater. He penned a lengthy account of his efforts in the Dec. 20, 1978, edition of the weekly Seattle Sun. The headline: “Digging Up the Past of the Late and Great Denny Hill.”

Perusing a photo collection, he came upon a portrait of the city unlike any he had seen. While “uncannily familiar,” this image did not seem to match Seattle’s existing topography. Paul concluded that it was a place “that had somehow lost its future, for it appeared to be in no way findable in our here and now.”

Then came a “Eureka!” moment.

With a magnifying glass, the name “Bell” emerged on a street sign. Familiar with Mama’s Mexican Restaurant at the corner of Second and Bell, Paul was thrilled to recognize the triple set of bay windows belonging to the Wayne Apartments, built in 1890.

The original clapboard had been covered with asbestos “war brick” siding, but the pictorial puzzle was solved. Denny Hill’s “back side,” 220 feet above sea level, was revealed in this rare, south-facing view of what today is called Belltown, captured just before an early regrade of 1903.

Among few remaining pre-regrade structures, the bay-windowed Wayne has shone prominently and repeatedly over four decades — in “Now & Then” in 1984 and in lectures and books, including our 2018 tome “Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred.” The edifice has born witness to change, loss and the thrill of discovery.

But not for long.

In early April, we received word from artist Buster Simpson and Steve Hall, a preservation advocate with Friends of Historic Belltown, that the Wayne and adjacent structures along Second Avenue soon will be destroyed. Though they achieved landmark status in 2015, exemptions to the ruling are allowing a prospective 9-floor retail-residential building to fill the space. Its height will more than match the original summit of Denny Hill.

In the rueful words of historian David B. Williams, modern developers seem to be “merely rebuilding the hill one banal building at a time.”

WEB EXTRAS

NOW2: Increasingly decrepit, the Wayne’s 132-year-old sagging roofline soon will be replaced by a 9-floor building, with retail on the bottom and apartments above. (Jean Sherrard)A few photos of the soon-to-vanish icon follow. Accompanied by Buster Simpson, I explored the back of the old Wayne apartments and crawled up a couple rotting staircases. A special prize for those who find the pigeon eggs.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on April 21, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on April 24, 2022)

With a peaceful view, Silvana’s Little White Church endures
By Jean Sherrard

In an increasingly discordant world, we scan for hopeful signs and clues – some are lodged in the past. One symbol of reunion and healing might be found on a rural hillside an hour’s drive north of Seattle.

The tiny town of Silvana, founded in the 1880s by Scandinavian farmers, was both blessed and cursed by the fertile floodplain of the Stillaguamish River. To accommodate the river’s oft-overflowing banks, its houses and sidewalks were raised several feet above ground level.

Little surprise, then, that the vigorous young congregation of Zion Lutheran, led by itinerant pastor Christian Jorgensen, decided to build its church and adjacent graveyard on a hill above the river. The land had been donated by farmer S.A. Erickson in 1884 and on Dec. 3, 1888, the parishioners drew up formal plans for their parish.

As documented by Zion Lutheran’s historian Irene Vognild, the church’s 1890 construction proved no small task. Existing roads were “muddy, crooked trails along the riverbanks.” Without rail or paved highways to provide access, all finished lumber had to be towed east on scows from a sawmill in equally tiny Utsalady on Camano Island.

The materials were to be offloaded onto carts and drawn by oxen to the building site. But that year’s early winter, Vognild recounts, was one of the severest in the region’s history. Church members credited divine intervention when the Stillaguamish froze solid, ensuring much easier transport by sled across the snowy river and up the hill.

Having spent just $750 on materials, the closely-knit farm community donated all labor, plus extra timber and shingles. The new church was erected in mere weeks, with grounds cleared for a nearby graveyard. Zion Lutheran Church’s first services were held that Christmas.

It wasn’t long before a divide over religious practices split the young congregation. Should this new church observe the rites and traditions of the State Church of Norway or adopt revised forms of worship?

The unhappy result, Vognild notes: “a break with friends and neighbors [who had] worshiped and worked together for years.” A minority faction left and built its own church in town, Salem Lutheran.

After nearly 70 years of division, the two churches set aside their differences and reunited in 1963, adopting a name reflecting the harmony: Peace Lutheran.

Today, the church comprises two structures — a practical 1978 building in downtown Silvana and the original Little White Church on the Hill, which was listed on the Washington State Heritage Register as a historic site in 1972.

The hillside church is open for summer services and for special occasions, including weddings and funerals.

WEB EXTRAS

Just a couple extra photos this week.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on April 7, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on April 10, 2022)

A 1930s Seattle maritime museum was both fleeting and floating

By Jean Sherrard

For local maritime historians, there once was a Camelot. During a brief stretch in the mid-1930s, the sailing ship St. Paul served as Seattle’s first and only floating nautical museum, ideally situated on the freshwater side of the Ballard Locks.

Built in Bath, Maine, in 1874, the 228–foot-long vessel with a soaring 150-foot main mast was reasonably swift for its size. The St. Paul crossed the Atlantic in just 16 days and sailed between San Francisco and New York, rounding Chile’s Cape Horn, in a brisk 103 days.

After hauling cargo between Britain, America and the Far East for nearly three decades, the elegant square-rigged craft (identified by Bremerton maritime historian Michael Mjelde as a “down easter”) was consigned to service between Alaskan canneries and Seattle until its banishment to Lake Union in 1924 with other relics and obsolete tall ships destined for the scrap heap.

Only the timely intervention of a local band of fervent maritime and marine enthusiasts saved the St. Paul from demolition.

Founded in 1928, the Puget Sound Academy of Science dedicated itself to “the diffusion of scientific knowledge by means of … publications, expeditions and exhibits.” The brainchild of Henry Landes, dean of the University of Washington College of Science and husband of Seattle’s first female mayor, Bertha K. Landes, the academy also was the beneficiary of Arthur Foss, co-owner of Foss Launch and Tugboat Company.

A collector and history buff, Foss had purchased the St. Paul and offered it to the academy for use as a floating exhibit. Enlisting naturalist (and future peace activist) Floyd Schmoe as president, the group proposed a “marine museum,” merging maritime history and marine biology.

Schmoe’s promotional booklet asserted that the restored St. Paul would serve as the museum’s “chief exhibit. … Nothing will be placed on her deck or in her cabins which was not there when she was still in service.” Below the main deck would be “ample room for … exhibits of primitive and historical boats … and the story of man’s development of the ship.” Another lower deck would include a “salt-water aquarium (with) marine life from the waters and shores of Puget Sound.”

The Marine Museum and Aquarium opened June 16, 1934, welcoming thousands of visitors to its Ballard berth (admission: one dime) for the next two years. But the museum’s shining moment faded all too soon.

The wooden-hulled St. Paul fell victim to Northwest rain and a dearth of regular maintenance. In 1942, at age 68, the deteriorating vessel was towed to Vancouver Island’s Oyster Bay to be scuttled as a breakwater.

WEB EXTRA

For our narrated, audio-visual 360-degree version of this column, please click on through.

(Published in The Seattle Times online on March 24, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on March 27, 2022)

Distortion, half-truths, outright lies – our second April Fools’ quiz

By Jean Sherrard

(click to enlarge photos)

As cherry trees blossom, we at Now & Then extend the welcome mat for our second annual April Fools’ Day quiz. We trust this exercise in historical whimsy will entertain and challenge in equal measure.

Please note that each question has a single correct answer. All other choices are larded with distortion, half-truths and outright lies!

Question 1

A BLOB BY ANY OTHER NAME Originally Clyde’s Cleaners, built in 1946 to serve lower Queen Anne Hill, the building was refashioned in 1984 into the ferroconcrete mound popularly known as The Blob. Detested and beloved in equal measure, the structure was demolished in 1997. What was The Blob’s original purpose?

A: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s nascent first draft of MoPOP (his Museum of Popular Culture), also colloquially known as The Blob.

B: The bulbous Moorish fort/Spanish villa themes were the brainchild of developer Anthony Dadvar, who intended to house a Mediterranean/Mexican restaurant, the Isla del Sol.

C: The last Queen Anne communal dwelling of the Love Family, a New Age religious group founded in the late 1960s.

D: An early and failed attempt at architectural 3D printing, engineered by noted inventor John Williams.

E: A movie set constructed for Ridley Scott’s megahit “Aliens” (1986), never used in actual filming.

Question 2

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? In early fall 1918, the misnamed “Spanish” flu raged throughout the Northwest. On Oct. 6, city health commissioner Dr. J.S. McBride and Mayor Ole Hanson ordered the closure of schools, churches and theaters to combat infection (you know the drill). On Oct. 28, they added a mandatory mask order. Seattleites largely obeyed, until tearing off and twirling their masks to celebrate what notable event?

A: Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918.

B: Santa’s arrival by reindeer-drawn sled in Pioneer Square on Nov. 30, 1918.

C: The conclusion of the five-day Seattle General Strike on Feb. 11, 1919.

D: The return of the 63rd Coast Artillery from World War I on March 12, 1919.

E: The mask order was never suspended.

Question 3:

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS WHISTLE Vessels of the Black Ball Line, from which today’s Washington State Ferries are directly descended, signaled arrivals and departures with whistle blasts. To this day, each captain and vessel employs signature toots. Which is the standard whistle sequence used by Seattle ferries?

A: A single melancholy blast.

B: Three medium-long honks, translating “S” for Seattle into Morse Code.

C: One long and two short toots, known by maritime afficionados as “a warp and two woofs.”

D: All signal patterns are at the captain’s discretion, reflecting the skipper’s mood.

E: Short, repeat blasts, used solely as small-craft warnings during a pea-soup fog.

Question 4 (see “Now” photo):

THIRTY DEGREES OF SEPARATION Many readers will be familiar with the popular mnemonic: “Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest,” muttered under locals’ breaths to recall the sequence of downtown streets. Yet all bets are off at Pioneer Square, where, north from Yesler, every street veers 30 degrees to the northwest, resulting in an odd tangle of angles. How did this come about?

A: The Seattle Fault runs directly under Yesler. In 1854, an earthquake caused massive seismic displacement, forever altering the shape of the young city.

B: South of Yesler, soggy tideland marshes made accurate mapping impossible.

C: Yesler was the clergy-mandated northern boundary of Seattle’s original red-light district. Its angled streets, pontificated Rev. David Blaine in 1855, supplied “ample warning of a turn to sin.”

D: Unresolved land-plat disputes between early white settlers David “Doc” Maynard, Arthur Denny and Carson Boren resulted in colliding street grids.

E: Fake news. Cartographers and geographers are complicit in promoting this fictional twist. Actual Seattle streets run straight as an arrow.

Answers

1:B

2:A

3:C

4: D

The rubric

One correct answer:
You’re a Mercer Mess.

Two correct answers:
You tore down the Viaduct!

Three correct answers:
You’re a Pike Pundit.

Four correct answers:
You’ve attained Seattle Chill.