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Published in The Seattle Times online on July 18, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on July 21, 2024

Orre Nobles’ artist colony once blossomed along Hood Canal

By Clay Eals

Beauty and stories abound here. We’re near Union, a wisp of a logging town formerly called Union City that once sought to be our state’s capital.

On a sunny drive, just west of Alderbrook Resort near the southwest corner of Hood Canal, this spot sparkles.

The scene overflows with deep-blue water, countless trees and snow-kissed Olympic mountains, a genuine Washington state paradise. But abandoned beneath the natural splendor is evidence of a century-old center of civilization, tiny but potent, a coterie of urban expatriates calling itself an artist colony.

The evidence stands on a bluff, dwarfed by greenery and just a stone’s throw from State Route 106. In fact, it was made of stones, shaped into human-sized pillars that once bounded Olympus Manor, a compound created by an irrepressible Danish renaissance man, Orre Nelson Nobles.

Beloved as a longtime art teacher at Ballard High School, Nobles (1894-1967) lived in Seattle during the school year in a unique, self-embellished “doll house” that eventually was moved from the path of Interstate 5 to 1623 S. King St., where it stands today.

Summertimes, however, east of Union, the painter, carver and musician convened what was considered an elite retreat starting in the 1920s. His adherents included local teepee-living woodblock printmaker Waldo Chase and a variety of visitors, including poet Don Blanding and world boxing champ Gene Tunney.

Fueling the gatherings were art pieces and clothing that Nobles collected during extensive travels to China, along with land- and water-anchored, Japanese-style torii gates. His 16-room manor succumbed to fire in 1952.

This and much more is documented in “The Artist Colony on Hood Canal,” a 2011 book by fifth-generation Union native Michael Fredson, who marvels at Nobles’ influence: “His motto was ‘Live rich. Don’t be rich.’ He was really the voice, the imagination, the joy of Hood Canal.”

Elizabeth Arbaugh, executive director of the Mason County Historical Society, whose museum in Shelton holds colorful artifacts from Nobles’ vision, confirms his charismatic role.

“He brought a little bit of class to Mason County,” Arbaugh says. “With artists and creative celebrities and others from all over the world, it was very exotic for the time.”

Fitting right in, Fredson himself might be called an artist of bygone storytelling. A lifelong homebuilder, the loquacious former historical-society leader has penned nine locally flavored books.

After an early-1970s service stint in Vietnam, Fredson returned to his home community, devoting himself to unearthing nuggets from Mason County’s yesteryears.

In a typically emphatic utterance, he says, “I just had to know everything about where I live. Otherwise you don’t know anything.”

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Michael Fredson, Elizabeth Arbaugh and especially Mike Munson for their invaluable help with this installment!

No 360-degree video with this installment, but below you will find 9 additional photos, 4 pertinent pages from the 2020 book “The Lavender Palette” and 7 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on July 11, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on July 14, 2024

Billboards in 1937 and 1957 pitch alluring automotive emotions

By Clay Eals

If you’re guessing that this week’s first “Then” photo evokes the tense emotions of the Great Depression, your instincts are right-on.

A multi-floor mass of dirt rises next to a set of side-by-side hotels offering “housekeeping rooms” at a nightly rate of “25 cents and up.” Even more prominent — and perhaps poignant — is a lineup of nine parked cars, seemingly spiffed up and ready to roll. Driverless, as if on display, they’re backed by the imposing symbolism of an unrelated billboard boasting commercial bliss: “Drive a Bargain / Nation-Wide Clearance Sale.”

It was an auto row on a street of dreams. So exactly where is this setting?

We’re looking southeast along Fifth Avenue, just south of downtown Seattle. Out of our view, above and behind the photographer, are the still-present 1910 Yesler Way overpass and elegant 1891 Yesler Building. But elegant this scene is not.

The year is likely 1937. The cars, pointing north, are (from left) a 1926 Chevrolet, 1929 Chevrolet, 1936 Ford, 1929 Chevrolet, 1927 Chrysler, 1928 Chevrolet, 1936 Chevrolet, 1929 Chevrolet and 1934 Plymouth. Most are not owned by adjacent residents. Instead, labels on seven of the driver-side doors indicate they are property of the nearby Seattle Health Department, which was busy that year addressing water sanitation, smallpox vaccinations and infant medical crises.

The West Coast-based Foster & Kleiser billboard promotes R&G Used Cars, located six miles northwest in Ballard. “R&G,” according to a 1937 Seattle Times ad, stood for renewed and guaranteed. “An R&G used car is one which HAS TO BE a real buy because it is guaranteed. … Prices on all makes and models are lowest in years. … Terms to suit your own budget.”

Perhaps the final sentence of that pitch rang truer in a more prosperous time 20 years later, as seen in our second “Then” image from Dec. 29, 1957. Same block, same buildings, similar lineup of cars, this time pointing south: (from left) a 1948 Oldsmobile, 1950 Ford, 1955 Chevrolet, 1946-48 Plymouth, 1950 Plymouth, 1951 Kaiser, 1950 Chevrolet, and 1950-52 Plymouth.

And yes, the same billboard. This time, however, its spiel is not for used vehicles. Instead, it’s a new car with fashionable fins: “Cadillac — Motordom’s Masterpiece for 1958!” The backing buildings eventually were razed, a spectacular fire destroying the one behind the billboard in February 1970.

Today, the mound and billboard also are gone. The modern 7-floor, 88-unit Tobira complex (built as the Empress Apartments in 2001 and converted in 2007 to condos) anchors the scene. Southbound cars whiz along the arterial, their drivers likely focused only on what’s ahead.

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Bob Carney, automotive informant extraordinaire, for his invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below, you also will find 47 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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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!

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Published in The Seattle Times online on June 27, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on June 30, 2024

Requiem for a corner: From hotel to government to ‘reimagining’

By Clay Eals

The sentiment may sound achingly familiar:

“The wrecking ball is fast changing the face of downtown Seattle. For many of us, it sounds a sometimes sad requiem. Familiar old landmarks are being razed to make way for banks, office buildings and parking garages. Pedestrian barricades and fenced-off sidewalks surround entire blocks in much of the downtown area. At the moment, demolition seems to be the city’s No. 1 industry.”

But the words are not from today. They’re nearly 56 years old, from the typewriter of The Seattle Times’ longtime “Faces of the City” columnist John J. Reddin on Oct. 16, 1968.

The impetus for this installment was the recent demolition of the 160-room, eight-story brick Holland Hotel, at the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue and Jefferson Street. The hillside hotel opened with just six floors in 1910, across Fourth from what six years later became King County’s third (and current) courthouse.

The Seattle Times on March 27, 1910, deemed the Holland “the most up-to-date commercial hotel on the Pacific Coast.” Ads prominently noted its “fireproof” construction, a sure reference to the Great Seattle Fire 21 years earlier. Rates began at $1/day. “Elevator service. … Phones in every room. Pleasant lobby.”

Reddin’s latter-day affection for the hotel stemmed from its street-level Tulip Room, a gathering spot for city and county employees, attorneys, police officers and journalists. “More than just a cocktail lounge,” he wrote, the bar was “a neighborhood institution [that] seemingly attracted more than its share of lawyers and others skilled in the art of freewheeling debate.”

Replacing the Holland Hotel in 1971 was today’s still-standing King County Administration Building. The nine-floor structure has long been praised — and sometimes reviled — for its hexagonal, honeycomb pattern of walls and windows. Some think it the ugliest building in Seattle.

“I can understand those who find this hulking modernist mass to be overpowering and maybe even authoritarian,” writes architectural blogger Paige Claassen. “That being said, I must admit I still find this blocky edifice pretty compelling.”

Nearly empty, it’s been closed to the public since March 2020. Its last occupants will move out by summer’s end, as King County Executive Dow Constantine has deemed the building obsolete. It and seven neighboring structures in his 2023 Civic Campus Plan are set for “reimagining” as a combined commercial, residential and governmental core, possibly including a Sound Transit station.

Transformation is in the wind, so we return to Reddin’s 1968 meditation:

“Not in the memory of modern man has there been so much change in the city’s skyline. But that’s progress. Inexorable. Or so they say.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Bob Carney and Paige Claassen for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below, you also will find 17 additional images and 24 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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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.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on June 13, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on June 16, 2024

Her mid-century business on Capitol Hill was a store of its dime

By Clay Eals

Funny what we recall from our younger years.

Once when we visited my grandparents in West Seattle, my mom took me to N&N Variety in the Admiral Junction. Its seemingly endless counters held innumerable tiny treasures, including toy figures, and my fidgety fingers fished one into my pocket. Outside, my mom found out, of course. She admonished me to return the item and confess to what I trust was my only instance of childhood shoplifting.

But the incident didn’t dim my enthusiasm for the shop. In fact, we all, of a certain age, hold great affection for what were called dime stores or the five-and-dime.

The term took off in 1879 with Woolworth’s, whose successful venture in Lancaster, Pa., eventually spawned a slew of chain and single-owner shops selling sundries at paltry prices — from yarn, shoestrings, mugs and other housewares to pencils, ornaments, greeting cards and jigsaw puzzles. They stocked the proverbial “little bit of everything” and became fixtures in nearly every mid-century neighborhood and town.

On Seattle’s Capitol Hill, the storefront at 422 15th Ave. E. housed a “5-Cent to $1.00 Store” starting in 1941. Buying the business in 1955 were Jim and Beverly Berto of Bothell, who renamed it the Capitol Hill 10-Cent Store.

Jim soon returned to commercial fishing, ceding the business to Bev. “After a couple of years of helping little old ladies select hairnets and measuring out satin ribbon by the inch, he gave up and told me I could run it myself,” Bev told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The interview with Bev ran in April 1973, three months after Jim’s death, when the shop lost its lease for expansion of next-door supermarket property. Therein, Bev lamented the impending loss of her everyday impact.

“Many customers … think of a visit to the store as their afternoon’s entertainment,” she said. “They were all very distressed to find I was closing. One little lady snapped, ‘We wouldn’t have let them close you down if we had known. We could have signed a petition or something!’ ”

Today, Bev’s grandchildren fondly remember the store and its proprietor. “Everybody on Capitol Hill would come in there, from kids to seniors, and mostly mosey along and browse,” says Jim Berto of Whidbey Island.

“Grandma was a gentle, quiet person, and she liked people,” says family historian Bev Schmer of Bothell. “She was a perfectionist. She wanted to do it just right. She was very patriotic, very family. She was just a jewel.”

The headline for the P-I story incorporated irresistible wordplay: “Store Will Close For Last Dime.”

That’s a priceless pun worth stealing.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Jade D’Addario of the Seattle Room of Seattle Public Library, Jim Berto, Jimmy Berto and especially Bev Schmer for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below, you also will find 6 additional images and 8 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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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.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on May 30, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on June 2, 2024

Passion to protect children has fueled patrol program since 1922

By Clay Eals

They’re a rare sight today. But they once were ubiquitous, overseeing hundreds of intersections near schools across Seattle.

We’re talking about tens of thousands of trained students who navigated traffic dangers with bright “STOP” flags, shepherding their peers through hundreds of millions of street crossings before and after school. Their name: the Junior Safety Patrol.

The post was an undisputed source of pride. Listen to sentries interviewed by The Seattle Times in October 1947 at High Point (now West Seattle) Elementary School:

“The little kindergarteners don’t know much about crossing the street,” said Stephen Tuthill, 9. “I think it’s a good thing to have them protected.”

“If we can take care of ’em and serve right as they desire,” said Barbara Gralow, 8, “then we can be on the patrol and do it right.”

“I like this better than anything,” said Jimmy Hoffman, 8, “even football.”

These guards were younger than the more typical 10- to 13-year-olds citywide. They served a barracks-style neighborhood, since redeveloped, that had been built five years earlier to house World War II-era aircraft and shipyard workers. They also were following a pioneering tradition.

In 1922, John Muir Elementary in Mount Baker launched the first student-centered safety patrol in the state. Six years later, aided by the Auto Club of Washington (AAA), Seattle expanded the program citywide. Police officer (later sergeant, then captain) George Kimball guided it until his death in 1961. In his honor, a Beacon Hill grade school was named for him in 1964.

Initially dubbed “Schoolboy Patrol,” the program welcomed girls as early as 1929. It compiled an impressive safety record, broken only occasionally, as in 1949 at a patrolled West Seattle Junction intersection, where a car came “out of nowhere” and killed a 5-year-old girl.

Eventually, says Yvonne Carpenter, today’s school-district’s crossing-guard supervisor, the city ceded the program to the district, and only a handful of Seattle schools use young guards anymore.

Most guards these days are paid adults, often retirees, who work two hours each weekday — one in the morning and one in the afternoon — to protect key intersections. Carpenter’s cadre numbers just 50, down from a desired 120, COVID having taken a toll.

“We are desperate for crossing guards,” she says. “I love my guards. Some have done it for 25 years. Every time they step into the street, they put their lives into their hands. They protect any pedestrians who cross, not just students, and they take it very seriously.”

As Seattle’s guards wind up another school-year’s work, Carpenter salutes what she calls their driving force: “You gotta love kids.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Bob Carney, Welela Hagos and Meaghan Kahlo and Yvonne Carpenter of Seattle Public Schools for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below, you also will find 10 additional photos, an illustrated 2023 Seattle Public Schools report and, in chronological order, 50 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on May 23, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on May 26, 2024

We really don’t want to spar over the name of this Seattle tavern

By Clay Eals

What’s the timeworn, in-person setting for many a vigorous verbal fight? A place to expound, debate, plead, bicker and wrangle? Hint: The feuding can be fueled by a brew or two.

The answer, of course, is your friendly neighborhood watering hole. Sometimes, however, such jousting can become boisterous, rousing some to fisticuffs or far worse. So we at “Now & Then” suggest that one such establishment had the correct branding from the get-go.

It was the Don’t Argue Tavern.

Proof lies in our “Then” photo, taken a few years after Prohibition ended here and funded by the federal grant-funded King County assessor’s office. It’s a slightly blurry rendition, begging jest that the photographer must have imbibed at the saloon before lifting a camera. Actually, it’s an anomaly, rare among the seemingly countless crystal-clear images captured by the assessment project.

The Don’t Argue’s location was 228 Fifth Ave. N., a largely nondescript neighborhood north of downtown, full of post-Denny Regrade wood-frame structures that fell victim to the wrecking ball in the late 1950s when what we now know as Seattle Center launched itself as the Seattle World’s Fair of 1962.

The site’s early commercial days were innocent. A 1923 Seattle Times ad for a wholesale and retail fruit and vegetable stand at that address was touted as “one of the best locations in [the] city.” But after the tavern took hold, it made news mostly via police reports, combined with inevitable headline wordplay. (“No argument in the Don’t Argue tavern,” read a 1939 blurb reporting the jailing of three customers.)

Such hits dotted news columns for decades. In a January 1954 incident, two “big men over 50,” one armed with a long-barreled gun, locked Don’t Argue owner Grace Allie and her barmaid in a rear storage room at 7:40 a.m., ransacking the cash drawer and safe of $2,300. Eight months later, a “slow drinker” who entered at 7:30 a.m. and nursed beers until 2 p.m. pulled the identical caper, escaping with $700.

By the time the nearby Space Needle took shape, the Don’t Argue building had become dust, and the business moved a block north to diagonal Broad Street, enduring until 1967. Taking over its earlier plot in 1980 was a McDonalds, feasting on a constant stream of Seattle Center visitors until it closed March 31, 2022, to make way for a $50 million nine-floor lab-science building that today is nearly complete.

What to make of the evolution from veggie stand to tavern to fast-food giant to glass-boxed tower? Time and the development bulldozer have an easy answer: Don’t Argue.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Aaron Breitbarth, Cynthia Brothers of Vanishing Seattle and Jade D’Addario digital projects librarian of the Seattle Room of Seattle Public Library for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below, you also will find an illustrated brochure and, in chronological order, 30 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column — plus a few just for fun.

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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.

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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

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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 25, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 28, 2024

Beneath downtown, McMahon’s chic characters still tweak vanity

By Clay Eals

When legendary comic Red Skelton played the Puyallup fair in September 1987, he opened with a timeless joke that works for any big burg: “Good to be back in Seattle. Great city — when they get it done.”

His shtick stung because just six months earlier, construction had begun downtown on the Metro Bus Tunnel, disrupting traffic and shopping until its completion in 1990. Buses running in the completed tunnels were replaced later by Sound Transit light-rail trains. But lingering underground today from the late 1980s are eye-popping, publicly funded works by two-dozen artists, including Seattle painter Gene Gentry McMahon.

With “relish and bounce,” McMahon has spent decades poking gentle fun at “stiletto, high-heeled romances in which women on the make mate with underworld thugs,” as one critic opined. That theme was writ large in her 35-by-10-foot transit-tunnel mural installed in 1988 at Westlake Station beneath what was the city’s most elegant department store, Frederick & Nelson.

Today, with Nordstrom above, the mural’s chic characters sparkle in brash juxtaposition as if the piece were brand new. “It’s social commentary about fashion and grooming and how we choose to present ourselves,” McMahon says. “It’s what people wear and bring when they travel, with the mannequins, models and products. I’m playing a little bit on vanity.”

The universal subtext fits a public setting and tweaks an era that is no more, says Greg Kucera, former Frederick’s employee and longtime McMahon champion who after 38 years of operating a Seattle art gallery moved two years ago to France.

“Gene’s art is both literal and very incisive,” he says. “Her mural is an homage to a time of consumerism pre-internet, with the old-fashioned sense of relationship to a salesperson and with products you touch and smell before you buy. The idea of shop-by-mail was quaint. Now everything is delivered to your house.”

These days, McMahon, 81, maintains a studio on Elliott Avenue West, near the P-I globe. There, she conjures lively, provocative art pieces while documenting and cataloguing her countless works. An impish gleam in her eye still conveys edgy enthusiasm.

“I saw the weirdest ad for Nordstrom yesterday,” she says. “It made me want to do [the Westlake mural] all over again. It showed regular white tennis shoes, like Keds. It said they were the most comfortable shoes for the season. Then it showed really high platform heels. Both pairs had gobbledygook flowers. The tennis shoes were $1,200. The platforms were $3,000. I was so revolted. I’m going to use those shoes for something!”

Obviously, neither Seattle nor McMahon is “done.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Greg Kucera and especially Gene Gentry McMahon for their invaluable help with this installment!

No 360 video this week, but below you will find 7 additional photos and, in chronological order, 18 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

And here, to note this column’s lead, we present a couple of 1980s articles about funnyman Red Skelton:

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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.

BONUS: Here is a panoramic view of the Mount’s April 26, 2024, centennial Group Hug photo.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 11, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 14, 2024

Presiding over West Seattle,
the Mount’s heart has beaten for 100 years

By Clay Eals

Not for nothing is it known as the Mount.

Perched on one of Seattle’s highest hills is Providence Mount St. Vincent care center. Its promontory along 35th Avenue Southwest oversees northern West Seattle and boasts a commanding view of downtown.

Likewise, though its 9.3 acres are walled off from much of the surrounding streetscape, the Mount holds a reputation and presence as warm as it is lofty.

Anyone who’s lived long in West Seattle probably has known of an elder family member or friend among its 800 yearly rehab patients or 175 others living final chapters under skilled nursing care. Toss in 109 apartments, a 100-child daycare, 200 volunteers and 487 staff from varying ethnicities, and you get an influential chunk of the community’s foundation.

That, of course, derives from longevity. The Mount building marks its centennial April 26, with a morning-to-evening rededication 100 years to the day since the first such public ceremony.

Initially women-driven, the non-sectarian center took root in Catholicism long before 1924. Its founding Sisters of Providence organized in the 1830s in Montreal. In 1858, they launched the first Pacific Northwest hospital, at Fort Vancouver. World War I interrupted plans in 1914 to expand to Seattle, but 10 years later saw the opening of the bluff-topped, dark-bricked, five-story complex, then called the St. Vincent Home for the Aged.

“A woman who gives her life to care for the old is as much a patriot as the soldier who gives his life on the field of battle,” Acting Gov. William Coyle said in praising founders at the dedication. “Your service is as great in peace as in war.”

Seen from above, the Mount’s layout forms an “H,” certainly symbolic of health. At its core, like a rudder, is a grand chapel. As times evolved, so did the institution’s name, services, staffing and outer face (a major mid-1960s rebuild and additional St. Joseph Residence gave it softer tones of tan and brown).

A high point came in 2015 when NBC “Today” showcased the Mount’s innovative Intergenerational Learning Center, pairing seniors with preschoolers, starting in 1991. The clasped hands and blended voices of old and young tugged at televised heartstrings.

Actually, the Mount’s centennial saga could generate at least 100 such heartwarming stories. One could be culled from 1974, when caregivers urged a resident in her 80s to keep moving to stay young in spirit. But she resolutely asserted she was too old for yoga classes: “I’m not going to stand on my head at my age.”

No wonder. She might not have been able to enjoy the view.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Molly Swain and Veronica Couto of Providence Mount St. Vincent and Cynthia Flash of Flash Media Services for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

You also will find a commemorative booklet, 10 additional photos (including several then/now pairs submitted by the Mount) and, in chronological order, 29 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on April 4, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on April 7, 2024

For first world flight, from Seattle to Seattle, hope took to the air

By Clay Eals

Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, the Wright Brothers. We all recognize those aviation icons and their deeds.

But what about Army pilots Frederick Martin, Lowell Smith, Leigh Wade and Erik Nelson? Their names have eluded cultural literacy, though they were the initial pilots leading the inaugural round-the-world voyage by air, a six-month U.S. military feat that began and ended in northeast Seattle 100 years ago.

This weekend marks its centennial. On April 6, 1924, some 300 onlookers witnessed four two-seat, open-cockpit Douglas biplanes named Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans and Boston taking off from Sand Point Airfield. Using interchangeable wheels and floats for periodic landings, the armada headed northwest — clockwise if you could eye the route from above the North Pole.

In this nascent era, among relentless complications, two planes perished. The Seattle crashed into an Alaskan mountain. Its two-man crew hiked five days through snow, holed up in a trapper’s cabin three days and walked one more day before their rescue and return home.

The Boston sank near Iceland, replaced by a backup, the Boston II. The original Boston crew later joined the crews of the Chicago and New Orleans, and the three planes came full circle, landing Sept. 28 at Sand Point, greeted by an adoring crowd of 40,000.

The 175-day sojourn touched 22 countries, some of which had never seen a plane. The purposes, outlined by Major Gen. Mason Patrick, were lofty:

• Demonstrate aerial communication with “all countries of the world.”
• Prove flight as practical “through regions where surface transportation does not exist or at least is slow, dangerous and uncertain.”
• Show that aircraft could operate “under all climatical conditions.”
• Prompt aircraft to adapt to “the needs of commerce.”
• Showcase the “excellence” of American aircraft and byproducts.
• Honor America as “the first nation to finally circumnavigate the globe.”

Indeed, hope filled the air for the April 6 launch. “Seattle has an interest in the gallant effort of the Army airmen not felt by other cities,” The Seattle Times editorialized that day. “It is here that they make their adieus and receive the expressions of goodwill from an admiring city.”

The same hope imbues this year’s six-month First World Flight Centennial celebration. The Friends of Magnuson Park group plans big events at Sand Point and the Museum of Flight around the Sept. 28 return date. But fittingly the party already has begun in the intangible air of the internet, with a “Follow the Journey” campaign on Instagram and Facebook.

“It’s a daily experience,” says Elisa Law, executive director, “to drum up global recognition and collective memory.” Through it, the Friends seek to unearth photos and other artifacts from the flight’s 74 worldwide stops.

As for Martin, Smith, Wade and Nelson? We could call them “The Boys in the Sky.” Hollywood, anyone?

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Jade D’Addario of the Seattle Room of Seattle Public Library, Wendy Malloy of the Museum of History & Industry, Phil Dougherty of HistoryLink and to Elisa Law and Cynthia Mejia-Giudici of Friends of Magnuson Park for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

You also will find 2 more videos, 64 additional photos and, in chronological order, 8 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

And don’t miss these in-depth HistoryLink stories on the First World Flight by Phil Dougherty:

• Seattle to Seattle: The First Aerial Circumnavigation of the Globe (Part 1) – HistoryLink.org
• Seattle to Seattle: The First Aerial Circumnavigation of the Globe (Part 2) – HistoryLink.org
• U.S. Army Air Service airplanes land at Sand Point Aerodrome to complete the first flight around the world on September 28, 1924. – HistoryLink.org

And this link for a long-running dream:

• The Seattle World Cruiser Project

The following panels are from a free exhibit commemorating the six-month 1924 feat, open weekdays at Mercy Magnuson Place, 7101 62nd Ave. NE, at Sand Point.

The following panels are the initial Instagram posts for the First World Flight centennial celebration.

The following images are of the 2021 aviation murals created by students at Building 41 at Sand Point. The Friends of Magnuson Park hope to make it a visitor center.

The following photos depict an aviation display at Magnuson  Community Center, 7110 62nd Ave NE.

The following photo and video are from Magnuson  Community Center’s dedication July 7, 2023.

The following photos depict the First World Flight commemorative monument at the entrance to Magnuson Park.

The following photos are from the collection of Ron Edge.

The following panels are from the May 2023 newsletter of Friends of Magnuson Park.

The following photos are from a photo album given by the Navy to Tiburcio V. Mejia at Sand Point in 1956. Here is a remembrance from his daughter, Cynthia Mejia-Giudici, board member of Friends of Magnuson Park:

“My father, Tiburcio V. Mejia, was a chief petty officer in the Navy, then a steward as that was the highest level Filipinos could attain at that time. We transferred here December 1956, and he retired during the 1965 school year. I was 12 or 13 in the group photo below. My brother, Ted, was about 10, and my sister, Leslie Ann, was 5 or 6. My mother, Connie, was a proud wife.

“My brother said that the photo album was most likely presented to my dad when he retired, possibly as a commemorative gift. Dad enlisted at Glenview, Ill., in 1942. He served admirals on aircraft carriers. We have slippers from his travels to Algeria and photos of him wearing a Scottish kilt. He was in the European theater and didn’t see ground combat. One of his assignments was on the USS Missouri. My father kept a file of programs of dinners that he who most likely coordinated, also recipes. Precious stuff!”

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A NOW & THEN APRIL FOOL’S SPECIAL

Are These Quirky Tales for Real?

Certainly plenty of weird things have happened in the Seattle area and beyond — but have all of these?

By Clay Eals and Jean Sherrard

Through the decades, we’ve all seen them: the wacky people or experiences that make us laugh, cry, roll our eyes — sometimes all three. Often they’re enshrined in photos that rarely make the history books. But what’s April Fool’s Day for if we don’t flaunt such images and mess with the annals of time?

We at “Now & Then” dug out some of our favorite quirky images and asked local history compadres to do the same. We boiled them down to 10 vignettes.

Below, enjoy these off-the-wall snapshots of yesteryear, but keep your guard up for tomfoolery. Think of each “Then” photo and vignette below as a mystery, and of the corresponding “Now” (which you can find when visiting the link below each “Then” vignette) as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us history!

And don’t forget to click here to see The Backstory!

Quirky tale #1:
Discovering a vicious sea monster

Long before radio and TV (and certainly the internet), newspapers abounded with eyewitness tales of dreaded sea serpents. It became almost a sport to try to prove such sightings. In 1906, a group of natty gents took matters into their own hands, showcasing visual evidence of such a find. At Rainier Beach, they wrestled a sharp-toothed beast to stillness just long enough for a photo to document their temporary prize before rolling it back into Lake Washington.

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #2:
Sculpting faces in raw meat

Where horsemeat once was peddled in the Pike Place Market — during wartime rationing in the 1940s — now stands Mr. D’s Greek Delicacies, a take-away restaurant serving customers for more than four decades. Along with classic Hellenic fare, owner Demetrios Moraitis, 89, creates art in the bizarre medium of gyro meat. Over the years, Mr. D. has carved lamb busts of notables — from Market savior Victor Steinbrueck and Zorba the Greek to Barack Obama and the 2016 matchup of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #3:
Bashing a bicycle, Balch-style

In the 1970s, zany Dick Balch was a mind trip. In ever-present TV ads, the hippie-ish huckster with a high-pitched giggle wielded a sledgehammer to clobber cars at his Federal Way dealership. The man drew attention! Promoter Ben Laigo understood this. So when he launched the first official Seafair Bicycle Rally & Picnic in 1972, he persuaded Seafair Queen Lynn Garcia to pose in Balch’s lot to “smash” a 10-speed with a sledge. Ever the ham, Balch joined in the scene with a giant grin.

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #4:
Notching another official Seattleite

On Oct. 7, 1937, the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer showcased this cheeky photo. In it, cigar-chomping Eddie Rivers, a popular PR and advertising man for Seattle’s Hamrick-Evergreen Theaters, chose a unique way to announce the birth of his third child. Named after a popular song, Rivers’ daughter Charmaine was, he insisted, a “first-class attraction” appearing for a “long-term engagement some five weeks ago.” He credited the booking to “A. Stork.”

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #5:
Facing a nun-too-subtle challenge

For amateur photographer Max Loudon, who documented his lively bachelor life in the early years of the 20th century, this snapshot of six Benedictine nuns in their habits during a visit to Seattle’s first world’s fair, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition of 1909, is one of a kind. What expressions! From grin to grimace, the sisters’ enjoyment of the AYPE seems … mixed. Loudon noted their provocative question: “How do you tour a city like Seattle?”

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #6:
Shining light on a riverside petroglyph

South of Fall City, the Raging River sometimes sloshes at high levels, but not enough to obscure a mysterious marker carved onto a 5-by-6-foot piece of riverside granite. Depicting a salmon and the sun, the petroglyph sits flat, as if on a tabletop. When hikers stumble upon what seems like ancient art, they’re stunned. Shouldn’t it be highlighted on some guide map? Well, Fall City historians don’t like to disclose its precise locale. Best not to invite vandals, they say. So in obscurity, its legend lingers.

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #7:
Fishing for a streetside dinner

Infamous Gutter Creek, running down First Avenue before the Denny Regrade reshaped much of the city’s topography, was notoriously muddy. Returning salmon could even be caught in its shallow freshets at certain times of year. In our “Then” photo, snapped between 1903 and 1906, an enterprising young fisher trolls for his dinner. A small crowd observes from the sidewalk in front of the Virginia Bar, erected in 1903 at the southwest corner of First and Virginia.

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #8:
Pigging out on the shoreline

He hid it well, but Seattle Mayor Carl Hinckley moonlighted as a bedraggled buffoon on the downtown waterfront in 1908-09. Masquerading as “Uncle Hiram and His Pig,” he induced his porcine partner, Betsy, and various dogs to perform crowd-pleasing tricks, while his hay-filled “Studebaker” wagon poked gentle fun at his campaign contributors. Hinckley built a following as what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called “one of the best impersonators of the original down Easterner in the country.”

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #9:
Doppelganging a Dorpat

On a 2005 trip to Paris, his first since age 16, our favorite Seattle historian, Paul Dorpat, then 68, was on a mission. Newly available birth records from a Grand Forks, N.D. hospital questioned his family history. In a double whammy, he learned not only that he was adopted in 1938 but also had an identical twin, Denis Poisson-d’Avril, who had moved to Paris after World War II with his own adoptive family. Hoping to visit this noted Left Bank philosopher at his Sorbonne digs, Dorpat serendipitously caught a glimpse of his twin at a sidewalk café and without a word sat at an adjoining table.

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

Quirky tale #10:
Sinking an unexpected hole

It was an encounter too close for comfort. Here we have evidence from Nov. 12, 1957, of a little-known and quickly hushed-up incident in which an asteroid entered the earth’s atmosphere and crashed onto a boulevard on the north side of Queen Anne. It left a massive hole before rolling down a wooded slope to Aurora Avenue North.

IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

And don’t forget to click here to see The Backstory!

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on March 21, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on March 24, 2024

Climate of today sinks Puyallup’s 1941 ‘House of Tomorrow’

By Clay Eals

The setting was — and remains — idyllic.

It’s just a stone’s throw (or two) from busy Highway 167 and the green-tinted George Milroy truss bridge that crosses the robust Puyallup River at 66th Avenue East. But this quiet spot in rural Pierce County also is hidden by woods and tucks itself along meandering Clarks Creek.

Facing the babbling stream and hearing little but the chirps of birds, you might never guess that behind you, for 83 years, has stood a unique multi-floor residence that its designer and builder dubbed the House of Tomorrow.

If you’re familiar with hucksterish home shows, such a label sounds like so much real-estate hype. But it’s an identifier as singular and audacious as its originator, Bert Allen Smyser (1893-1987).

The brash entrepreneur assembled a career of not always highly heralded feats and schemes. His 1930 coffee-pot shaped Tacoma roadhouse survives today as Bob’s Java Jive. Rejected, however, was Smyser’s late-1950s brainstorm to host what became the Seattle World’s Fair, complete with a “sky-high” restaurant and a swirling, suspended transit system, in Auburn.

Smyser — whose nickname was “Bullnose” because he preferred rounded to square corners — lived with his wife for decades in his Clarks Creek creation, a symphony of curves in the established international Art Deco style known as Streamline Moderne. Equally notable was Smyser’s pioneering use of plywood as a primary building material. Upon the home’s construction, the Tacoma News Tribune declared it “as modern as milady’s next fall chapeau.”

Over time, however, the elements took a soggy toll. Repeatedly and increasingly frequently, Clarks Creek flooded the building — four times between 1941 and 1978, and in at least seven instances since 2008, when its latest private owner purchased it. The twin culprits, says Randy Brake, Pierce County project manager, were nearby development and climate change.

In 2016, the county sought mitigation funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In 2022, FEMA granted $600,000 to help the county buy the property and raze its signature home, determining that it was neither cost-effective nor practical to relocate it. The county aims to return the site to wetland in perpetuity.

At only 1,012 square feet, the House of Tomorrow is hardly a mansion. But Smyser’s creation and the experimenter himself present a complex, fascinating tale, authenticated by historically meticulous and richly illustrated research documents totaling 272 pages. At last-peek open houses Jan. 17 and Feb. 3, streams of visitors verified its appeal.

But demolition is nigh. The bulldozer is due to arrive in April.

Alas, once again tomorrow cannot keep pace with today.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Adam Alsobrook and Randy Brake for their invaluable help with this installment!

No 360 video or additional newspaper clips this week, but you will find covers of two research documents totaling 272 pages on the House of Tomorrow.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

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

A Seattle treasure soon to be demolished — but not forgotten

By Jean Sherrard

Our mission, should we choose to accept it: Find a rare image of a soon-to-be razed mansion and repeat it on location. Surely not impossible, right?

Fortunately, the Museum of History & Industry supplied the only extant “Then” photo of what director Leonard Garfield calls “one of the great private estates from one of Seattle’s golden eras.”

But capturing the “Now” photo proved a greater challenge.

“This is a caper,” MOHAI board member Maria Denny said as we glided through Montlake Cut in a battered cabin cruiser, turning north into Lake Washington on a balmy winter’s afternoon.

Maria’s great-great uncle Rolland Denny (1851-1939) commissioned noted Seattle architectural firm Bebb & Mendel to design a three-story Spanish Mission Revival mansion. Completed in 1907, it was christened Loch Kelden — a fusion of wife Alice Kellogg’s name and Denny’s own. Overlooking “Loch” Washington, the then-50-acre estate was a wilderness retreat accessible only by boat from Madison Park.

In 1974, the Unification Church acquired the mansion and its remaining 1.7 acres, using it as a domicile and hosting dignitaries, including founder Sun Myung Moon and his wife.

On the market since 2022, Loch Kelden recently was sold to developers for what real-estate sites say is $5.999 million, “pending feasibility.” Preservationists could not nominate it as a city landmark because the state Supreme Court has exempted religious entities from landmark designation unless such owners support or seek it. Thus, demolition appears imminent.

In February, Scott Dolfay, the church’s retired property manager and caretaker for more than two decades, graciously offered a farewell tour to a group of historians. Two days before our visit, however, the invite was rescinded due to a strict nondisclosure provision of the sale agreement. Access to the grounds to take our repeat photo also was denied.

So we opted for a boat’s-eye view. Putt-putting past expansive waterfront homes, we spotted the cream-colored mansion on Windermere bluff. “Spectacular!” said Maria Denny. “I’d forgotten how lovely it is.”

It stirred a raft of family memories as well. Her father, the late Brewster Denny, often visited Loch Kelden, fondly recalling his 11th birthday party, thrown there by his “Great Uncle Roll,” notably the youngest member of the well-known Nov. 13, 1851, Alki landing party.

Two months old and near starvation, Rolland was not expected to live. But Duwamish tribal members supplied the infant with life-saving clam nectar.

In the end, why does this lovely place matter? For Maria Denny, the answer is simple: “Holding onto pieces of history means that we continue remembering them.”

An improbable and uphill mission, perhaps not yet impossible.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Elke Hautala, Cari Simson, Scott Dolfay , Leonard Garfield, Eugenia Woo and Maria Denny  and Howard Lev for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Jean Sherrard’s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Jean, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column. Also, below you will find a video interview of Maria Denny by Clay Eals.

See below for 5 more photos from fall 2023 by David Williams.

And further below, see 8 photos from Magnolia resident Tab Melton, in the 1950s before he was born and when his family lived at Loch Kelden.

Here are the 1950s photos provided by Tab Melton, when his family lived in a log cabin on the Loch Kelden estate. The photos show Tab’s three older siblings. Tab recalls that when his father, George Melton, lived in the mansion, the two watched the Nov. 25, 1963, funeral of slain President John F. Kennedy on a portable TV in the mansion’s parlor, where the copper fireplace was festooned with tapestries.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on March 7, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on March 10, 2024

Panoramic book reveals Space Needle’s newly transparent views

By Clay Eals

Somehow I can’t forget a delightful ditty from when I was 11 years old. Its lyrics come from one of many Seattle World’s Fair-themed songs in 1962, sung to the show-tune melody of “Hey, Look Me Over”:

Hey, look us over, come to the fair
Come to Seattle, fun is everywhere

Climb up in space, look all around
You’ll be amazed at the sights you see
You never knew that could be found …

Of course, the reference was to the Space Needle, now the preeminent worldwide symbol of Seattle. To me, the 605-foot beacon is calming, inspirational, ubiquitous. It’s in framed posters at home. It’s on my smartphone wallpaper. It’s in the corner of my eye whenever I zip around the city. I doubt I’m alone.

You might not have visited the Needle other than to show visitors. Whether dissuading you was the press of everyday life or the price of admission ($26-$39 today, depending on age, vs. $1 in 1962), your last ascent might have been years ago.

In fact, you might not have ridden the golden elevators to the “top house” since its breathtaking renovation of 2017-18.

But hey, now you can learn about and enjoy the big redo at ground level.

Just published is a lavishly illustrated book, “New Heights: Transforming Seattle’s Iconic Space Needle” (192 pages, Images Publishing Group). It was written and assembled by Olson Kundig, the Seattle-based international design firm that shepherded the $100 million project.

The book snugly complements Knute Berger’s definitive 2012 tome “Space Needle: The Spirit of Seattle” (184 pages, Documentary Media).

And just as with the song lyrics, “New Heights” makes clear that for the Needle’s renovators, the views were THE thing.

Heeding the city Landmark Preservation Board’s admonition to retain the Needle’s original look and profile, changes nevertheless were substantial — and stunning. Off came exterior security cages in favor of tall glass panels. Interior windows were deepened. Off came opaque walls. Away went the rotating restaurant in favor of a rotating (and revealing) glass floor. Transparency ruled. The relentless refrain was: “Does it serve the view?”

With 160 images, including eye-popping panoramas, the book depicts history, visions, models, construction and finished results. Brief text adds insights and incidentals. Examples: TV’s “Jetsons” possibly assigned the Needle the persona of “a midcentury cartoon.” And when navigating the new glass floors, the project architect’s two young daughters had clearly divergent (!) reactions.

Naturally, the book can’t fully substitute for the actual experience. So the best place to find and purchase “New Heights” might be atop the Needle itself. “You’ll be amazed at the sights you see …”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Mathilde van Tulder, Alan Maskin, Blair Payson and Cate O’Toole for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

No historical news clips this week, but below you will find 2 additional then/now photo comparisons and an additional “then” photo. And we’ve just gotta include the full lyrics to “Hey, Look Us Over,” sung to the tune of “Hey, Look Me Over” and referenced at the beginning of this column:

Hey, look us over, come to the fair
Come to Seattle, fun is everywhere

Climb up in space, look all around
You’ll be amazed at the sights you see
You never knew that could be found

And while you’re here, take a boat ride
Out on the Sound
Find the joys of living, pleasures here abound

So get out of the habit of staying home
Take a plane, a train or bus
Come to Seattle, have a good look at us!

Plus, of many videos promoting the Space Needle and Seattle Center, click here for a choice one from 1968.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 29, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on March 3, 2024

History with a heart: Postcard detective identifies long-gone home

By Clay Eals

Often we shrug: “Here today, gone tomorrow.” For Adam Alsobrook, the phrase transforms wistfully into “Here yesterday, gone today.”

In off-hours, the architectural historian and resident of Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood often dons a figurative fedora to become a specialized detective after my “Now & Then” heart.

Alsobrook, 45, dives into what collectors call Real Photo Postcards (RPPCs), an early 20th-century phenomenon triggered by a then-new Kodak camera that let hobbyists and roving photographers print images on postcard stock for mailing.

Often unlabeled, the cards were produced in tiny runs, depicting subjects without commercial appeal. Today they flood eBay (2,700 “Seattle” listings alone, for example), but many are quite rare.

These missives also bore handwritten messages with fleeting details that some sleuths find maddeningly incomplete in suggesting what the images portrayed. Missing info, however, only stirs Alsobrook’s juices of research, training and intuition.

Case in point: our main “Then” postcard. An unknown person mailed it from Seattle on Sept. 13, 1907, to Mrs. F.F. Adams of Leverett, Mass.

Alsobrook scoured reference books, databases and other online resources, to no avail. But with expert-level acumen in residential historical design, he combed Sanborn fire-insurance maps to glean hints of the house’s locale.

He started with Capitol Hill and Queen Anne, then circled to First Hill, cracking the case by finding a mapped footprint at the northwest corner of University Street and Summit Avenue that matched the image.

This corresponded with a March 2, 1902, Seattle Times blurb about architect W.D. Kimball designing “an extensive double residence” for attorney Winfield R. Smith at that corner. Six days later, an architectural rendering appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

By about 1909, it had become a Catholic home for “working girls,” a euphemism for unwed mothers, and, by the late 1920s, a maternity hospital. It was razed in 1928, making way for Maynard Hospital. Today, it’s a multi-floor retirement community.

Alsobrook has investigated many other RPPCs, including those whose subjects still stand, such as a 1909 image of a Ravenna home at 5643 Brooklyn Ave. N.E. But the 1907 card of the long-gone University/Summit building may be the only photographic record of its existence.

His pie-in-the-sky hope is that historical residential photo-documentation will become as routine as today’s DNA-aided ancestry research. Why is such visual insight important?

To Alsobrook, it reflects our country’s culture. Relentlessly “nomadic,” Americans nevertheless deeply value their ever-changing built environment, he says, and making public its history can be uplifting.

For evidence, he needs only to flip over the 1907 card to its three-word inscription, fertile with rooted affection: “Our Seattle Home.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Adam Alsobrook for his invaluable help with this installment!

No 360-degree video for this installment yet. But …

You also will find 4 links, 1 video, 1 additional photo and, in chronological order, 2 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

• Adam Alsobrook’s blog
• Real Photo Postcard site 1
• Real Photo Postcard site 2
• Real Photo Postcard site 3

(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 and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 15, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 18, 2024

A would-be landmark served Chinese, Japanese locals

By Clay Eals

For 101 years, it has presided on western Capitol Hill, instantly recognizable but for most of its life not someplace to visit unless you were called by mortality — or you’ve been on a Bruce Lee tourist pilgrimage.

The former Butterworth Mortuary, near the edge of Interstate 5, does catch the eye. Despite standing only three floors tall, its rounded façade, recessed ornamental clock and paired column entrances allow the elegant, tan building to command attention at the busy Pine/Melrose corner.

While it’s not an official city landmark, the Classical Revival charmer designed by architect Charles Haynes bears those earmarks. It’s an “easily identifiable visual feature” of its neighborhood. Perhaps more pertinent, evidence abounds to link it to a “historic event,” “important” person and local “cultural, political or economic heritage.”

In the funeral business since 1883 in Centralia, the Butterworths provided mortuary services in Seattle on First Avenue near Pike Place Market starting in 1903. The family opened its plush Capitol Hill hub, complete with suites, apartments, dormitories and a pipe organ and piano, in March 1923.

From World War II on, the family firm drew much of its identity from its virtually exclusive role in tending to the local Chinese and Japanese communities. Funeral directors Jimmy Mar served the former and Art Susumi the latter.

“That was two-thirds of their business for 60 years,” says former employee Craig Emmick. A conspicuous example of this reputation was its July 30, 1973, service for Lee, the famed martial artist and actor. Bringing  star power from Hollywood were pallbearers Steve McQueen and James Coburn.

The family sold the business in 1998. Attorneys occupied the edifice until last spring.

Today the building is closed except for the former Butterworth chapel, which was remodeled into a sumptuous pub that has operated from the Melrose entrance since 2012 under a clever moniker, the Pine Box. There, Lee fans from around the world stop in to quaff a brew and salute a legend.

No one has stepped up to nominate the building for landmark protection. Owners put the building up for sale last April for $9.3 million and later withdrew it from the market. A real-estate website estimates its value at $5.2 million. It’s assessed at $7.3 million.

The owners’ manager, attorney Jerry Everard, told the Daily Journal of Commerce last April he wants the building to be a keeper instead of a tear-down, likely as an investment for boutique offices. “I’m a collector,” he said. “I don’t like to let go of anything.”

That’s another method to champion the storied treasures that mark our land.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Mike and Craig Emmick , Tom Butterworth, Bert Butterworth Jr., Cyn Huntley, Brian Miller, Eugenia Woo, Bob Carney and Scott & Amy Eals for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

You also will find 26 additional photos and, in chronological order, 14 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 8, 2023
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 11, 2023

Integrity made Bobby Morris the city’s first sports-star awardee

By Clay Eals

On the crisp Saturday afternoon of Oct. 3, 1936, in Pullman, 22,000 football fans streamed into a new stadium and saw Washington State edge Stanford 14-13. But the drama didn’t end with the final score.

For days, northern California newspapers kicked around fierce, spoil-sport claims. Five Stanford players had accused the game’s lead referee of coaching Cougar players on the field and, in the finishing moments, blowing back-to-back calls that stranded Stanford mere inches away from a comeback touchdown.

The complainers — in today’s political parlance, they might have screamed “Stop the steal!”— were never named, though the official’s name was made notorious. A San Francisco Examiner headline declared him “under fire” for “bum rulings.” His detractors, however, didn’t really understand who they were dealing with.

The ref was longtime Seattle sports official Bobby Morris (1897-1970), a mentor to thousands of school children and college athletes, and renowned for honesty and fairness. “Square as a die,” Cougar coach Babe Hollingbery described him.

The Pacific Coast Conference probed the coaching allegation, and one week after the game, Stanford officials telegrammed Morris a public apology: “We regret the unfortunate publicity which has developed in this matter and any reflection which may have been cast on your integrity.”

Also, filmed evidence indicated that in the two culminating plays, while the torso of Stanford’s ball carrier reached the endzone, his knees had first hit turf shy of the goal. Thus, as per collegiate rules, Morris rightly denied Stanford a winning score.

For more than two decades, this man with the boyish first name officiated countless basketball and football games, including Rose Bowls in 1925, 1935, 1936 and 1939, and served as a judge at Longacres horse races. So it was natural that he came to embrace a high-profile opportunity to ensure the integrity of local records and elections.

In 1937, Morris was appointed King County’s chief deputy auditor, then auditor in 1941. Elected to the post in 1942, he was re-elected every four years thereafter until, ill, he retired in 1969.

Fittingly, the city playfield east of Morris’ alma mater, Broadway High School (today’s Seattle Central College), where he played sports himself, was named for him posthumously in 1980.

All this is worth remembering given that the 89th annual Seattle Sports Star of the Year banquet clocks in this Feb. 15 at The Westin downtown. The award series, launched by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and originally dubbed Man of the Year, began in March 1936.

Who won the first award? None of the 11 nominated athletes and coaches, but rather someone devoted to keeping their games trustworthy — Bobby Morris.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Dave Eskenazi, Heather and Joe Levy and especially Marilyn Morris Campbell and her grandson Bobby Morris for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

You also will find 2 related links, 22 additional photos and, in chronological order, 61 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Two related web pages:

• Bobby Morris profile at SportsPressNW.org
• Sports Star of the Year banquet of the Seattle Sports Commission

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 1, 2024
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 4, 2024

[Editor’s note: As expected, the storied Rosewood Manor in the unincorporated neighborhood of Esperance within the city of Edmonds was demolished Jan. 22-23, 2024. This column was written beforehand.]

By any other name, Rosewood Manor no longer smells sweet

By Clay Eals

By the time you read this, it might be gone.

These days, when the local development bulldozer is bustling 24/7, the “it” can be most anywhere. But today’s target stands (or stood) in the Esperance neighborhood, an unincorporated doughnut hole within the city of Edmonds.

The building’s name, the latest among several, is Rosewood Manor, a stately designation for this neglected 1915 mansion, reached via a circle driveway on the south side of busy 220th Street Southwest and surrounded by mid-20th-century homes, a wetland and tiny Chase Lake.

During its recent decay, passersby often speculated affectionately about its past personas. Today, thanks to Edmonds historian Brad Holden, its span of identities is close to definitive, from base to benevolent — each in its own way humanitarian.

A timeline of incarnations, from Holden’s research:

• A private home from 1915 to 1919, owned by builder Celdon Martin, co-owner of Sol Duc Hot Springs on the Olympic Peninsula. A debut housewarming party drew 50 couples, noted the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
• The White Horse Tavern through 1922. The name referenced a stallion that patrolled a pasture out back. Flowing alcohol and emanating ragtime-jazz music drew countless Prohibition-style police raids. In one incident, the owner shot an unruly customer with a pistol.
• Chase Lake Pavilion (a tavern) for much of 1922 to 1926, and Olympic Tavern through the mid-1930s.
• Chase Lake Sanitarium, reputedly a maternity hospital, starting in 1939.
• Charles Segal Sanitarium, offering addiction treatment, starting in 1951.
• Aurora Edmonds Nursing Home from 1961 to the mid-1990s, when it briefly housed Counterpoint Mental Health Services.
• Church of the Beloved, operated by a Christian fellowship group, starting roughly in 2000. The backyard’s elaborate garden hosted weddings and cookouts until 2012, when the site went up for sale.
• Full circle to a family home starting in 2016, but a kitchen fire soon made the space uninhabitable. Adamant Homes of Mill Creek bought it in October 2022.

Holden found no evidence to substantiate rumors that famed Hollywood dog Rin Tin Tin was buried on the site or that it served as a hunting lodge that drew a visit from President Theodore Roosevelt.

Adamant Homes won’t return press inquiries, but workers onsite told Holden in December that demolition was imminent. Permit documents cite plans to build 7 to 16 so-called single-family detached units there.

Instead, Holden, co-author of the 2022 book “Lost Roadhouses of Seattle,” hoped Rosewood Manor would be repurposed for low-cost housing or a museum. But he’s also realistic, sadly so: “It’s kind of a crude erasing of our history here.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to architectural historian Larry Kreisman, Snohomish County planner Joshua Machen and especially Brad Holden for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below you also will find 1 additional video, 4 additional photos and, in chronological order, 5 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), and Washington Digital Newspapers, as well as other papers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

In addition, here are MyEdmonds.com links related to this column:

• An initial story by historian Brad Holden
• A chronology by historian Byron Wilkes

(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 and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 11, 2024
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 14, 2024

A drowned ghost town reemerges in times of intensified drought

By Jean Sherrard

“A new-world Venice.”

That’s how The Seattle Times described a “little village” seven miles south of North Bend and 35 miles southeast of Seattle. Photos accompanying the May 14, 1915, front-page article provided dramatic evidence. Most of the burg’s 200 houses were half submerged by slowly rising flood waters.

A company town, Moncton, was established in 1906 by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad while carving its transcontinental line through Snoqualmie Pass. It thrived on the picturesque Rattlesnake Prairie within the Cedar River watershed.

Rail workers soon were joined by utilities employees from nearby Seattle water and hydroelectric dams. By 1909, the town boasted a grocery, hotel, saloon and 30-student school. The town, less than 3 miles from Cedar Lake, Seattle’s primary water reservoir, was euphoniously renamed Cedar Falls. It must have seemed an idyllic spot to plant roots.

In 1912, City Light began building an imposing masonry dam intended to further harness Cedar River waters to supplement Seattle’s increasing electrical needs.

Cue ominous music.

Consulting geologists cautioned that surrounding valleys were comprised of porous glacial moraine unsuitable for water containment. But their warnings were overruled by J.D. Ross, Seattle’s superintendent of lighting.

Cedar Falls paid the piper. Soon after completion of the masonry dam in early 1915, springs erupted from surrounding hills and seeped up from the formerly dry prairie. By summer, all but two families had departed their flooded homes and were living in boxcars or makeshift houses above the rising waterline.

Initially, Seattle Mayor Hiram Gill denied responsibility, blaming the flooding on natural causes. After months of dithering, wiser heads prevailed. The town was condemned and its dispossessed residents compensated for their losses.

Amy LaBarge, Seattle’s current Watershed Management Division director, has watched Rattlesnake Lake rise and fall for decades. In December, after months of drought, the lake’s water levels dropped to the lowest she’s seen. “Our summers are definitely getting longer and warmer, and therefore drier,” she says.

A trained forest ecologist, LaBarge notes that volatile and extreme weather patterns are associated with increasing frailty of the forest ecosystem. “Over the last few years, we’re seeing alarming waves of tree mortality,” she says. “Multiple species have become highly susceptible to things that wouldn’t normally kill them.”

How, then, to manage future water supply in a climate changing world?

“Humans will have to learn to be very, very careful with how we use non-renewable resources like water,” LaBarge says. “We must conserve — not just for people, but for salmon and wildlife and all the other beings that call this place home.”

WEB EXTRAS

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

Also, a few more photos.

Throughout the dry lake, evidence of the abandoned town can be seen in old growth stumps and structural remains (click for full size).

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

UPDATE: “The Bellwether Sheep of the Mosquito Fleet” won second place in the the Robert Kotta Memorial Song Writing Contest. Winners will perform at 1:45 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025, at the Port Gamble Maritime Music Festival. Admission is free.

Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 4, 2024
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 7, 2024

For whom the bell(wether) tolls: The 1904 calamity of the Clallam

By Clay Eals

So often have we heard: “Don’t do something just because others do it. Don’t be a sheep.” Well, sometimes a sheep can lead us all. Possibly save lives.

One-hundred-twenty years ago, just as now, a popular way to reach key points along Puget Sound and the Salish Sea was over water. Today, we might drive onto a state ferry. In 1904, we would have walked aboard a private predecessor.

That year, on the blustery morning of Jan. 8 at Pier 1 at the foot of Seattle’s Yesler Way, the stately SS Clallam, just 9 months old and deemed the queen of the informally named Mosquito Fleet, took on 61 passengers bound for Port Townsend and Victoria, B.C.

Also clambering aboard was an agglomeration of sheep. All, that is, but one. Known as Billy, the bellwether animal wore a bell and for years led herds aboard vessels headed for the provincial capital.

That morning he was “particularly stubborn,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. Billy “threatened dire things to anyone who tried to drag him aboard. The tossing waves did not look good to him.” When the Clallam shoved off, Billy remained ashore.

What followed was unspeakable tragedy. While the steamer reached Port Townsend without incident, it confronted gale winds while entering the Strait of Juan de Fuca, taking on water and launching three lifeboats filled with women and children, all of whom perished in the storm. Overnight, tracing a triangular path in the strait, the Clallam broke apart and sank.

The final death toll: 56. Survivors, including crew, numbered just 36.

Learning of the calamity last fall, Queen Anne singer-songwriter Jon Pontrello, 37, decided to pen a ballad to commemorate its 120th anniversary. Ensnaring his imagination was the role of the bellwether sheep.

Survivors claimed Billy had “a way of knowing what the weather will be that, for accuracy, puts to shame all the storm signals and information of the weather bureaus,” the P-I reported. So Pontrello’s 8-minute song summons a haunting hero:

There may be a seer among us
whose actions we don’t understand,
an omen that throws into question
all the things you had planned

Some sheep are meant to follow,
and some are meant to lead,
so when that bell starts ringing
you know that you better take heed

For Pontrello, the lesson evokes a potent metaphor. “The way I think about it is, we’re all on this voyage,” he says. “The sea is like the universe, the ship is you, and you are the captain of that ship.”

Of course, we each can ask: Who is our bellwether?

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Nat Howe, executive director of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, and especially Jon Pontrello for their invaluable help with this installment!

See Jon Pontrello perform the full song in video below and in concert Jan. 11 and 13, as indicated in the poster below. Also, he will play the song at 1 p.m. Monday, Jan. 8, the 120th anniversary of the Clallam sinking, on 91.3FM KBCS.

Here are two extensive articles on the Clallam tragedy:

• essay by Daryl McClary at HistoryLink.org
• essay by Peter Grant of Victoria

Due to technical difficulties, there is no 360-degree video this week. However, below you will find a poster, 2 videos featuring Jon Pontrello and, in chronological order, 15 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), SGN and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

This is a Postscript, updating these earlier “Now & Then” columns:

• June 8, 2023, Marvin Oliver totem poles
• Sept. 2, 2021, Tacoma totem pole

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 23, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 24, 2023

Poles Apart:
The fate of 3 totem poles removed in
Seattle and Tacoma remains up in the air

By Jean Sherrard and Clay Eals

IN SEATTLE, hidden near two poles lying in a Seattle Parks lot in Discovery Park, Marylin Oliver keeps a whisk broom.

During visits from her Kingston home, Oliver retrieves debris from the 50-foot-long carved cedar poles. In November, she left a note asking visitors to show respect.

Commissioned from renowned Native artist Marvin Oliver (Marylin’s late brother) by Seattle architect and preservationist Victor Steinbrueck, the poles stood since March 1984 near Pike Place Market, framing a Puget Sound panorama while paying “tribute to the culture and heritage” of indigenous peoples.

Last April, as part of the city’s reconstruction of Victor Steinbrueck Park, the poles were unbolted from their plinths and delivered to Discovery Park, where they have rested side by side, unprotected from the elements.

Lisa Steinbrueck, a conservator with a master’s in museology — and Victor Steinbrueck’s daughter —worries about their exposure. “If one wanted to slowly destroy the poles,” she says, “this is how to do it.” Oliver adds, “They should be moved into dry storage.”

Unlike the poles, no moss has grown on Oliver’s efforts. Planning for repair, she enlisted Makah carver Greg Colfax, who examined the poles and says that despite significant decay they can be restored.

Seattle Parks, however, recently reversed its long-held position. Having originally committed to repair and reinstall the poles, it petitioned the Pike Place Market Historical Commission to authorize the poles’ permanent removal. At its Dec. 13 meeting, the commission denied that application. Parks will have the opportunity to appeal.

The Oliver/Steinbrueck poles remain in Discovery Park. In mid-December, they were covered with tarps.

Oliver continues to sweep and hope for the poles’ reinstallation. The fate of her brother’s collaboration with Victor Steinbrueck remains up in the air.

THIRTY MILES south, the Puyallup Tribe holds the fate of the severed 1903 totem pole that stood for 118 years in downtown Tacoma before the city removed it from Fireman’s Park on Aug. 3, 2021. That morning, the city chainsawed the pole into six pieces.

Topped by an eagle, the pole reportedly was carved by Alaskan Natives hired by Tacoma businessmen, but by 2021 the city had deemed it inauthentic.

The city initially gave the tribe the pole’s mid-sections, retaining the top and bottom for interpretation by the Tacoma Historical Society. Its director, Jessica Smith, says a display might have examined cultural appropriation. “But we didn’t have the space or funding to stabilize these pieces for pests,” she says. So the top and bottom also went to the tribe.

The tribe confirms it is storing the pieces but hasn’t said what it will do with them. At Fireman’s Park, the pole’s stabilizing frame stands bare. The city says it might partner with the tribe to commission Coast Salish art for the site if grant funding surfaces.

Meanwhile, the historical society, which in 2015 revived “Eyes of the Totem,” a locally produced 1927 silent movie featuring the pole, has deactivated its online film-download portal, citing finances. “The cost,” Smith says, “was higher than the number of people purchasing or renting it.”

“Eyes” provides a “great snapshot” of 1920s Tacoma, Smith says, but it is “one of many parts” of Tacoma’s story, which includes the city’s historically “complicated” relationship with the tribe.

WEB EXTRAS

No updated 360-degree video this week because of technical difficulties. But you can see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video from the Sept. 2, 2021, blog post on the Tacoma totem-pole takedown, and hear that column read aloud by Clay, by checking it out at this link.

Below, you also will see two additional videos. In the first one, Mick Flaaen, part of the team that restored the 1927 silent-film melodrama “Eyes of the Totem,” introduces the film Nov. 12, 2023, at the Blue Mouse Theatre in Tacoma’s Proctor District. The film was made entirely in Tacoma by H.C. Weaver Studios. The Blue Mouse screening was part of the theater’s centennial celebration. The second video is the film itself.

Also, just added on Dec. 24, 2023, an evocative photo!

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 14, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 17, 2023

Rescuing the voice of Seattle Gay News, in print and online

By Clay Eals

Viewed on newsprint, vintage headlines can shock us as if they were published today.

That’s what Tom Rasmussen found recently while diving into copies of Seattle Gay News from 40 to 50 years ago. Tracking down the publication’s historic early editions was his initial goal. But what he saw along the way — such as a Jan. 1, 1982, story about a deadly “gay cancer” (AIDS) — delivered a wallop.

“Every week there would be pages like this,” says Rasmussen, a Seattle City Council member from 2004 to 2016. “It was chilling because ‘Who’s next?’ It was a plague. There was no awareness of what was causing it. There was no cure. It was this sudden sense of hopelessness. They were real people, and how young they were. These were people whose life should have been ahead of them, and they didn’t make it.”

One of Seattle’s earliest openly gay elected officials, Rasmussen three years ago began marshaling public and private institutions for the mammoth task of locating, sorting and archiving thousands of past editions of the paper and digitizing them to coincide with the paper’s 50th anniversary next March.

This quest pairs with a second golden milestone: five decades since the Seattle City Council’s vote on Sept. 10, 1973, to add sexual orientation to protection from employment discrimination.

Sponsoring that ordinance was council member Jeanette Williams, a human-rights advocate for whom Rasmussen worked as an aide decades before his own council stint.

Adding to this season of celebration, Seattle Gay News this fall acquired an enthusiastic new publisher, Mike Schultz. He rescued the paper from potential oblivion following uncertainty triggered by the 2020 death of 37-year owner George Bakan.

Notably, Schultz is reinforcing an abbreviated brand forged recently by Bakan’s daughter, Angela Cragin. Much as AARP did with its publications, Seattle Gay News adopted “SGN” as its name, reflecting the wider LGBTQ+ swath of its traditional coverage. It also hints at Schultz’ expansion of SGN’s service area beyond Seattle to Spokane, Bellingham and the Washington coast.

“We’re pulling in more of our queer community that otherwise didn’t necessarily have a voice,” he says.

Schultz plans a beefed-up, more timely online presence for SGN while retaining a regular print run. The continuing editions will augment physical SGN collections housed at a half-dozen repositories. This cheers Rasmussen, who cherishes the history of local LGBTQ+ progress and grew up on print.

“A physical newspaper is as close as you can get to being there,” Rasmussen says. “There’s something about holding a newspaper that was created at that time that is so tangible. It just helps you understand.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to University of Washington communications librarian Jessica Albano, Angela Cragin, Rick McKinnon and especially Tom Rasmussen, Mike Schultz and Maggie Bloodstone for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

You also will find 2 additional videos and, in chronological order, 17 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), SGN and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(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 and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 30, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 3, 2023

Cautionary shadow lingers from deadly West Seattle slide in 1921

By Clay Eals

While it happened 102 years ago, this is a cautionary tale for the ages.

My mother grew up not far from what she and others called Fairmount Gulch, the steep-sided canyon whose narrow and secluded road slices its lush woods, connecting West Seattle’s blufftop Hiawatha Park with Harbor Avenue and the Elliott Bay shore far below.

“Gulch” might imply foreboding territory. That impression could have originated, in part, from a lethal stroke of nature about a year before my mom was born.

On Sunday, Dec. 11, 1921, what the Seattle Star immediately called “the greatest rainstorm ever recorded in Seattle” wreaked regional havoc, nowhere more dramatically than in the gulch.

Riding the Route #1 Alki streetcar, Northern Pacific brakeman Samuel C. Andrews was headed to his home partway up the gulch at 1910 Fairmount Avenue. Before leaving work, at 6:15 p.m. he had telephoned his wife, Mary, who said she was cooking hot biscuits for supper and urged him to hurry home.

Shortly after 6:30 p.m., as Andrews stepped off at nearby Novelty Flour Mill (today’s Salty’s on Alki restaurant), the hillside to his west shattered him. The Andrews’ rental home and retaining wall had just been crushed by a maelstrom of mud falling from land next to view homes 120 feet above on dead-end Brook Avenue. Their house in turn had smashed a neighbor’s home, wrecking both structures. Killed were Mary Andrews and her stepsons John, 7, and Tom, 5.

The unrelenting storm triggered a second slide at 9:30 the next morning, injuring and temporarily burying nine city rescuers and two journalists. A third slide at 1:30 p.m. brought down another house. Rains receded, but harrowing memories lingered.

Nathan May, a Stanford Law School student, grew up along Fairmount Avenue, which he labels a “special corner” of the city. He takes personally what he calls “the profound human tragedy” at the center of the slides and seeks opportunities to make those who walk or drive Fairmount aware of “what happened here.” The legal scholar also sees a deeper, darker context:

“We have this enormous privilege of living in a region of unparalleled natural beauty, but there’s a flip side, which is that some of the factors that lead to that beauty — the hilliness, the precipitation, the unique weather factors — can also lead to tragedies like the one in 1921.

“It seems important that we pay heed to that risk and to the very real possibility that we’ll continue to see things like this in the years ahead.”

Of course, in 1921 no one had heard of climate change.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Midori Okazaki at the Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives, Heather of the Seattle Room of Seattle Public Library, Wendy Malloy at the Museum of History & Industry and especially Nathan May for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

You also will find an additional video and, in chronological order, 18 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

And see a trio of new (as of Jan. 15, 2024) additions at the bottom!

(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 and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 16, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 19, 2023

 101-year-old’s inspiring blog on aging becomes a pair of books

By Clay Eals

In her youthful eyes, smile and bearing, we can see it all — joy, hope and, reinforced by a sturdy tree, boldness and fortitude.

That fits this December 1940 day. The 18-year-old poses in uniform outside the Swedish Hospital nurses’ home on First Hill, following a “capping” recognition ceremony in the second of her four years of study at Swedish’s School of Nursing.

She’s Doris Schölin Carnevali, a Seattle native and local legend, less for an oft-honored nursing and educational career at Swedish and the University of Washington and more for what she embraced six years ago after turning 95 and continued through this year at 101. This accomplishment is an extraordinary blog of 200-plus entries, attracting 1,000 subscribers, with the rhyming title of “Engaging with Aging.”

Her blog, suggested by a UW dean and set up by a granddaughter, covers all manner of physical and emotional aspects of getting older. With a first-person voice, it’s less a compendium of explicit advice than a set of lessons by example, from adjusting to changed abilities to accepting offered assistance.

Mixing anecdotes and philosophy, the longtime West Seattleite imparts wisdom and humor from which we all can benefit, if (as the saying goes) we are lucky to live so long.

A sample: “No way did I think that becoming aged would require almost constant creativity in order to remain happy and satisfied, but it has! Now this creativity has little to do with the way I would have defined it in the past: artistic, inventive, theoretical. No, instead it’s been mundane, pragmatic, primitive, tiny, adaptive.”

Thus, in her kitchen: “The round knob on the oven … was too stiff for me to turn. A quarter-inch-wide small rubber band over its circumference gives me the traction I need. I can still bake!”

This fall, Carnevali’s blog posts were transformed into two colorfully illustrated, spiral-bound volumes by two Whidbey Island friends: Army Col. Grethe Cammermeyer, a longtime nurse (best known for her successful challenge of the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” homosexual policy), and illustrator-designer Stef Christensen.

Today, Carnevali is in assisted living, unable to travel. But several fans recently visited the site of her 1940 photo at the ever-changing First Hill campus of Swedish — an institution that, at 115, is not much older than Carnevali herself.

“What Doris has contributed,” Cammermeyer says, “is how a healthy, elderly person can manage the changes of aging, and do it with vim, vigor and enthusiasm. There is so much that is so positive and inspiring. I’m only 81. She’s telling us how.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Emily at the Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives, Heather of the Seattle Room of Seattle Public Library, Natalie Kozimor of Swedish Hospital and especially to Janet Primomo, Basia Belza, Sarah McKiddy, Grethe Cammermeyer and Stef Christensen for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

You also will find an additional video, 3 web links and, in chronological order, 29 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Web links related to Doris and her blog:

• Doris’ 2019 paper, “Engaging with Aging: A Framework for Managing Daily Living,” co-authors Janet Primomo and Basia Belza, published in the Journal of Gerontological Nursing
• A celebration of Doris’ 100th birthday, a 2022 Kudoboard
• A June 5, 2019, KING-TV story
• A winter 2021 story from 3rd  Act magazine

(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:

A SAD UPDATE:

Charlotte Bushue, featured in this installment of “Now & Then,” died of a sudden illness Friday night, Oct. 20, 2023, at Swedish Cherry Hill. Charlotte’s son and daughter asked that this be known. Charlotte became an instant friend to me. Jean Sherrard and I hope this installment serves as a fitting tribute to her. — Clay Eals

=====

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 19, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 22, 2023

Lofty Mount Rainier beckons
to young woman in 1926, and her daughter today

By Clay Eals

Invariably, it looms large. Some days it sparkles, taking our breath anew, though we’ve seen it countless times. Other days it faintly hovers in the haze. Still other days, it’s invisible, but we know it’s there.

Of course, I’m speaking of Mount Rainier. From one generation to the next, it’s the rock of our Northwest identity.

I renewed my awe for this perennial presence at a talk by historian Dan Kerlee last May at the Mirabella Seattle retirement community. Also attending was resident and Seattle native Charlotte Dean Bushue.

Afterward, I learned that Charlotte, 88, had brought along a battered box of 42 professional photos taken at and near Rainier’s Paradise trail base in 1926. Several of the 8-by-10s depicted Charlotte’s then-23-year-old mother, Jean Frazier, working as a guide that summer.

The box by her side, Charlotte reflected on her mom, who graduated college with honors and held several jobs: “She was a smart lady, and she liked to do unique things.” During the Depression, Frazier worked at a Seattle bank, “sitting at a table at the entrance to the bank with a pile of cash, reassuring the public that their money was safe. Can you imagine doing that now?”

Frazier also adopted a homemaking trajectory. She married in 1929, gave birth to Charlotte in 1935 and another daughter in 1938. The three followed Frazier’s husband through stateside military service during World War II. Frazier embraced entertaining guests, playing bridge and hiking the Silverton/Big Four region of the Washington Cascades. “She was tough, just her personality. With what we went through as a family during the war, I think it was tough for her not to have a profession.”

The keepsake box symbolizes a formative season that Frazier apparently treasured but didn’t chronicle or discuss with her children. But the photos themselves — showing a vibrant young woman alone and with peers crossing meadows and cavorting on shorter nearby peaks, with lofty Rainier as a backdrop — tell a vivid tale.

Today, active like her mom, Charlotte golfs and organizes walks at Mirabella. In August, I drove her to Paradise, where she readily repeated her mom’s 97-year-old pose. She beamed with satisfaction: “That she had that experience makes me happy.”

The twin gazes of mother and daughter, backed by gleaming grandeur, reflect the warmth of youthful dreams. And Charlotte’s tenderness beckons most anyone’s Rainier yearnings, certainly my own.

As a child, I often was driven by my mom across the Mercer Island floating bridge. On a clear day, she would point south and proclaim, “Get out your ice-cream spoons. The mountain’s out!”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Dan Kerlee, Brooke Childrey and especially Charlotte Dean Bushue for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

To see information on the Mount Rainier guide service, automobile rates and hotel rates in 1920, see this National Parks History page.

Below are two additional videos of:

• Charlotte Bushue reflecting June 2, 2023, on her mother, Jean Frazier.
• Dan Kerlee‘s presentation on the history of Mount Rainier on May 24, 2023, at Mirabella Seattle retirement community.

You also will find 40 additional photos, and, in chronological order, 3 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 5, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 8, 2023

The charming, barnstorming Babe Ruth captivates Seattle in 1924

By Clay Eals

With major-league baseball’s post-season swinging into high gear, “Now & Then” eagerly commemorates the first sighting of the Babe in our woods — George Herman “Babe” Ruth, that is.

Given today’s seemingly endless playoffs, this year’s champion team may not emerge before Nov. 4. But in the simpler schedule of 1924, the sole post-season play was the World Series, which that year ended Oct. 10. Immediately afterward, star ballplayers barnstormed, playing coast-to-coast exhibition contests, mostly west of the Mississippi — land of no big-league ballclubs.

Thus, 99 years ago, Seattle caught its first in-person glimpse of the megawatt New York Yankees outfielder known as the Bambino.

At age 29, Babe Ruth already had patented the persona of a slugger, having hit 284 of what became 714 career regular-season home runs. His 1924 batting average (.378) topped the American League. Sportswriters’ synonyms for him soared. (Sample: the “Supreme Socker.”) And his on-field performance reinforced a joyful, larger-than-life charisma. People of all ages, especially kids, revered the man.

Sponsored by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Ruth visited Seattle with teammate Bob Meusel.

In front of 9,000 fans in an Oct. 19 game enlisting local amateurs at Rainier Valley’s Dugdale Park, Ruth played errorless first base and, befitting his roots, pitched one inning.

In nine at-bats, he belted three homers and a double. His first four-bagger, the P-I’s Royal Brougham reported tongue-in-cheek, “hit Mount Rainier on the first bounce!”

During a late inning, Brougham wrote, a “curly-headed tot” ran out to Ruth, who bent over, shook the boy’s hand, patted his head and “sent him away happy.” Seventy-one years later, Dr. Bill Hutchinson told the P-I the boy was his 5-year-old brother Fred, who later gained fame as a big-league pitcher and manager and cancer-center namesake.

Ruth, here for two days, also hit balls pre-game to 1,000-plus kids in centerfield, visited hospitalized children, spoke at a banquet, “directed” conjoined twins who played “The Strike-Out Blues” on saxophone, and tossed autographed balls to fans from the P-I building at Sixth and Pine.

He even spoke against a statewide initiative to abolish private schools, saying that if not for a Baltimore industrial reform school, he “probably never would have been heard of.” The measure was defeated.

Before leaving Seattle, Ruth penned for a Western Union messenger a homily both touching and timeless:

“You can knock a home run always doing your work properly and travel the bases until you reach home plate. Success. Don’t alibi if you miss one. Play the game fair. Be there in the pinches, and in your business life you can be the ‘King of Swat’.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Dave Eskenazi, Mike Burns, and, at the Museum of History & Industry, Devorah Romanek, Julianne Kidder and Allie Delyanis for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below, besides a video of Mike Burns reflecting on his grandfather Bobby Burns, are 17 additional photos, and, in chronological order, 47 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Also check out these links:

• The Babe and others at MOHAI.
• The Babe in Dunsmuir, California.
• The Babe in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
• The 1924 championship Seattle Indians.
• Ballpark namesake Dan Dugdale.
• Seattle legend Roscoe “Torchy” Torrance.

In addition, here is a special letter from 1944 from Babe Ruth to P-I sports editor Royal Brougham, courtesy of Cathi Soriano:

NEWS CLIPS

The following clips are related to Babe Ruth’s two-day visited to Seattle in 1924.

NEWS CLIPS

The following clips are related to Bobby Burns and to the Seattle town teams he played for (Stacy Shown Jewelers and City Sash & Door). Burns was selected to bat fifth behind Babe Ruth in the Oct. 19, 1924, exhibition game.

(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.

BONUS: Dorothy Cordova will be honored by Historic Seattle when she leads a tour of FANHS at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 28, 2024. For more info and to register for this $5 event, click here.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 21, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 24, 2023

Dedication drives longtime Filipino champion Dorothy Cordova

By Clay Eals

With salmon leaping eagerly into a giant can (“From the sea to you!”), this week’s “Then” portrait depicts a festive float. Surrounding it are local Filipinos, 59 men and 8 women, heartily gathering downtown to take part in Seattle’s Labor Day procession of Sept. 5, 1938.

No less hearty, the present-day repeat of our “Now” photo speaks to a national organization documenting a community’s legacy and guided by a local Filipina dynamo, Dorothy Laigo Cordova.

In the 1938 shot, many don formal dress, and some hoist cans of salmon, celebratory symbols of the 1933 formation of the Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union, Local 7.

The first Filipino-led union in the United States, it spoke for thousands of often unrecognized immigrants who traveled summertimes to the then-Alaska Territory for arduous fish-cannery work. They called themselves “Alaskeros” (ala-SKERR-ohs).

The float also reflected political tensions. Although many CWFLU members were categorized as “nationals,” not U.S. citizens, and could not vote, they joined other unions in urging defeat of “strike control” Initiative 130, on the statewide ballot that fall.

The initiative was led by business interests who sought to “stamp out racketeering and violence in Washington” and promised “peace, pay checks [and] prosperity.” But union sympathizers held sway. The measure failed, 295,431 to 268,848.

Revealing just one swath of local Filipino history, the float image holds prominence among countless photos, posters, oral histories and documents stored and displayed at the headquarters of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS, pronounced “fonz”). The combination library and organizing center spans several rooms on the first floor of Immaculate Conception Church in the Central District.

Dorothy Cordova launched it in 1982 with her husband, the journalist, college spokesman and renowned civil-rights leader Fred Cordova, as an outgrowth of their late-1950s Filipino Youth Activities organization and early-1970s Demonstration Project for Asian Americans. Today, FANHS boasts chapters in 41 cities.

Fred died in 2014. Remarkably, Dorothy, 90, a Seattle native and longtime sociologist, teacher, researcher and activist (not to mention mother of eight), still runs FANHS. Unpaid, she commutes from Montlake to the office five days a week.

Dorothy’s decades of accomplishments and awards are formidable. This year alone, she received a legacy award in May from the Association of King County Historical Organizations, and at a banquet Thursday, Sept. 28, Historic Seattle will honor her as a “preservation champion.”

Why keep at it? “Curiosity!” she spouts. “Actually, it’s a mission: ‘Did you know anything about us? We were nobody.’ We try to set the record straight.”

And there’s always more: “You just have to keep plugging away.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Ben Laigo and especially Dorothy Cordova for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below, besides an additional video of Dorothy receiving a legacy award from the Association of King County Historical Organizations, are 4 additional photos, and, in chronological order, 70 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

October is Filipino American History Month. Activities and events can be found here. Info on the FANHS online auction Oct. 14-15, 2023, can be found here.

BONUS: a YouTube video created by Kevin Davis:

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 14, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 17, 2023

Where to find ‘golf utopia’ in 1931? No lie: at Mount Rainier!

By Clay Eals

It was outlandish 92 years ago. It’s outlandish today. But out on the land immediately south of Mount Rainier, there once arose, in golfing vernacular, an alluring ace.

For two Depression-era months in the summer and fall of 1931 at aptly named Paradise, the gem was a nine-hole golf course.

Don’t believe it? Photos, news stories, a logbook and even a blueprint prove that Paradise Golf Course was no high lie.

On opening day, Aug. 8, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it “golf utopia,” and not just for the up-close views of the 14,411-foot peak. Paul Sceva, then Rainier National Park manager, claimed that every drive had 30 yards more carry than on any other course in America. The reason? The 5,000-foot altitude sliced air resistance to a minimum.

“There is no question about it,” said its architect, Roy Herbert Dobell, of Aberdeen. “The ball travels 25% farther up here in the skies. I’ve proved it many times.”

The course also provided “a most interesting feature to the tired business man,” the P-I reported. “Every fairway is downhill.” A car regularly waited at hole No. 9 to carry golfers back to the first tee, which teetered over a bluff, a breathtaking 300 feet above hole No. 1’s fairway.

The Northwest Hickory Players, a 10-year-old, no-dues club of 125 golfers who play with vintage clubs and duds, recently drove to Paradise to revel in the place of their period predecessors. The club’s Martin Pool, of Kenmore, labels the setting a “spectacular novelty.”

By the 1920s, golf’s national popularity had soared. Pool’s research indicates that the park’s concessionaire proposed the course to boost sagging business at the mountain’s lodge, especially overnight stays.

“Golf is a country game, not a city one,” responded Horace Albright, then National Park Service director. “It can be justified in parks easier than tennis. Anyway, I want to try out the thing, and as the Rainier Company needs revenue more than any other company, I am disposed to let them try the experiment.”

Some 200 men and women, mostly from Puget Sound but also from Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, St. Louis, Niagara Falls and Tokyo, Japan, gave the course a try. Fees at the time were $1.50 for 9-hole play and $3 for all day.

Of course, the remote locale invited unique challenges, including a pair of bears who ambled the greens at dusk, snapping off bamboo flag sticks and pulling out cups. Then there was the weather. When snow blanketed the area in early October, the course closed, never to reopen.

Today, it’s one of history’s sweet spots.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Martin Pool, Gary Smyres, John Quickstad, Rob Ahlschwede of the Northwest Hickory Players, along with Ben Nechanicky and Mount Rainier National Park curator Brooke Childrey for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below are 2 documents , 2 additional videos, an additional photo, a 6-page log book and blueprint and, in chronological order,  4 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

The above video is contributed by Kevin Davis, who used blueprints, news clips and LiDAR data of Mount Rainier to re-create the 9-hole Paradise Golf Course.

(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.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

A BONUS!

This column installment begins below, But first a delightful bonus above. Here we present a one-minute radio commercial for First Bank, which is how Seattle-First National Bank branded itself from 1975 to 1977. Click the red promotional record below to hear the commercial, titled “Another Nice Thing.” Next to the record are images from its sleeve. Enjoy!

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Aug. 24, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Aug. 27, 2023

A former bank on Denny Way, but not its site,
retains its status as a Seattle landmark

By Clay Eals

Can a Seattle landmark lose its protection? If can if the Seattle City Council overrules its Landmarks Preservation Board.

In the 50-year history of the city’s landmark program, the council rarely has approved such a reversal. But it almost did so last January, before a compromise saved a building but not most of its surrounding site.

The site, at 566 Denny Way, is known mostly for its notable neighbors: the Space Needle, the Monorail, the KOMO-TV complex, the Chief Seattle statue, Denny Park (the city’s first), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the gaggle of South Lake Union mid- and high-rises informally known as Amazonia.

Since 2009, the site has operated as a Walgreens, but it took shape in 1950 as a Seattle-First National Bank branch, among the firm’s “customer-friendly” banks built after World War II.

The building — with its gently concave roof, stone logo plaques and brick-faced and limestone entries, augmented by a curved drive-through lane, parking lot and prominent identifying brick pillar — embodied design known today as Mid-Century Modern. It also brought stature north of downtown to a district of wood-frame houses leveled in 1928-30 during the final phase of the hill-sluicing Denny Regrade project.

Today, it bears unfortunate earmarks of decline: persistent graffiti and a closed front entrance to deter theft. But in 2006, the Landmarks Preservation Board designated the building exterior and site a landmark for its design, architects (Lister Holmes, John Maloney) and contribution to neighborhood identity.

Last year, the building and site faced the final step in the landmark process. Specific controls agreed to by Walgreens and the landmarks board and staff headed to the City Council, which routinely OKs such negotiated agreements. Not this time, however.

Backed by urbanist housing advocates, a council committee voted 4-0 on Dec. 9 against landmark controls for the building and site. Led by chair Tammy Morales, committee members said preserving a one-floor, auto-centric building and parking lot in a dense neighborhood “doesn’t make sense” amid a citywide housing crisis.

Heritage advocates disagreed. They also said the committee vote threatened the landmark board’s autonomy and expertise.

Their lobbying produced a compromise: On Jan. 10, the full council voted 9-0 to protect the ex-bank building but open most of the rest of the site to development. No plan to develop the site has surfaced.

The debate spotlighted the council’s desire to foster affordable housing despite its inability to compel property owners to build it. In addition, it addressed transfers of development rights, and it refocused attention on which landmarks are worth saving, especially those that express the city’s more recent history of change.

Discussion surely will continue.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Michael Houser, Michael Herschensohn, Leanne Olson, Tom Rasmussen, Nick Licata, Deb Barker, Kathy Blackwell, Karen Gordon, Erin Doherty, Midori Okazaki and especially Eugenia Woo for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below are 4 landmark-related documents  and, in chronological order, 33 historical clips (including 11 clips that detail how Seattle’s landmark ordinance came to be in 1972-1974) from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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 and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Aug. 10, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Aug. 13, 2023

Photographer grateful his images can ‘hit the moment in time’

By Clay Eals

You grow up an ordinary guy on the outskirts of Los Angeles. You’re not great at academics, but in the late 1960s you pick up a camera and shoot for the high-school newspaper and yearbook. Later, you work at McDonalds and a Ford plant. You deliver sailboats around the country. In 1979, you move north, bouncing from Granite Falls to Green Lake to the Alaska town of Valdez and, finally, to Shoreline.

All the while, you immerse yourself in enormous concerts by the biggest names in rock, blues, country and folk, your camera a constant companion. Over more than 50 years, you amass a rare archive.

You’re Steve Schneider, whose musically panoramic imagery fills “The First Three Songs: Rock & Roll at 125th of a Second,” a 220-page coffee-table compendium whose title alludes to the brief time at the opening of shows when promoters typically let photojournalists work up close. The tome bolsters Schneider’s uncomplicated mantra: “It’s always been about excitement, about fun. I just want to get the shot.”

The 71-year-old has earned day-job pay from documenting conventions of professional associations and occasional journalistic assignments (UPI had him shoot a 1984 Seattle campaign visit by Democratic VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro, see below). But nights and weekends are a different story.

His “Who’s Who” concert subjects range from CSNY to Pearl Jam, Dylan to Cobain, Bonnie Raitt to Carlos Santana, Willie Nelson to Paul Simon, to McCartney, Clapton, Jagger, Springsteen, Bowie and, yes, the Who. Whew!

Schneider’s most enduring focus, however, has been the trippy Grateful Dead, known for its freeform shows and faithful “Deadheads.” He has seen at least 100 Dead concerts. More than 20 appear in the book.

His Dead shots began with a May 25, 1974, gig at UC Santa Barbara featuring then-beardless leader Jerry Garcia. Exactly 21 years later, Schneider captured a greying Garcia at his last Seattle concert, at Memorial Stadium. Garcia died 76 days later at age 53, and Schneider’s portrait filled a page in Time magazine’s tribute.

The band persisted in various forms, most recently as The Dead & Company, which disbanded in July. Its fourth- and fifth-to-last shows were at The Gorge Amphitheatre. Schneider was there, part of “the family.”

For the Dead, and all of Schneider’s star subjects, the most compelling factor has been the music itself. “It once was all new,” he says. “The songs hit the moment in time. Today you enjoy the song, and it brings back good memories. I just preserve a bit of history, that moment in time that I saw.”

You might say it’s what keeps his Dead soul alive.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Steve Schneider for his invaluable help with this installment!

Below are 26 additional photos (not enlargeable here)  and, in chronological order, 10 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Aug. 3, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Aug. 6, 2023

Water cannons evoke big blazes fought by fireboat Duwamish

By Clay Eals

Wildfires often command today’s attention. But how’s this for a different kind of wild?

Early on May 20, 1910, at the foot of Vine Street along Elliott Bay, a kettle of melted asphalt sprang a leak, mushrooming into a “blazing pile of more than 100 tons of inflammable asphalt” and producing “the thickest smoke that ever rolled up from a city,” reported The Seattle Times.

The fire destroyed Independent Asphalt Co. and damaged Occidental Fish Company nearby but could have been catastrophic for the waterfront if not for gushers from “the highest powered fireboat in existence,” the Duwamish. Thousands of tons of water — shot from the vessel’s cannons for more than an hour, aided by two land-based engines along Railroad Avenue (now Alaskan Way) — doused the flames.

Eyewitnesses said the sight of “streams from the fireboat playing across her bow was the prettiest firefighting spectacle ever witnessed in this city.”

The inferno came 10 months after the launch of the steam-driven Duwamish, named for the city’s Native American tribe and only river. The fireboat fought decades of water-proximate fires, many with dramatic smoke plumes from both the conflagrations and the fireboat’s aging steam engine. Dieselized in 1949 and retired in 1984, the Duwamish endures as a city and national landmark at South Lake Union.

Seattle’s first fireboat — and the first one on North America’s west coast — was the Snoqualmie, launched in 1891. Sold in 1932, it became a freighter in Alaska, where it burned in 1974. The city’s third fireboat, the Alki, launched in 1927, lingered for decades at Lake Union and recently was scrapped. Thus, the in-between Duwamish is the sole old-time survivor.

West Seattle’s Bob Carney, a retired electrical-parts salesman who first toured the Duwamish at age 8 in 1968, could be its biggest historian and fan. He is rivaled only by Beacon Hill’s Steve Walker, who traces his maritime affection to “The Sand Pebbles” (1966) starring namesake Steve McQueen, “the king of cool,” as a military steamship engineer.

Walker, a state ferry retiree, helms the Duwamish, moored permanently at the Historic Ships Wharf next to the Museum of History & Industry. He and Carney lead Sunday tours, spouting gentle cannons of marine lore for visitors.

Today’s four operating Seattle fireboats are the Chief Seattle (launched in 1984), the Leschi (2007), Fire One (2006) and Fire Two (2014). During summer festivals, their pumps propel a sizeable spray. But the most inspired show emerges from the deck of the Duwamish where, for a few gripping moments at its disabled water cannons, anyone can imagine being a waterborne hero.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Molly Michel, Seattle Design Festival; David Cueropo, Seattle Fire Department; Xin Tong, Kristin Wong, Tom Liu, Devon Lawrence, Tom Smith and especially Bob Carney and Steve Walker for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below are a video interview of Steve Walker, a historical timeline and fact sheet by Bob Carney, 39 additional photos  and, in chronological order, 6 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on July 27, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 30, 2023

An overdue return trip for railway workhorse and zoo touchstone

By Clay Eals

We at “Now & Then” usually take our “Now” photos at, or near, the same spot as the “Then” images, but this week, the spatial spread is greater. We’re talking 35 miles.

At least the locales are in King County, and you may abide the distant pairing because the fundamental function of our subject is to move people and things from one place to another.

Those who lived here as children between 1953 and 1980 (or as adults with kid-like awe) likely recall with warmth and admiration, if not worship, the colorful locomotive #1246 that greeted visitors inside the south entrance of Woodland Park Zoo. The Great Northern Railway gifted the steamer to the city on the cusp of dieselizing its locomotive fleet.

Built in 1907, it had what today would be called a “wow” factor. To fully appreciate the gleaming engine, more than 15 feet tall, you had to look way up. In person, it demanded honor and deference — more than could be conveyed by mere visual or verbal depiction.

Of course, #1246 possessed a mobile past that long predated its stationary role as a zoo touchstone. For decades, it toiled on rails from Portland to Vancouver, B.C., and over the Cascades to and from Wenatchee.

For a time during the locomotive’s zoo stint, a placard heralded #1246’s historic status as a consolidation-style engine, featuring two small pilot wheels followed by eight 55-inch-diameter drive wheels:

“They were slower and less spectacular than earlier, lighter types, but their initial (starting) tractive effort was superior, and they could start and pull longer trains. For more than 75 years, they were the workhorses of American railroads, and their performance in mountainous terrain played a significant part in the development of the west.”

The narrative fits “The Railroad Changed Everything” tagline of Snoqualmie’s Northwest Railway Museum, which brought #1246 back to King County in late April after nearly 30 years of negotiations with owners in desert-like southern Oregon. Though looking “like it was pulled up from the bottom of a lake,” says Richard Anderson, executive director, it is reassuringly intact, complete with “grime and grease” from when it last operated 70 years ago.

Restoration will take years, but Anderson says #1246 already stands as a “massive and powerful” asset among the organization’s 75 rail vehicles. “You can walk right up to it and touch it,” he says, and the steam legacy adds “a sense of life.”

Eventually it will bolster an anticipated 35,000 square-foot addition to the museum’s current 24,000 square feet — just in time to awe the senses of a new generation of children.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Kevin Weiderstrom, Bob Kelly, Richard Anderson and Dan Kerlee for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below are 34 additional photos  and, in chronological order, 31 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column. Plus there’s a bonus at the bottom!

(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 and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on July 13, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 16, 2023

A century ago, a Seattle speech foreshadowed a president’s death

 By Clay Eals

Today we ruminate over presidents of advanced age. But a century ago, the U.S. president was Warren G. Harding, then just 57.

In 1923, his third presidential year, Harding mounted a grueling, two-month journey through the American West, with final stops planned in Washington, Oregon and California. Before sailing north to Alaska (then a territory), he addressed 25,000 on July 5 in Tacoma. Back south in Seattle on July 27, he spoke to 30,000, including many Boy Scouts, at Woodland Park and 30,000 at filled-to-capacity University of Washington (now Husky) Stadium.

Six days later … he died.

His Seattle speeches were the last for a president who — despite affability, enthusiasm and a statesman’s countenance — left professional and personal scandals in his wake. Today, historians rate him among America’s worst presidents.

A rural Ohio newspaperman who had risen to U.S. senator, Harding was a reluctant compromise candidate during the 1920 Republican convention in Chicago, emerging from a proverbially smoke-filled room.

Three years after his election, his 5 hours in Seattle played an unintentional role in his demise. He had traveled 5,246 miles via rail, car and steamship in just 22 days. After his Woodland Park appearance, plus a downtown parade and reception at Volunteer Park, his major speechifying ended at the UW.

There, wrote biographer Francis Russell, Harding’s cheeks looked green, and his jaws were “set in pain.” While speaking, the president “hesitated, slurred his words [and] called Alaska ‘Nebraska.’ ”

Midway, Harding “began to falter, dropped the manuscript and grasped the desk,” recounted Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce (and later president), who sat behind Harding, picked up the scattered sheafs and quickly organized and fed Harding the remaining pages. Harding, Hoover wrote, “managed to get through the speech.”

“PRESIDENT ILL!” screamed a Seattle Times banner the next day. Reportedly contracting ptomaine from poisonous crabmeat en route from Alaska, Harding was ordered to bed rest on his train. His tour abruptly ended.

“PRESIDENT IS DEAD” shouted the Seattle Post-Intelligencer front page on Aug. 3. His evening passing, in a San Francisco hotel, came from a heart attack. Five hours later, in Vermont, his vice-president, Calvin Coolidge, was sworn in as his successor.

“He had no business being president, but strange things happen,” says Mike Purdy, presidential historian, of West Seattle, who says Harding lacked the wisdom and vision for the role.

Harding himself offered confirmation: “The presidency is hell. There is no other word to describe it,” he once said. “I knew this job would be too much for me. I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Ron Edge, Greg Lange, Wendy Malloy, Gigi Allianic and Craig Newberry of Woodland Park Zoo, the PBS series “The American President” and especially Mike Purdy for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below are 2 additional photos  and, in chronological order, 60 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(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:

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on June 29, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 2, 2023

Look closely for the ferries’ floating billboards for Century 21

By Clay Eals

Countless times have we seen this placid, pleasing “Then” scene — two Washington State Ferries passing each other while criss-crossing Puget Sound.

But look more closely.

It’s 1962, and each ferry bears a 40-foot-long banner advertising the Seattle World’s Fair. Three-foot-tall letters proclaim the exposition’s futuristic moniker, Century 21. After “21” is the fair’s official logo, an arrowed circle resembling the biological male symbol and the astrological symbol for Mars. Its arrow points upper right, to space-age progress. Inside the orb is a skeletal cartoon globe. Throughout our region that year, the logo was seemingly everywhere.

But look even more closely.

Before “Century” is the same logo, only in reverse. The arrow points upper left. To the “Northwest,” perhaps? Or representing the double-ended, ambidextrous ferries themselves?

The speculation comes from Paula Becker and Alan Stein, who wrote the definitive 2011 coffee-table book “The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and Its Legacy.” The two otherwise puzzle about the inverted logo, which in their research they never saw reversed in any other context.

The banners, which transformed all 21 state ferries into floating billboards starting in June 1961, were prepared by the state and authorized by Gov. Albert Rosellini. The ads not only bolstered fair attendance but also helped boost 1962 ferry traffic to record levels: 3.2 million vehicles and 9.8 million people.

Our main “Then” photo itself is also distinctive. Most extant photos of the bannered ferries are in black-and-white, and they usually show only one such vessel, not two.

The photographer was then-25-year-old William “Bill” Benshoof, who captured a south-facing view of the Kehloken (foreground) and Rhododendron ferries on the Mukilteo-Clinton run while courting 21-year-old Wylene “Willie” Feske, the woman he would marry Nov. 30 that year.

Fresh from a Navy stint, he was working on the Minuteman missile project for Boeing, while she was beginning a phone-company career. Each living with family near White Center in 1962, the two visited Bill’s aunt on Whidbey Island, hence the ferry trip, and took in the big-city fair.

“It put Seattle on the map,” Bill says. “It was our Disneyland.” Willie recalls “how excited people were. They all had to come to Seattle to see the Space Needle and the center.” Bill liked “the funny-looking elevator” called the Bubbleator inside the Coliseum (today’s Climate Pledge Arena). Willie delighted in a Pacific Northwest Bell exhibit “where you could talk on the phone and see each other.” With a laugh, she recalls telling a friend at the time, “That’s never gonna happen.”

Could bannered ferries happen again? Perhaps (wink!) with our next world’s fair?

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Dina Skeels, Jade D’Addario of the Seattle Public Library Seattle Room, Ian Sterling and Christy Grnaquist of Washington State Ferries, Emily & Bruce Howard, Paula Becker, Alan Stein and especially Bill & Willie Benshoof for their invaluable help with this installment!

No 360-degree video this week.

Below are 8 additional photos  and, in chronological order, 31 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(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:

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on June 15, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on June 18, 2023

Soothing steamboat runs ended in upriver Snoqualmie in 1917

By Clay Eals

All 13 of those posing in this week’s idyllic “Now” scene came to the riverbank across from downtown Fall City by car. So did Jean Sherrard and I. Indirectly, the needs and wants of us and our collective forebears are why this section of the Snoqualmie River hasn’t seen a paddle-driven steamboat in well over a century.

In the late 19^th century, steamboats, also called sternwheelers, were part of Puget Sound’s celebrated Mosquito Fleet and a prime mode of transport for hops, timber and people in rural waterways. But their navigation fell victim to unmistakable signs of growth and progress — the complicating cables and booms of cross-channel ferries and bridges, the parallel routes of new railroad lines and the coming popularity (and rumble) of automobiles and trucks. Steamboat runs upriver as far as past Duvall, ended by 1917.

Thus, any rivercraft sailing past Fall City today consists only of recreational rowboats, rafts and kayaks.

But oh, for the days of steamboats, yearn childhood pals Steve Barker and Jack Russell. Now straddling age 78, they devoted their four most recent years to assembling a new, large-format book, “Steamboats on the Snoqualmie.” Its 148 pages overflow with 130 historical photos, six intricate maps and myriad details of elegant vessels from a seemingly gentler time, with names like the Traveler, the Ranger and the May Queen.

The softcover volume focuses on what we might call three “S-es”: the Snoqualmie River and to a lesser extent its downstream siblings, the Skykomish and Snohomish — a system emanating from the Cascades and snaking to saltwater in a northwesterly direction from above Snoqualmie Falls to Everett.

Russell, of unincorporated Skyway (between Seattle and Renton), and Barker, of Duvall, met in the fifth grade in 1955-56 at Hawthorne Elementary School in the Rainier Valley. Their families bore sternwheeler connections that buoyed their 67-year friendship.

Barker, a retired banker, was the primary writer and Russell the researcher. Russell also parlayed his steamer passion into an adult vocation he still practices today. He runs a Fishermen’s Terminal-based charter service on the 1993-vintage Christine W, the only commercial sternwheeler on the Sound. It embodies an appeal the book can only attempt to capture.

“It’s the smell of the steam and the cylinder oil. It’s not a diesel chugging away,” Russell says. “It only goes 5 to 6 mph, so it’s a gentler motion. And steam whistles can be very pretty, very melodious. It just sounds different and feels different than a propeller vessel.

“And when the paddlewheel turns, you can hear the wheel hitting the water. It’s a soothing sound.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Ruth Pickering, Lisa Oberg and especially Steve Barker and Jack Russell for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

Below are a video of Jack Russell and his Christine W sternwheeler, a newsletter cover, 3 additional photos  and, in chronological order, 10 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.