All posts by pdorpat

Richard Berner – passed

November 6, 2018 pdorpat 4 Comments

Richard Berner died around 2:30 pm last Saturday Nov. 3, 2018. At the time Jean and I were in West Seattle helping the West Seattle Historical Society with it’s annual “gala auction.” That benevolent huckstering went so well that the gala ran both bountiful and long, and our plan to visit Rich following the auction was prevented by the small worries of slipping time. Two days later we learned that it was also snipped by the singular one of Rich’s death. Born at the very end of 1920, Richard did not make it to 100. As the founder of the University of Washington Library’s Archive he was a mentor to many of us, and friend too. Rich was a fine blend of ready compassion and good humor.

BERNER’S BOOMTOWN

(click to enlarge photos)

We are pleased now to introduce Seattle 1900-1920: From Boomtown, Urban Turbulence to Restoration, the first of Richard C. Berner’s three books named together Seattle in the 20^th Century.When the details, stories, and insights are explored with a close reading, Berner’s accomplishment is by far our widest opening into Seattle’s twentieth century, the first half of it, from the 1900 to 1950. Those fifty years were also the second half of Seattle’s first hundred years, if we begin our counting with the footsteps of mid-western farmers settling here in the early 1850s.

Volume one was first published in 1991 by Charles Press, and the publisher – “Rich” Berner himself – made a modest list of its contents on the back cover. We will repeat it. “Politics of Seattle’s urbanization: dynamics of reform, public ownership movement, turbulent industrial relations, effects of wartime hysteria upon newfound civil liberties – all responding to the huge influx of aspiring recruits to the middle class & organized labor as they confronted the established elite. Includes outlines of the economy, cultural scene, public education, population characteristics & ethnic history.”

For this “printing” we have added many captioned illustrations, some of them copied from news reports of the events Berner examines, and we have almost always succeeded in placing each next to the text it illustrates. On-line illustrated editions of Volume 2: Seattle 1921-1940, From Boom to Bust and Volume 3: Seattle Transformed, World War 2 to Cold War will follow – but not at the moment. The collecting of illustrations and putting them in revealing order with the narratives for Volume 2 and 3 is still a work in progress. Readers who want to “skip ahead” of our illustrated presentations of Berner’s three books here on dorpatsherrardlomont can find the complete set of his history as originally published in local libraries or through interlibrary loans.

How Rich Berner managed it is a charmed story. He undertook what developed into his magnus opus after retiring in 1984 from his position as founder and head of the University of Washington Archives and Manuscripts Division. Between the division’s origin in 1958 and his retirement Rich not only built the collection but also studied it. Berner worked closely with Bob Burke, the U.W. History professor most associated with the study of regional history who first recommended Berner, a University of California, Berkeley graduate in history and library science, for the U.W. position.Together, the resourceful professor and the nurturing archivist shepherded scores of students in their use of the archive. Rich Berner is the first to acknowledge that he also learned from the students as they explored and measured the collection for dissertations and other publications. By now their collected publications can be imagined as its own “shelf” of Northwest History.

News clipping showing Rich C. Berner “as curator of manuscripts for the University of Washington Library.”

Rich Berner showed himself also a good explicator of his profession.His influential book, Archival Theory and Practice in the United States: A Historical Analysis was published by the University of Washington Press in 1983 and was awarded the Waldo Gifford Leland Prize by the Society of American Archivists. Composing this historical study on top of establishing and nourishing the University’s Archive and Manuscripts Division may be fairly considered a life’s achievement, but, with his 1984 retirement Berner continue to work in the archive at writing his three-volume history. He published Volume Three in 1999, and so, continuing the charm of this entire production, he completed Seattle in the 20^th Century before the century (and millennium) was over.

(Lest we imagine this scholar chained to his archive we know that with his wife Thelma, a professor of Physiology and Biophysics in the U.W. Medical School and the first woman appointed Associate Dean of the UW graduate school, this famously zestful couple managed to often take to the hills and mountains.)

Rich was born in Seattle in 1920 – the last year explored in this his first volume. His father worked on the docks as a machinist, and for a time was “blacklisted” by employers because of his union advocacy.During the depression, while Rich was attending classes at Garfield High School, his mother ran a waterfront café on the Grand Trunk Pacific’s pier at the foot of Madison Street.

During the war Rich served with the Army’s 10^th Mountain Division. Following it with help from the GI Bill he matriculated at Cal-Berkeley with degrees in both history and library science. It was also in Berkeley that he first met Robert Burke, then Director of the Manuscript Collection of the Bancroft Library. Rich worked part time there.

For Seattle, as for any city of size, there is a “canon” of publications that are necessary reading for anyone wanting to get a grip on local history. The first half of the Seattle Canon may be said to begin with Pioneer Arthur Denny’s Pioneer Reminiscences of 1888. The pioneer canon receives its own magnus opus with the combined works – multi-volume histories of Seattle and King County – of Clarence Bagley, himself a pioneer. That Berner was already attending Seattle’s T.T. Minor grade school in 1926 when Bagley was still three years away from publishing his History of King County is evidence of the “Boomtown” included in the title of this Berner’s first of three books on Seattle history.

With rare exceptions the books included in this first part of the Seattle Canon were published by their subjects, like Denny’s still revealing Reminiscences, or under the direction and/or support of their subjects, like Bagley’s still helpful volumes. They are generally “picturesque histories” written to make their subjects seem more appealing than they often were. The stock of motives for “doing heritage” are there generally supportive or positive, showing concern for the community, admiration for its builders, the chance to tell good stories, and often also the desire to learn about one’s forebears although primarily those truths that are not upsetting.Not surprisingly, and again with rare exceptions, these booster-historians and their heritage consumers were members of a minority of citizens defined by their wealth, race and even religion. It would be a surprise to find any poor socialists, animists or even affluent Catholics among them.

Part Two of the Seattle Canon may be said to have popularly begun with Skid Road, historian-journalist Murray Morgan’s charming and yet still raking history of Seattle. Published in 1951, the year of Seattle’s centennial, it is still in print, and has never been out of it. Richard Berner has dedicated Seattle 1900-1920: From Boomtown, Urban Turbulence to Restoration to Morgan. The post-war canon is often corrective of the sins of the pioneers. The works of Morgan and many others, certainly including Berner, are not generally clothed in the pious harmonies of their predecessors, the ordinarily stress-free narratives expected of those who were writing under the “pioneer code.”

In our opinion Rich Berner’s three-volume Seattle in the 20^th Centuryis the greatest single achievement of our Seattle Canon – “part two.”It has the scope and details required. It is profoundly instructive and filled with the characters and turns of fate that any storyteller might admire and wisely exploit. Within Berner’s three books are the wonders of what they did, the touchstones of their devotions and deceptions, their courage and hypocrisy, meanness and compassion.Certainly, it has been our pleasure to help illustrate this the first volume and to also continue on now with volumes two and three.

Paul Dorpat 10/1/2009

Archivist-Antiquarian as Young-Equestrian posing in front of the Berner family home on Seattle’s Cherry Street.

Student at Seattle’s Garfield High School

Rich Berner’s father, top-center: machinist on the Seattle waterfront.

“High school or college, I’m no longer sure.” - Rich Berner — “High school or college, I’m no longer sure.” – Rich Berner

Rich Berner, second row third from left, posing for a group portrait of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division at a Colorado camp during the Second World War.

The Robert Gray Award from the Washington State Historical Society

Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: Finding Kikisoblu (aka ‘Princess Angeline’)

October 22, 2017 pdorpat 5 Comments

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: Pioneer Seattle photographer Frank LaRoche’s revealing record of Princess Angeline’s last home is also stocked with clues for finding its location. We have put helpful aids – like a map – in the blog pauldorpat.com. [Courtesy, the Museum of History and Industry]

NOW: Ron Edge shows his back to the spot where Princess Angeline posed on the porch of her new home in the early 1890s. By Ron’s figuring the princess’ home, had it been preserved as a monument with all else the same, would now be protected inside the Market’s new covered parking lot, but not her porch. It would be taking the weather with the small copse of bamboo that has found a break in the built neighborhood about 130 feet north of the Pike Street Hill Climb.

The Northern Pacific Railroad’s photographer F. Jay Haynes included Princess Angeline’s home site during his 1890 visit to Seattle. Soon after his visit Angeline’s new cabin was built for her directly north of this her older one. The shed was removed but not, apparently, the stump that here crowds it on the right. (Courtesy, Murray Morgan)

A “Rosetta Stone” snapshot framed in a circle that shows the remnants of Angeline’s First Cabin and behind it the front facade of her Second cabin, which was also her last.

This Sunday we, Jean Sherrard, myself, and especially Ron Edge, our collector-cartographer with a devotion to details, hope to convince you that we have discovered the correct location for the footprint of Princess Angeline’s home. Angeline, many of our readers will know, was the daughter of our city’s namesake Chief Seattle. Born around 1820, she was in her prime by the time Euro-American settler-interlopers first arrived here to stay in the early 1850s. The princess got on well with the city’s founders, and it was one of them, Catherine Maynard, who gave her the royal name. Catherine, a nurse and wife of the village physician, Doc Maynard, explained that her new name better fit her elevated status. (Although surely the princess’s native name, Kikisoblu, was as euphonious as Angeline.)

Angeline supported herself washing clothes and weaving baskets, which she sold. She also posed for pictures, both candid street shots and prepared portraits. The latter, like the Edwin J. Bailey portrait shown here, were snapped in studios where the native princess was sometimes – although not here – posed with a mix of props and backdrops that promoted her authenticity. Through Seattle’s first half-century, the princess was easily the most popular subject hereabouts, and when she could, she charged a fee for posing.

The princess also accepted help and may have expected it. She enjoyed a free grocery tab at Louch’s Market on First Avenue, which was not far from her home, whose true footprint we will now reveal with the help of photographs. In 1890 the N.P. Railroad photographer, F. Jay Haynes, took what may be the earliest surviving photo of Angeline’s home. I first used and misused it for this feature on May 13, 1984. While Haynes did not peg his portrait of the Princess sitting near the front door of her seemingly windowless shed, I embraced the commonplace belief that her home was somewhere near the waterfront, between Pine and Pike Avenues, and probably closer to the latter. My mistake was in making it a beach shack by interpreting Haynes’ prospect largely on the basis of the patch of horizon that shows to the left of Angeline’s shed. That is not the beach and Haynes was not looking west but nearly northwest through the neighborhood of small warehouses and squatters’ sheds that climbed the western slope of the now long gone Denny Hill.

We must thank Ron for this correction and also for introducing photographer Frank LaRoche’s setting of the Princess and her dog posing on the front porch of her new home, built for her in 1891 by the local lumberman Amos Brown. Printed to its full width, the LaRoche photograph reveals a wide swath of Belltown landmarks that lead us with the help of Ron’s triangulation to within a few feet of Angeline’s last home. Although the princess died in 1895, her Amos Brown-made home survived and served at least as evidence until the printing of its footprint in Vol.2. page 127 of the 1905 Sanborn Insurance Map. To follow Ron Edge’s revealing lines and to explore more photographic evidence of Angeline’s home and the neighborhood, please visit the web page pauldorpat.com. It is so noted every Sunday, including this one, at the bottom of the feature’s text.

WEB EXTRAS

Just a few special treats to sweeten the (already sweet) pot. First off, a big thanks to David Peugh, through whose condo we were given access to the site; his son Jeff (pictured below) graciously escorted us.

An alternate NOW: Ron Edge with Jeff Peugh (r)

A bamboo thicket grows in the shadows above Ron’s shoulders

The ‘now’ view from Kikisoblu’s front porch; the Fix/Madore building (originally the Standard Furniture Co. Warehouse) on the left, the concrete walls of the Pike Place parking garage on the right, and the soon-to-disappear viaduct to the west.

Looking back east at the green cut from just in front of the viaduct with Ron Edge at the bottom of the steps…

Below, Paul presents the evidence which led Ron Edge to his discovery.

**With this portrait I will imagine Angeline laughing at my clumsy mistake.**

This is meant to be – or will be – a feature about our victory in locating the home site of the daughter of Chief Seattle for whom the pioneer settlers adopted the name Princess (and sometimes Queen) Angeline. We have known with considerable confidence that her cabins – at least two of them for which we have photographs – were set somewhere near Pike Street, below what has been since 1907 the Pike Place Public Market. But we wanted the footprint – or close to it.

Here from the rear is Angeline’s last home. The Miner Hotel, one of our landmarks that helped Ron Edge put Angeline’s home in its proper place shows its corner tower, upper right. The view looks south. The tree on the left and the cabins there are clues as well.

After assembling perhaps all available clues – maps and photos – Ron managed to find the home, or proper footprint, for this home, and Jean posed him, as it were, on the front porch of Angeline’s home for the NOW, where she posed with her dog more than once, for she for the boom years before her death in 1896 probably the most popular photographic subject in Seattle.

**Here highlighted in yellow is a sign of Princess Angeline’s enduring draw. The adver is from The Times of December 12, 1904, eight years after her death. [click to enlarge]**

One year later developer C.D. Hillman, is proud to imagine that the cabin in which Princess Angeline was born is on property he is offering for sale and and so is free for him to show in the neighborhood with his “Greasy Pole Climbing” for the year’s Independence Day Picnic on Mercer Island.

**As if reflecting on the claims of the boomtown that surround her, she, it seems, needs no introduction, ca. 1903.** [click click to read]

MORE ANGELINE INTERLUDE –

Included within the frame of this week’s featured photo are the helpful clues for locating the footprint of Angeline’s cabin. They are listed in yellow upper-left. Click to Enlarge.

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Both the number and inserted thumbnails should help you orient some of these parts/clues to those notes in the featured photo. CLICK CLICK CLICK TO ENLARGE

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An unidentified photographer looks north thru (and above) the ruins of Angeline’s older home to the front south facade of her new home. This photo was obviously of great help in finding the footprint.

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Looking north from the roof of the Standard Furniture Co. Warehouse with Western Avenue on the right. The landmark tree is number two. By this WW1 era shot Angeline’s home is gone. Most of it – perhaps all – would have been out-of-frame to the bottom.

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The red line is drawn down from the tenement on Front Street at Pine into Angeline’s last home.

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The neighborhood looking north along the waterfront from the King Street coal wharf in 1890. Construction is nearly the as yet not built central tower of the Denny Hotel, upper-right, on the front hump of Denny Hill. It straddles Third Avenue between Second and Fourth Avenues a few feet more than 100 feet above the regrades.

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Angeline’s back yard – again.

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Helpful details from both the 1893 and 1904 Sanborn Insurance Maps. The red circle marks Angeline’s cabin.

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A Google Earth space shot superimposed on the 1904 Sanborn Insurance Map.

The Standard Furniture Co. Warehouse c1905 (now the Fix/Madore building)

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And a few links to additional related features:

Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: Looking East from Ninth and Pike

February 18, 2017 pdorpat 4 Comments

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: This 1939 glimpse east from Ninth Avenue follows Pike Street to the end of the about three-quarter mile straight climb it makes on its run from the Pike Place Market to its first turn on Capitol Hill. [CLICK to ENLARGE and so on]

NOW: A swath of landscaped concrete first poured and planted in the 1960s has replaced the row of former hotels and shops that once lined Pike Street in its ascent of Capitol Hill. Jean Sherrard has put his back to the window-arched tunnel that distinguishes Pike Street where it passes beside the Washington State Convention Center.

The featured look east on Pike Street from Ninth Avenue is dated May 21, 1939. In about two decades more this neighborhood would be cut, crushed, and cleared for the construction of the Seattle Freeway. Through these two blocks between Ninth Avenue and Boren Street, Pike’s mixed neighborhood of cafes, hotels, barbershops, and furniture upholsterers would be revamped into a concrete ramp over a concrete ditch. That this part of Pike was once an “upholstery row” surprised me. In 1938 (I have a city directory for 1938 but not 1939) there were five furniture upholsterers listed in the few blocks between Eighth and Melrose Avenues. It is at Melrose that Pike begins its turn east to conform to the more recently platted street grid on the ridge. The jog’s directional change is indicated with an adjustment in the name to East Pike Street, which in 1939 was one of Seattle’s principal “auto rows.” East Pike also marks the subjective – and by now traditional – border between the First and Capitol Hill neighborhoods.

Another same day snap by the billboard rangers, Foster and Kleiser, on Pike Street, but here one block east at Terry Street. The hotels here include the William Penn, far left, — Another same day snap by the billboard rangers, Foster and Kleiser, on Pike Street, but here one block east at Terry Street. The hotels here on the south side of Pike include the William Penn, far right, Hotel Crest, left of the power pole, and the Wintonia, which I remember for its wild tavern in the 1970 with bad manners contesting with good music. Across Pike and a block east is the Villa Hotel at the northeast corner of Boren and Pike..

Also with the help of the Polk City Directory for 1938 I have counted four hotels in these two blocks between Ninth Avenue and Boren that were lost to the Seattle Freeway (Interstate Five): the Stanley, here at Ninth Avenue, the William Penn and the Crest near Terry Avenue, and the five-floor Hotel Alvord, on the left. (Jean Sherrard’s repeat also reveals a survivor. The Villa Hotel at the northwest corner of Pike and Boren can stands out in the photo above. It cal also be glimpsed directly above the trolley in this Sunday’s “then.” It is more difficult but not impossible to find in the “now.”)

**A Seattle Times clip from March 3, 1933**

**A Seattle Times clip: Oct. 23, 1936.**

Sprinkled throughout most hotel and apartment house histories are true crime stories of many sorts. This one was published in The Times for July 23, 1930. — **Sprinkled throughout most hotel and apartment house histories are true crime stories of many sorts. This one for the Alvord was published in The Times for July 23, 1930.**

The Alvord’s publicity stream begins in 1924, the year of its construction, and reaches its most sensational height around midnight on March 1, 1933. Mildred Russell, the 24-year-old bride of violinist and orchestra leader Jan Russell, opened a window in search of fresh air and used all five of the hotel’s floors to fall to the ground below. The Times qualified the ground as “soft earth.” From her merciful bounce, Mildred received only a few bruises and a cracked skull. “I had just lit a cigarette,” she said. Only three years later, Margaret Thaanum fell from the Alvord’s third floor to her death. The trained nurse was trying to walk the three-inch ledge outside her window.

**The single and double fees for the Alvord Hotel a few weeks before the economic crash of 1929. And below: a few weeks more than one year following the crash.**

**From The Times classifieds for Feb. 21, 1931.**

Returning now to the trolley heading east on Pike Street, on this spring day there was a growing sense that these often rattling common carriers were about to lose out to the busses and trackless trollies promoted by internal combustion and “big rubber.” Two years more and most trolley tracks in Seattle were pulled up and the disrupted brickwork patched with asphalt and/or concrete.

COMING UP - This Spring the 50th ANNIVERSARY of the FOUNDING of HELIX. We hope to completed the scanning of every page - by then. Keep watch. The above was printed on a back cover of one of the (very roughly) 130 weekly (for the most part) tabloids. — COMING UP – This Spring the 50th ANNIVERSARY of the FOUNDING of HELIX. We hope to completed the scanning of every page – by then. Keep watch. The above was printed on a back cover of one of the (very roughly) 130 weekly (for the most part) tabloids.

On this Sunday, May 21, 1939, we learn from The Times that while Hitler and Mussolini were preparing a military alliance with their Rome-Berlin pact, Seattleites were anticipating in the week the grand Potlatch Pageant and its big parade. (Hitler and Mussolini vented that “Germany and Italy have no intention of using any country as a tool for egotistical plans, which is happening only too clearly on the other side.”) Two days later Boeing’s Yankee Clipper inaugurated the first commercial airway service between the Unites States and Europe. Perhaps playing it safe at the start, other than the crew of fifteen, the clipper carried only mail, four tons of it.

**The Boeing Clipper at Matthews Beach, its testing harbor on Lake Washington.**

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, blokes? Blokes but not bullies we will find some links and other decorations and put the UP.

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**A detail from the 1912 Real Estate Map. Note the two brick structures (including Seattle Taxi) in block 108 on the right. CLICK TO ENLARGE**

Seattle Taxi is on the left in this look south 9th Ave. from Pike Street.

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The buildings on Ninth Avenue south of Pike Street, including the Seattle Taxi, are still standing in this aerial of the neighborhood photographed sometime before it was cut through by Interstate-5. Compare to the photo below.

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**RETURN to a detail of the neighborhood pulled from the 1912 Baist Real Estate map**

Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: Seattle’s First Chinatown

February 11, 2017 pdorpat 1 Comment

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: The Phoenix Hotel on Second Avenue, for the most part to the left of the darker power pole, and the Chin Gee Hee Building, behind it and facing Washington Street to the right, were both built quickly after Seattle’s Great Fire of June 6, 1889. (Courtesy: Museum of History and Industry.)

NOW: The Phoenix Hotel was destroyed with the 1928-29 Second Avenue Extension. The hotel was replaced with the new street’s intersection, while the surviving Chin Gee Hee Building, originally behind it, was reshaped for the new northeast corner of Washington Street and Second Avenue.

Public historian Kurt E. Armbruster, one of our sensitive explorers of Seattle’s cityscapes, recently sent me his snapshot of the Chin Gee Hee Building at the northeast corner of Washington Street and the Second Avenue Extension. Kurt regards it as “a little gem” and, it seems, it is the last remaining piece of architecture to survive from Seattle’s First Chinatown, in the neighborhood of Washington Street and Second Avenue. It was a community of the mostly single men who help build the region’s earliest railroads, labored as domestics and on the pick and shovel gangs that helped dig, for example, the canal between Puget Sound and Lake Washington.

Kurt Armbruster's snapshot of — **Kurt Armbruster’s snapshot of the “little gem.” Thanks Kurt.**

Chin Gee Hee arrived in Seattle in the mid-1870s and soon prospered as a labor contractor, a merchant and a builder. Partnering with Chin Chun Hock, another and even earlier Chinese contractor-merchant, Hee and Hock hired Seattle’s earliest resident architect, William E. Boone, to design two commercial buildings for them in Chinatown. Although both were consumed by the city’s Great Fire of June 6, 1889, they were quickly replaced by the two

**Chinese labor contractor at his desk.**

Seattle Times clip from Feb. 15, 1927 comparing Chin Gee Hee to the Great Norther Railroad's Jim Hill. — **Seattle Times clip from Feb. 15, 1927 comparing Chin Gee Hee to the Great Northern Railroad’s Jim Hill.**

grander three-story hotels featured in the featured photo at the top. The greater part of Chin Chun Hock’s Phoenix Hotel is to the left of the darker power pole in the photo’s foreground, and the full front façade of the Chin Gee Hee Building, facing Washington Street, is to the right of the pole. Boone styled both as orthodox Victorians. It is claimed that Chin Gee Hee’s hotel was the first brick building completed following the ’89 fire, however, we may be permitted to show some reservation about this claim as we do many other “firsts” in local history. The thirty-plus blocks of the business district was a cacophony of construction following the fire with the builders’ general racing urge to open first.

The Phoenix Hotel on the right with the Chin Gee Hee building out-of-frame to the right., ca. 1912. Long ago we did a now-then feature using the above and blow photos. When we find it we will insert it.

**A clip from The Seattle Times for August 25, 1897.**

Judging from news coverage, the Phoenix was the seedier of the two hotels. On August 11, 1905, the hotel’s manager W.A. Morris was charged with robbing one of its drunken guests of $45.00. While the manager confessed his innocence, the police told the Seattle Times that “Morris conducts one of the worst dives in the city.” Earlier that summer the police had made an opium raid on the Phoenix, noting that the hotel had “developed into a full-fledge opium den and in the last month a half-dozen smokers have been caught there.” Meanwhile, also in 1905, the Phoenix’s neighbor, Chin Gee Hee, left Seattle to build a railroad in China. He was subsequently awarded by the last emperor with the honor of a peacock feather and a retinue of servants and soldiers, presumably to help him guard the rails.

THE SECOND AVENUE EXTENSION as seen from the SMITH TOWER. Above before: March 14, 1928. Below after: June 11, 1929. The Phoenix Hotel at the former northeast corner of Second Avenue and Washington Street can still be seen (below the center) near the bottom of the 1928 photograph. The Chin Gee Hee Building is behind it, to the left. In the 1929 photo below, the Phoenix has been sliced away and the southwest corner of the Chin Gee Hee clipped.

A detail from the 1908 Baist Real Estate Map, still twenty years prior to work on the Second Avenue Extension. Our choice intends to feature at the top the intersection of Washington Street and Second Avenue with the Phoenix Hotel named at its northeast corner. And please not the green marked park at the top. — A detail from the 1908 Baist Real Estate Map, still twenty years prior to work on the Second Avenue Extension. Our choice intends to feature at its top the intersection of Washington Street and Second Avenue with the Phoenix Hotel named at its northeast corner. And please not the green marked park at the top. We will show more of it below.

A detail of the same intersection (upper-left) from 1912. Later an owner of the bound Baist map drew through the detail the borders of the Second Avenue Extension, which cuts through the Fire Department Headquarters at the northwest corner of Main and Third Avenue. In the photograph that follows directly below the extension work is underway with a remodel of the building at the southwest corner of Main Street and Third Avenue. The doomed fire station is directly across Main Street, and behind and above it the transcendent Smith Tower inspects it all like an adolescent hall proctor. It’s fifteen years old.

Looking south on Second Avenue S. over Yesler Way and the Fortson Square park and trolley stop. The Phoenix Hotel can be found on the left. A feature clip about Fortson Square is include with the line of features placed at the bottom of this feature. [CLICK TO ENLARGE]

**Looking south on Second Ave. S. during an early Potlatch Parade. Note the Phoenix Hotel upper-left.**

Most likely hard to read but still revealing of the early hopes for the Second Avenue Extension. The Seattle Times clip dates from Oct. 18, 1925. And far right is part of a clip on Ye Old Curiosity Shop founder Pop Standley's curios-congested West Seattle home. — Most likely too hard to read but still revealing of the early hopes for the Second Avenue Extension. The Seattle Times clip dates from Oct. 18, 1925. And far right is part of a clip on Ye Old Curiosity Shop founder Pop Standley’s curio-congested West Seattle home.

A detail from the citiy's 1936 mapping aerial. The completed Second Ave extension leaves several sliced structures including the Chin Gee Hee Building. Can you find it? — A detail from the city’s 1936 mapping aerial. The completed Second Ave extension leaves several sliced structures including the Chin Gee Hee Building. Can you find it? Note the Smith Tower, upper-left, and across Yesler Way from it the triangular park named for Fortson, a Spanish American War volunteer – a heroic one.

The Phoenix’s transgressions were fixed forever in 1928 when it was razed with the “improvement” of the Second Avenue Extension, a 1,413-foot cut through the neighborhood between Yesler Way and Jackson Street. It was hoped that the extension would make Second Avenue a ceremonial promenade leading to and from the train depots. The Chin Gee Hee Building was saved with only its west end sliced away. This eccentric reduction, combined with the recessed gallery cut into the third floor above Washington Street, surely heightened the building’s gem-like charms. Martin Denny, the proprietor of the Assemblage, the Chin Gee Hee’s principal commercial tenant, shared the greater neighborhood’s underground mystery that the Phoenix Hotel’s basement may well survive under the intersection.

THREE OTHER GLIMPSES OF THE CHIN GEE HEE BUILDING

**A 1963 tax photo looking north over Main Street and the Second Ave. Extension to the shining southwest facade of the Chin Gee Hee Building.**

**The Central Business District with Chin Gee Hee near the center of this record from the Great Northern tower., ca. 1930. [CLICK TO ENLARGE]**

Rubble from the 1949 earthquake. The subject looks south on the Second Avenue Extension from its southwest corner with Yesler Way. The southwest facade of the Chin Gee Hee Building rises with its six windows above the damaged swept-back auto parked on the right.

WEB EXTRAS

Here’s detail of the Chin Gee Hee Building, which Kurt adores:

Anything to add, les mecs? Certainly Jean, first a long list of features pulled by Ron Edge from the last eight years or so of Now-and-Then, and then a few more and earlier features.

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**First appeared in Pacific, Feb. 9, 2003**

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**First appeared in the Times, Feb. 28, 1999.**

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**First appeared in The Times, March 14, 1999**

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Evidence that Jean visited Pioneer Square during our recent flurry. — **Evidence that Jean visited Pioneer Square and the Chief during our recent flurry.**

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**Above, and continued below, a July 2, 1929 clip from The Seattle Times.**

**First appeared in Pacific, May 9, 1999**

Uncategorized

2017

December 31, 2016 pdorpat 1 Comment

Greetings. We discovered that this weekend’s contribution to The Times PacificNW mag has been dropped, or rather postponed, for this January One, 2017 the annual “Pictures of the Year” (last year) takes every page, except, of course, those with the ads. In its place we will assemble a miscellany: a pile of oddities.

PIONEER AGING

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The INTERLAKEN BIKE TRAIL – Perhaps An Early Pause to Tweet

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WORLD WAR ONE SURGERY BASE HOSPITAL NO. 50 ( IN FRANCE) SUPPLIED WITH DOCTORS AND NURSES FROM WASHINGTON STATE

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CAPITOL HILL BUS STOP at the Southwest Corner of BROADWAY and REPUBLICAN –

In 1976-77 during my residency above Peters on Broadway I snapped two thousand or more photographs – both bw and color – of those waiting for a bus and/or boarding it. It was part of an art in public places program, which, I think or bet, Anne Folke at the And/Or Gallery (and performance space, also on Capitol Hill) was behind. Some of the photographs wound up on the busses – beside the interior ads. (Or they might have had busses that were dedicated to the public arts project sans commerce.)

Friends of the Rag performed for our cameras - we also shot film. (Some day all will be revealed.) — Friends of the Rag performed for our cameras – we also shot film. (Some day all will be revealed.)

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POLITICALLY CORRECT GRAFFITI – CA. 1975 on Eastlake

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MERIDIAN PLAYFIELD – From WALLINGFORD WALKS, 2006-2010 [click to enlarge]

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REST IN PEACE

Composer Norman Durkee at my 40th Birthday party, Oct. 28, 1978. — **Composer Norman Durkee at my 40th Birthday party, Oct. 28, 1978**.

Doug McBroom with his contribution to MOMA'S Forsaken Art Collection. Occasion: 2013 founding of the Museum Of Forsaken Art with a banquet at Ivar's Salmon House. All those attending paid for their own salmon, and contributed an object of art to the collection, which now waits and calls for a new member to help build the web page sharing the estimated 1000 parts of the collection. Please step forward. — Friend of art and justice, Doug McBroom (on the right) with his contribution to MOMA’S Forsaken Art Collection. Occasion: 2013 founding of the Museum Of Forsaken Art with a banquet at Ivar’s Salmon House. All those attending paid for their own salmon, (except those who forgot to, slackers for whom Jean Sherrard picked up the bill) and contributed an object of art to the collection, which now waits and calls for an old or new member to help build the web page sharing the estimated 1000 parts of the collection. Please step forward.

Tiny Freeman over the shoulder of KRAB RADIO founder Lorenzo Milam on the evening of KRAB'S LAST DAY on the air. (There's a good history of KRAB on HISTORYLINK should you want to know the date - and more.) — Tiny Freeman over the shoulder of KRAB RADIO founder Lorenzo Milam on the evening of KRAB’S LAST DAY on the air. (There’s a good history of KRAB on HISTORYLINK should you want to know the date – and more.)

Tiny Freeman (on the right) on the sidewake beside the Central Tavern on First Ave. South. — **Tiny Freeman (on the right) on the sidewalk beside the Central Tavern on First Ave. South.**

Christ's Nose - early and late Gothic examples — Christ’s Nose – early and late Gothic examples

MISSING LINK from Stanwood High School photo album

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PROVERBS FROM 1889 AND A PROHIBITION-SYMPATHETIC CARTOON FROM A SEATTLE TIMES CLIP FOR MARCH 18, 1913. [CLICK TWICE to Read]

PIONEER SQUARE BAR and only 45 DRINKING DAYS LEFT

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BRAIN POWER – FOUR FREE LECTURES – MOORE THEATRE

ESTES CONDUCTS HIS KIDS IN A TREE LIKE NOTES ON A MUSICAL STAFF - LIFE MAGAZINE NOV. 21, 1938 — **ESTES CONDUCTS HIS KIDS IN A TREE LIKE NOTES ON A MUSICAL STAFF – LIFE MAGAZINE NOV. 21, 1938**

Helix

HELIX – RETURN of the REDUX

April 13, 2015 pdorpat 1 Comment

HELIX – The Return of the REDUX
From Paul Dorpat and Bill White
The five issues of Helix freshly posted below are a continuation of what was posted previously – where we let off many months ago. With this return we embrace again our intention to post them all, although most likely with less rigor. It may be a month or more before we post another one. In this we also depend upon Ron Edge who has done the scanning, and so well. Bill and I hope that you will also respond and reflect on what you read – any or all parts of it. Record your comments on anything you read in these Helixes, and send the MP3 to Bill at BWhi61@hotmail.com by the end of April, at which time Bill will edit audio histories from the MP3’s he receives and post them here with the Helix issues. If you prefer to post a written commentary or response, please join our Helix Redux Facebook site, home of lively conversations on all things Helix and related. https://www.facebook.com/groups/217636941681376/

POSTSCRIPT: MP3’s received after the end of April may be included in the next issue to be posted.

Below is a photograph of the concert advertised at the bottom of the back cover of Vol. 4 No.8

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THE BARK MONTCALM ADDENDUM

November 30, 2014 pdorpat Leave a comment

Before this coming Sunday’s feature is published we want to insert an addition to last week’s feature about the Galbraith and Bacon Wall Street Wharf and the Bark Montcalm that was tied to her south side most likely in early November, 1910 and not “circa 1912” as we speculated last Sunday. Here’s the feature photo, again.

We received three letters responding to our uncertainties about which Montcalm this was and, as noted, the date it visited Seattle. Reader Kyle Stubbs was first to respond, and noted that “I am only aware of one Montcalm that was a barque-rigged sailing vessel. That is the Montcalm of 1902, 2,415 tons built at Nantes, France, which was used in around Cape Horn service by La Societe des Voiliers Nantais. The vessel was broken up in the Netherlands in 1924.”

The next letter came from Douglas Stewart, a seasoned cardiologist with the University Medical School and hospital, whom I first met last winter after I fell to the kitchen floor, tripped by my oxygen gasping heart’s tricks with consciousness, or loss of it. The good doctor is also an enthusiast for most things maritime, and even rows to work from his home, which like the hospital sits beside Portage Bay. He found that the original nitrate negative for this photograph is in the keep of the University Libraries Special Collections. In their terse cataloging of it a librarian concludes that this was the “decommissioned sailing ship Montcalm at dock, probably in Seattle ca. 1912.” The date is almost certainly wrong, and the “decommissioned” attribute is unclear or uncertain. Decommissioned when? The library’s data also describes this Montcalm as an “armored sailing corvette . . . originally built for the French Navy in 1865.” While a Google search for everything that is a Montcalm and floats will surface a French corvette with that heroic name dating from the 1860s, it is, again, almost certainly not this Montcalm. The first French corvettes of the 17th century were much smaller than this bark or barque and were built to carry cannons. They got bigger, surely, but not this big. and continued to be built for cannons not concrete and wheat like our Montcalm.

The Montcalm at the Wall Street Pier as illustrated in the Seattle Times for Nov. 2, 1910, and as mistakenly titled the Antwerp. (Courtesy, Seattle Public Library and The Seattle Times) — The Montcalm at the Wall Street Pier as illustrated in the Seattle Times for Nov. 2, 1910, and as mistakenly titled the Antwerp. The professional headline or title writer did not consult the reporter or caption writer, a common enough mistake in newspapers. Almost certainly the feature photo on top was recorded by the same photographer. (Courtesy, Seattle Public Library and The Seattle Times)

The third and last contributor to this quest for a proper caption is our old friend Stephen Lundgren, who for this sort of investigation into maritime history prefers the sobriquet Capt. Stefan Eddie. I confess to having used the Captain at times as a capable “World Authority on Everything,” resembling the Professor played by Sid Caesar on his TV show in the 50’s – the best part of that decade. Capt. Eddie also did what I should have done, which is consult the Seattle Public Libraries assess to the key-word search opening into The Seattle Times on-line archive between 1900 and 1984. Stephen found, for instance, the clipping above, which was almost certainly photographed by the same camera or camera person as the featured photo on top. From reading the Times reporting during the Montcalm’s few days stay in Seattle, the Captain concludes, “Took about an hour trolling the Times database and verifying the ship history facts. That it is rigged as a bark, with a steel hull, narrows the search. It’s at the Galbraith Dock probably between discharging the cement cargo in West Seattle and before loading outbound wheat at Smith Cove. The Galbraith Co. dealt in Cement. Question is what buildings were constructed with this Belgium-shipped concrete?” Capt. Stefan Eddie’s last question really goes too far. How could anyone be expected to follow the concrete from ship to foundations?

An early record of the West Seattle elevator. Why we wonder did the Montcalm unload its concrete here, an elevator for grain, when it was Galbraith and Bacon at Mill Street that was the dealer in concrete?

Finally, Captain Stephan Eddit added to his missive something more of his charming familiarity with the Montcalm subject. He explains, “Lars Myrlie Sr. tells me (in Norwegian) ‘I gots off that damm frenchie ship as soon as it gots to Seattle, it was a hell ship and I damm near gots my head stove in off the coast when the load shifted and knocked the other cargo loose cement in bulk, which meant our sure deaths if we gots a leak. Sure it was a steel ship but them damm rivets popped when a hard one hit, like a bullet they was and then came the squirt. My brother gots me off the Galbreath dock and over to Port Blakely and no more damn frenchies for me, Tusende Tak Gotts!”

It took the Montcalm 195 days to carry its 3,000 tons of concrete from Antwerp to Seattle. The ship was registered at 1,744 tons, so the concrete gave it lots of steadying ballast for the storms. However, there were no storms except the expected ones around Cape Stiff, the sailors’ name for Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. Otherwise her crossing of the Atlantic was one of constant calms and so not of great speed.

Two months before "our" Montcalm visits Elliott Bay another French Montcalm called on us and stayed and partied long enough to qualify as a floating embassy. — Two months before “our” Montcalm visits Elliott Bay another French Montcalm called on us and stayed and partied long enough to qualify as a floating embassy.

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CINEMA PENITENTIARY NOW AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY – or through it.

November 15, 2014 pdorpat 2 Comments

About two hours ago our friend and expat in Lima, Bill White, was honored on a stage at the Seattle Public Library. Or rather his e-book CINEMA PENITENTIARY was honored, he could not make it from Lima. CINEMA PENITENTIARY is one of three books selected by the Seattle Public Library to be included this year in its lending collection. We hope that some blog’s will remember that now a few years back we included an excerpt from CINEMA PENITENTIARY. Now, below, Ron Edge will return it to the front of this blog (before the week’s now and then comes forward this evening) that posting. It will be linked to five reports that Bill made while on his long journey to his New World by ship in the fall of 2012. We miss you still Bill and CONGRATULATION, of course. As agreed we should try to resume the posting of Helix issues later this fall. (Once we figure out our Skype tangles.) A WARNING: Bill is fond of re-writing so the chapter from CINEMA PENITENTIARY that we printed here two years ago, may have been polished or something since then. If so now you can compare them. Contact the library. It is a treat.

Click the festive photo from Bill to review all his post for his “Journey to a New World”

Intended Effects

MANDALA NO.1 – A Neighbor’s Shrub with Leaves Like Glass

Image October 13, 2014 pdorpat Leave a comment

Uncategorized

PARKING LOT LEAF – Oct. 6, 2014 (Wallingford Walks)

Image October 8, 2014 pdorpat Leave a comment

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