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(Published in The Seattle Times online on August 4, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on August 7, 2022)

Municipal portrait makes ‘You’ll Like Tacoma’ a winning slogan
By Jean Sherrard

Distracted by the trio of natural and architectural jewels strewn across the skyline of this 1910 photo of Tacoma’s north downtown, we easily can miss the discreet banner stretched over a roadway in the foreground shadows.

Its crisp caption: “You’ll like Tacoma.”

The year-old slogan originally had been adopted by Tacoma promoters during arch-rival Seattle’s first world’s fair, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, meant to encourage visitors to venture south to the self-styled City of Destiny.

Directly across Lake Union from the fairgrounds (today’s University of Washington campus), boosters had erected their Paul Bunyan-sized solicitation in huge, electrically illuminated letters.

The motto was both “an invitation and a prophecy,” gushed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “and it fit [Tacoma] like a new glove: neat, apt, modest and winsome.”

The $30,000 campaign also included buttons, flyers and paid ads. Even a “patriotic march song” was commissioned to amplify the message:

You’ll like Tacoma
Where rail meets sail,
Where all are prosperous,
Hearty and hale,
Down on Commencement Bay,
A New York’s growing, day by day,
Tacoma, the peer of all.

For Paris-born photographer Paul Leo Richards, his popular “Then” photo, captured a year after the exposition, was a valentine to his adopted city. Fresh off the boat in 1891, the ambitious Frenchman wore many hats — inventor, investor and innovator — but is best known for documenting and celebrating the shining attributes of Tacoma.

This notable municipal portrait also subtly tweaks the Tacoma-Seattle rivalry. Just for fun, let’s keep score:

The Mountain That Was God, a mere 40 miles to the southeast, looms gloriously large. Tacomans persisted in calling it Mount Tacoma or Tahoma, its native moniker, disparaging the Seattle- (and USGS-) approved namesake, English Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. Names aside, Tacoma has always rocked the mountain view.

Point: Grit City.

At center, Northern Pacific Railroad’s Headquarters, completed in 1888, overlooks train-track ribbons and Commencement Bay. The creamy, stucco-covered structure also commemorates Tacoma’s 1873 triumph over Seattle, when the railroad chose the tiny (population 200) unincorporated town as its western terminus, in one fell swoop breaking more than a thousand Queen City hearts.

Point: the City of Destiny for the snub.

At right, just across Pacific Avenue, stands Tacoma’s commanding Old City Hall, built in 1893. A superb example of Italian Renaissance style, its eight-foot-thick foundation walls support a freestanding clock/campanile tower, slightly tapered to emphasize its soaring 10 stories. Seattle, having just erected a more utilitarian flatiron city hall in 1909, might well have expressed envy.

Point: You’ll prefer Tacoma, for the win.

WEB EXTRAS

A 360 degree video will be forthcoming but Jean is in his second day of Covid – not too serious thus far, but his dry cough keeps ruining vocal takes!
And at last here’s the 360 (in the first couple minutes, a cop tries to convince Jean to get out of traffic. Jean nods, and smiles agreeably but continues recording).

We have a handful of extras this week, including more materials featuring photographer Paul Richards.

But this just in! Lane Morgan, daughter of legendary historian Murray Morgan (author of ‘Skid Road’ and many other monumental books of regional history, as well as being mentor and close friend of this column’s founder Paul Dorpat), sends along the following delightful odes to Tacoma, written by her grandfather Henry Victor Morgan between 1912 and the early 20s.

Her favorite:

POULTRY IN TACOMA

Livin’ in Tacoma is one long delight,
Just a been attendin’
Poultry show tonight;
Every hen a-singin’–
Red and white and blue—
“Gee we like Tacoma, Bet your life we do!”
All together sayin’, “Isn’t this sublime?
Don’t you like Tacoma? Ain’t the climate fine?

Ever see such weather on a New Years Day
That is why we’re happy. That is why we lay.”

One Rhode Island biddy
Filled the room with cackle,
Said Tacoma’s Leghorn: “She is from Seattle.”
Answered biddie’s Chanti
Rolling up his eyes,
“Yes, we’re from Seattle,
And we won third prize.”

One lone bird seemed dumpy
At the poultry feast
Said the White Minorka,
“She is from the east;
She is like a trolley, off the beaten track,
Dumpy? She is thinkin’ that she must go back.”

Then the roosters proudly
All began to crow,
“No place like Tacoma! Watch Tacoma grow!”

And, as promised, a bit more about Paul Richards:

After building a life in Tacoma, he joined the US Army as a photographer and documented the First World War in France. Certainly, he also served as a translator as well. In the final months of the war, tragedy struck in the form of mustard gas. Severely wounded, Richards spent three years convalescing but died in 1921 of his injuries.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on July 28, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 31, 2022

Born of war, Woman’s Relief Corps fed nation’s ‘higher sphere’

By Clay Eals

One of my mentors — the late Elliott Couden, an open-housing advocate in the 1960s who 20 years later founded the Southwest Seattle Historical Society — once lamented that as a boy, he had to learn history by memorizing timelines keyed mostly to wars. “We didn’t get very much into what relation we as individuals have to this society,” he said.

He could have been reading the mind, and heart, of Richard Heisler. During the pandemic, the energetic equestrian artist and historian, 49, focused his research on the estimated 3,500 Civil War veterans and their families who migrated to King County near the turn of the 20th century. Heisler, of Bothell, has unearthed direct links between these vets and the rise of the town east of Lake Washington’s northern tip.

Nationally, starting in 1866, many of the war’s surviving Union soldiers formed the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) fraternal organization. In 1883, their wives, along with daughters and other descendants and supporters, began gathering in posts of an auxiliary, the Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC).

The Bothell WRC post began in 1902, and 22 of its members (plus two discreetly positioned men) populate our “Then” photo from 1908. They pose outside the city’s 1893 William Hannan home, which stands today at Bothell Landing along the Sammamish River, a half-mile west of its original site. Pristinely restored, it houses the Bothell Historical Museum.

Bothell, the city, derives from a family by the same name. Heisler pointedly notes that the only graphic symbols on a Bothell Pioneer Cemetery monument for founder David Bothell (1820-1905) and his wife Mary Ann (1823-1907), parents of George, the city’s first mayor, are of the GAR for David and WRC for Mary Ann.

Other local luminaries had ties to the war’s Union forces and their abolitionist, Lincoln Republican ways of thinking, Heisler says. “We think it was all so distant,” he says, “but many veterans and their families came west and walked the streets all over this county.”

WRC posts produced patriotic Memorial Day observances, installed flags and monuments and even supported women’s suffrage. At an 1885 Seattle gathering, the GAR’s J.C. Haines saluted their role: “We welcome you because you have demonstrated that woman has a higher sphere than any that man can ever lay claim to — a sphere as broad as human sorrow, as lasting as humanity itself.”

Today, the WRC has receded locally, but it lives on in Heisler’s talks, including one set for 6 p.m. Aug. 3, at the Bothell Library, for the Bothell museum. “This is not an abstract thing,” he says. “These are people.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Bill Woodward, Pat Pierce, Jill Keeney and especially Richard Heisler for their 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.

Below are two additional photos, two videos and 22 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 21, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 24, 2022

‘Eight Arcs’ tableau signifies transformation on Alaskan Way

By Clay Eals

You can see it looking south along Alaskan Way, but only for a block and a half at street level starting at Pier 66 or atop the Bell Street overpass, and only on clear days. To me, it symbolizes a century of transformation for Seattle’s shore. It’s a tableau that I call the Eight Arcs.

In our “Now” photo, front to back, count ’em:

• The Seattle Great Wheel (2012).
• The twin roof ridges of Lumen Field (2002, originally Seahawks Stadium then Qwest Field).
• The four roof ridges of T-Mobile Park (1999, originally Safeco Field).
• The curved countenance of Mount Rainier (1 to 2 million years ago, originally Tahoma).

This pleasing juxtaposition serves both today’s saltwater tourists and the roadway’s recently arrived condominium dwellers. For them, it’s a place of play.

But little — besides the pointed Smith Tower (1914) in the distance — is the same when you zip back nearly 90 years to our “Then” scene, along what had long been named Railroad Avenue.

Taken on an overcast Friday, June 22, 1934, from the Lenora Street overpass (1930-1983), the photo reveals what we characterize as a working waterfront, with side-by-side wharves, rail tracks and a divided, wooden boulevard beneath which washed the tides of Elliott Bay.

With much of its former train traffic undergrounded in a nearby tunnel, and as cars used the timber trestle to bypass the upland business district, this byway spelled sporadic trouble. To wit, on Nov. 24, 1934, a car skidded on tracks near Lenora, plunged 15 feet through the center split and landed upside down in 3 feet of water. The stunned driver was unhurt.

Thankfully, progress on the route already was afoot. In this Depression decade, work had begun to pave the thoroughfare and close its gap, remove its above-ground electrical wiring and poles and, most important, construct a protective western seawall, finished in 1936.

Such enterprise inspired the city to give the water-hugging street a more relevant, elegant name. More than 9,000 ideas poured in, many invoking the expansive sobriquet of “Way.”

With a decision nigh on July 6, 1936, the leading contender was Pacific Way. However, in a nod to the role Seattle’s waterfront played in the late-1890s Klondike Gold Rush, as well as to the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (the city’s first world’s fair), Alaska Way slipped in as the finish-line favorite.

To honor “the men and women who pioneered the territory,” councilman and former mayor Robert Harlin appended the letter “n.”

The result, Alaskan Way, still provides a touch of humanity along the road to today’s Eight Arcs.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Ron Edge, Bob Carney , Gavin MacDougall and Mike Bergman for their help with this installment!

Below are two additional alternate images from our NOW view and 41 clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column. Among the clips are 20 exploring the fascinating process of renaming Railroad Avenue, plus 8 historical pieces by our column founder, Paul Dorpat!

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Published in The Seattle Times online on July 14, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 17, 2022

A parade of community continuity thrives in tiny Fall City

By Clay Eals

Is anything so timeless and appealing as a parade? From musical to commercial, from patriotic to protesting (which in turn is patriotic), a parade engages countless participants and onlookers, encompassing every age, setting, group and cause. All you need is two feet — or wheels — and the willingness to move.

Parades happen so often that movie characters on the run momentarily evade capture by joining one. In 1984, I saw a local political candidate become so entranced by a parade’s effect that after one cruise along the route he circled back to the end of the line and motored through again.

There’s just something innate that draws us together in person, what I’ve learned to label the Original Social Media: Face to Face. Especially in a neighborhood or small town, a parade embodies this, weaving a powerful spell. Seemingly everyone sees everyone, breathes the same air and exchanges smiles and waves.

And this summer, after a two-year pandemic hiatus, parades are back all over the county. One of the earliest took place June 11 in Fall City, the unincorporated burg 25 miles east of Seattle. The route, on Redmond-Fall City Road paralleling the Snoqualmie River, has served the tiny town’s annual processions since the post-World War II early 1950s.

Greater gatherings surrounded the parades, of course. Initially, the event was called the Strawberry Festival before morphing into Fall City Derby Day, saluting a Cub Scouts soap-box race and showcasing Derby Darlings atop a float. (One year, in 1968, the parade gave way to a River Drift, in which a 35-gallon metal barrel was dropped into the Snoqualmie, and citizens guessed how long it would take for the barrel to float 3.2 miles to a finish line.)

A new name emerged in 1971: Fall City Days and Logging Show. This year’s post-virus rebound was simply Fall City Day, celebrating 150 years since establishment of the hamlet’s first post office. Accoutrements included the traditional dunk tank and watermelon-eating contest.

One sign of community continuity along the parade route is a building at 337^th Place Southeast whose legacy stretches to the late 1880s, when it began life as a hotel and restaurant. Over the decades, its name, functions and roofline have changed, but it has stood as a parade touchpoint, next to the reviewing stand.

The Fall City Historical Society’s history books have tracked those incarnations faithfully, thanks in no small part to the group’s longtime director, the vigilant Ruth Pickering, this year’s parade grand marshal. “Rural towns are an important thing,” she maintains. “They’re kind of an endangered species.”

Unlike, thank goodness, their parades!

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Bob Carney, Emily and Bruce Howard and Ruth Pickering for their 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 four documents from the Fall City Historical Society, an offbeat historical blurb from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), and three sets of additional photos that augment this column.

Parades R us!

In three groups, here are 93 additional photos (click twice on each one to enlarge it):

• 15 photos from the Memorial Stadium endpoint of the 1965 Seafair Torchlight Parade, by Katherine Drazic, courtesy of Teresa Anderson.
• 30 photos from the June 11, 2022, Fall City parade by Jean Sherrard. Click twice on each photo to enlarge it.
• 48 from the 1956 Fall City parade by Larry Divers and courtesy of the Fall City Historical Society.

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(Published in The Seattle Times online on July 7, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on July 10, 2022)

A Saloonkeeper’s civic sensibility inspired a lasting auditorium
By Jean Sherrard

James Osborne may have attended late 19th-century touring opera performances at Yesler’s Hall at First and Cherry, only blocks away from his profitable Gem Saloon in Pioneer Square.

And while tapping his foot to the music of Donizetti, Bellini or Verdi, the confirmed bachelor might have conjured an act of civic generosity that ended up supporting arias in centuries to come.

Affectionately referred to by friends as “a great infidel” due to his free-thinker’s rejection of religion, Osborne (1834-1881) bequeathed a whopping $20,000 to Seattle with one condition: The donation could be used only to build “a public hall” with city matching funds.

Nearly five decades passed before Osborne’s bequest was fulfilled. The site was a fertile stretch of glacier-carved swale between Queen Anne Hill and regraded Denny Hill.

Dotted by willows and edged with wetlands, this was a traditional gathering place for the Duwamish, who called it Baba’kwob or “the prairies.” The skillful netting of ducks scared up from Lake Union provided ample protein for potlatches and other tribal festivities.

The land also proved ideal for growing fruit, vegetables and imported roses. Settlers David and Louisa Boren Denny moved there in 1854 with their young family, building a log farmhouse and planting gardens that supplied much of Seattle’s fresh produce for the next quarter century.

In 1886, the Dennys — by then one of the region’s richest families — had donated much of the site to the city, prescribing, with an echo of Osborne, that it be reserved for “public use forever.”

By 1927, Osborne’s invested legacy had grown to $110,000, but repeated efforts to erect a public facility had languished or been thwarted despite popular acclaim.

That year, The Seattle Times lobbied for a civic structure to reflect a reinvigorated “Seattle Spirit.” Added the Post-Intelligencer: Seattle was “the only great Pacific Coast city without … a large municipal auditorium.”

City council members and Seattle’s first female mayor, Bertha Landes, offered vigorous support, proposing a $900,000 bond to fund construction.

However, passage required a turnout of at least 50% of eligible voters, and the March 8, 1927, election became a nailbiter. A Times banner warned on the afternoon of election day: “Light Vote Endangers Auditorium.” But Seattleites heeded the call, passing the proposition.

The 7,700-seat Civic Auditorium was completed by June 1928 and hosted its inaugural event, a national Kiwanis convention.

In 1962, the auditorium was refashioned for the Seattle World’s Fair as the Seattle Opera House. In 2003, with donations and public funding, the structure was largely rebuilt, with improved acoustics and seating, as Marion Oliver McCaw Hall.

WEB EXTRAS

Go for it! Click on through to our 360 video, shot on location and narrated by Jean.

Also Clay reminded me of the centerfold of our 2018 book ‘Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred” which features a spectacular view of the Civic Auditorium from Queen Anne! It’s quite wide, so double click for full impact.

Also, we include a few celebratory photos of the Northwest Folklife Festival, marking its return after a two-year pandemic caesura.

Just for fun, check out the  jam session on the steps of McCaw Hall featured in our “now” photograph.

Update Aug. 8, 2025, from Des Moines Historical Society on the City of Des Moines EIS authorizing demolition and preservationists’ GoFundMe for an appeal. And these recent Cascade of History podcast interviews by Feliks Banel: the Des Moines city manager, and a King County preservation architect and a Des Moines citizen group.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on June 30, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on July 3, 2022

Will Des Moines’ majestic Masonic Home be demolished?

By Clay Eals

Near the south King County waterfront suburb of Des Moines, 10-year-old Richard Kennedy tickled his accordion keys to perform the “Lone Ranger” TV theme (the “William Tell Overture” finale) in a 1964 recital on the stage of the Masonic Home of Washington.

He had no idea he would grow up to be mayor of Des Moines and later lead the Des Moines Historical Society’s effort to save the same structure inside which he’d played the clarion call.

What would Kennedy’s hometown be without the majestic, 95-year-old edifice, sparkling from its hillside for all to see from land and Puget Sound?

“Des Moines would slowly become just another place without anything to denote it from the next town,” he says. “We’ve lost so much. The history is gone, there’s very little left. The Masonic Home is the most outstanding building in the city.”

Technically, the Masonic Home — built in 1925-27 by the European-rooted Freemasons fraternal assembly as a statewide residence for elderly members and wives “who have ceased to bear the heat and burdens of the day” — was erected not in Des Moines but one mile south in the community of Zenith.

But in 1982, Des Moines annexed Zenith, and in a town known for massive retirement complexes, the Chateauesque, five-floor Masonic Home stands preeminent. As city-council member JC Harris told the Waterland Blog earlier this year, “The Masonic Home is Des Moines. We all just live here.”

Closed as a retirement center in the mid-2000s, it hosted events for several years. The Masons studied its conversion to assisted living, a tourist casino or communal workspaces but determined that rehabilitation, costing $40 million, would not pencil out. In 2019, they sought a city demolition permit and sold the home. The current owner is Sumner-based Zenith Properties, which has filed its own wrecking-ball permit request.

In response, Des Moines began an environmental review, inviting citizen comments this spring and triggering an advocacy alert by the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation. But the city, says Bonnie Wilkins, city clerk, has advised its council members to stay mum to achieve an appearance of fairness during the extended study because council comments could prompt a developer lawsuit. “It’s pretty serious stuff,” she says.

That doesn’t deter the passionate JC Harris, who promotes the Masonic Home’s preservation, envisioning it as a park, city hall and/or community center, complete with coffee or wine bar: “It’s one of the most beautiful things in all of Puget Sound, which makes it one of the most beautiful things on the planet Earth.”

The stage is set for a Lone Ranger-type rescue.

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Mike Shaughnessy, Richard Kennedy, Kevin Hall, Chris Moore and Huy Phan for their help with this installment. Additional kudos go to the more than 100 people who turned out in the hot sun of May 22 to pose in our “Now” photo.

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 of Des Moines City Council member JC Harris, six additional photos, a 1938 booklet, four reports and documents, six web links and two historical articles from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Web links:

• City of Des Moines: Zenith Properties Building Demolition Application
• City of Des Moines: Zenith Properties Building Demolition Application comment tracker
• City of Des Moines City Clerk
• Seattle Times story, Dec. 20, 2020
• Waterland Blog, Feb. 11, 2022
• Washington Trust for Historic Preservation Advocacy Alert

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(Published in The Seattle Times online on June 23, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on June 26, 2022)

Vroom with a view: Bikers still ‘see everything’ 112 years later
By Jean Sherrard

It was, proclaimed the Seattle Times, “the first real endurance tour in the history of the motorcycle in the Pacific Northwest,” hosted July 3, 1910, by the Seattle Motorcycle Club.

In our “Then” photo, 26 club members pause near Volunteer Park before the event, straddling their cycles while wearing leather chaps, sporting mustaches and derby hats.

These early bikes were not dependable, says Tom Samuelsen, historian of the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling. An extended trip demanded equal reservoirs of luck, mechanical improvisation and sheer tenacity. Writer Frank Richardson Pierce retrospectively detailed the riders’ elaborate dance:

“When the photographer finished, the club members shoved belt-tightening levers and pedaled madly until the engines started. Then, loosening each belt so that it slipped on the pulley, they dismounted, [easing] the machine off the stand. … Remounting, they tightened the belt and were on their way.”

The grueling, 2-day run began at 7 a.m. from Pioneer Place (now Pioneer Square) and adhered to a punishing schedule.

Checkpoints included Kent, Tacoma, the Mount Rainier Park entrance and the Nisqually glacier, plus an overnight stay in the town of Elbe. A checkered flag was waved in front of the Seattle Times building at Second and Union at 6 p.m. Independence Day, July 4.

Of the 33 motorcyclists who started the tour — propelling two-thirds of the 50 motorcycles then owned in Seattle — all but four vroomed the distance. Local shops and merchandisers awarded top finishers prizes ranging from headlight lamps and goggles to new sets of tires.

Our “Now” photo was snapped Sunday, May 22, from the same vantage, the steps leading up to the Volunteer Park water tower, looking south along 14th Avenue.

These 30 motorcyclists also participated in that day’s 11th annual Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride. A global event spanning more than 700 cities and 100 countries, it has raised more than $31 million since 2012 for the Movember Foundation, on behalf of prostate-cancer awareness and men’s mental health.

Seattle hosts one of the largest such rides, mainly sponsored by two local clubs, the Vintage Motorcycle Enthusiasts (VME) and the Rainier Ravens (an all-women’s motorcycle group).

While the classic motorcycles featured here are more reliable than their early counterparts, their riders are no less passionate about their choice of conveyance. Samuelsen waxes poetic about motorcycling zen:

“It’s nothing like riding in a car. And if you slow down a bit, you can see everything — farmland, mountains, ocean — and become part of nature. It provides direct immersion into the world.”

WEB EXTRAS

For our usual 360 video, narrated by Jean Sherrard, vroom over here.

In addition, we offer several bonbons of motorcycle memorabilia and documentation, most supplied by the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling, now celebrating its 30th anniversary.

First, let’s supply a few additional details concerning our Now and Then photos, courtesy of Tom Samuelsen, PNWMoM senior historian:

“The THEN photo depicts the Seattle Motorcycle Club (SMC) member’s First Annual Endurance Run that was to be held on July 3-4, 1910. This was the first real endurance tour in the history of the Pacific Northwest. Valuable prizes were offered for the best score. This run was held under the sanction of the Federation of American Motorcyclists. Each rider was credited with 1000 points at the 7am start in Seattle’s Pioneer Place, now called Pioneer Square. Rules stated that for each minute late or each minute early at the control timing points there would be 2 points deducted. The run also included one secret control check. The average speed of 20 miles per hour kept riders safe on the dirt roads and trails up Mt. Rainier and they rode far beyond the highest point reached by auto or carriage. 

“They returned to the town of Elbe where they spent the night. The next morning, they rode to Olympia and checked in at Ashley’s Motorcycle Shop in Tumwater then took lunch at the Carlton Hotel, leaving Olympia at 1:15pm after a pass through several check stations in Tacoma and Kent.

Seattle was reached at 6:00pm with the last check at the Seattle Times Building. Two silver cups and several prizes were awarded to the dusty riders. Of the 32 starters all but four riders made it. Perfect scores were earned by seven riders as follows: C.R. Roy, 6 ½ Yale; Lee Dagner, 7 Indian A.W. Hirsch, 4 H-D; Nels Christopher, Fred Walker, Paul Koch and B.S. Klein all of whom rode 4hp Excelsiors. (Article by the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling)

“The NOW photo features members of the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling, co-organizers of the re-creation of the 1910 Seattle Motorcycle Club photo. It was taken on May 22, 2022, just south of Volunteer Park’s historic Water Tower on 14th Avenue East for the Seattle Times ‘Now & Then’ pages in the weekly Pacific NW Magazine. Jean Sherrard and the Pacific Northwest Museum of Motorcycling (PNW MoM) have collaborated to recreate the images of early motorcycle history multiple times. 

“Front row, L-R; Jack Mackey holding the minutes of the Seattle Motorcycle Club’s 1910 ride planning. Most of the motorcyclists pictured are members of the PNW MoM and the Vintage Motorcycle Enthusiast (VME). Tom Samuelsen holds a photo taken in Seattle on July 3, 1910 at the starting point of the Endurance Run; Tammy Sessions (PNW MoM President) hold SMC records from 1910. Tad Dean, Jeff Earle, Chris Sharon, Paul Henderson, Emily Mullens (leader of the all-women’s motorcycle group Rainier Ravens) also appear, l-r. 

“Several motorcycle groups are represented in the current photo, including Mike Coski representing the historic Tacoma Motorcycle Club (also formed in 1910), and Cretin’s MC members, Knuckle Busters MC members, and other prominent members of the motorcycle industry. “

(again, click twice to expand to full size)

Plus a couple of Seattle Motorcycle Club treasures from 1910. Just below, a copy of the actual minutes of the club committing to the endurance tour.

A menu from the SMC 1910 banquet, celebrating a successful summer of touring:

Of special note, the fish entree: “Scallop of Pedal au Spring Fork”. For dessert, “Endurance Run Pudding”.

(Incidentally, the Firloch Club was most likely at the same spot as today’s Seattle’s Tennis Club.)

For both enthusiasts and the moto-curious, here are a slew of candid photos taken of participants in the Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride. Thanks to all the easy riders who joined in!

A late-breaking extra and mea culpa! A photo of the Seattle Motorcycling Club at the start of its 1911 endurance tour, also near Pioneer Square, was misdated as 1910 (due to operator error!).

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Published in The Seattle Times online on June 16, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on June19, 2022

Bleitz’s consumer-first legacy enlivens 101-year-old funeral home

By Clay Eals

From death can spring life. Case in point: the feisty, long-lasting Bleitz Funeral Home.

The 101-year-old edifice represents a customer-focused tradition at a prominent corner, hovering over the Lake Washington Ship Canal at the south end of the Fremont Bridge.

Serving bereaved families until 2017, the same year it was designated a Seattle landmark, it has entered a new phase as a fully leased office building, anchored by The North Face apparel firm. The pandemic-era preservation triumph was stewarded by its current owner, Pastakia & Associates of Seattle, and general contractor, Bellevue-based Foushée.

The stately, 2-1/2-floor concrete structure arose just four years after the ship canal and bridge were completed. Illinois-born Jacob Bleitz (pronounced “Blites”) had worked as an undertaker in Wichita before establishing a funeral business in 1904 in Seattle’s Green Lake neighborhood. After short partnerships in Fremont with morticians Edgar Ray Butterworth and John Rafferty, he crossed the bridge and settled his sole-owner mortuary in 1921 along Queen Anne’s industrial northern edge.

From the start, dealing with death transcended mere business for Bleitz. He promoted affordability and excoriated undertakers he called predatory. “The People of Seattle Have Been Outrageously Overcharged for Funerals and Materials,” roared a full-page notice in the Feb. 18, 1915, Seattle Star. His ads promised the “lowest” prices. One even warned of “graft” by competitors whom Bleitz said gave away hundreds of Christmas turkeys to induce referrals.

Long before it became popular, Bleitz also encouraged a cheaper alternative: cremation. In the late 1930s, he went further, patenting and using an ultra-hot-flame technique leaving no remains, called evaporation: “The New And Better Way … COSTS NO MORE … Gives a comfort never before known.” It didn’t catch on.

In the year Bleitz died, 1939, the family firm partnered with the new People’s Memorial Benefit Association, a cooperative that emphasized spiritual rather than material aspects of attending to the bereaved. Later, the Bleitz company became known in funeral circles for serving AIDS victims and the LGBTQ+ community when other mortuaries rejected them.

Over the years, Bleitz Funeral Home handled more than 180,000 deaths, including the cremations of famed grunge rockers Andrew Wood in 1990 and Kurt Cobain in 1994. Today the building showcases “adaptive reuse,” meriting an award in May from the Queen Anne Historical Society.

Historian Michael Emmick embodies the Bleitz legacy via family connections. Working stints at Bleitz were Michael’s great-grandfather, Sam Frederiksen (1970s-80s); father, Craig Emmick (1975-2004); and wife, Desirée Emmick, (2015-17). Since 2014, the Emmicks have operated their own West Seattle funeral business, guided by the Bleitz approach — as Michael says, “not selling people something they don’t need.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Eric Jones, Tejal Pastakia, Bob Carney and the Emmicks — Craig, Desirée and especially Michael — for their 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 interviews of the Emmick family on video, two 2017 Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board documents, 41 additional photos, and 34 historical articles and ads from Washington Digital Newspapers (available via the Office of the Secretary of State) and The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Published in The Seattle Times online on June 9, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on June 12, 2022)

All-in-one Denny Hall arose first on UW’s relocated campus
By Jean Sherrard

The proudest day of my great-grandfather’s life was the one marking his graduation from the University of Washington.

Arthur Dailey had arrived in Seattle two months before the Great Fire of 1889 from Kalamazoo, Michigan, soon finding a teaching job. At the advanced age of 30, he hoped that a collegiate diploma would assure his future.

With the rest of his 18-member class of ’97, displaying the school colors of purple and gold, he enthusiastically chanted the school cheer based on Chinook jargon that conveyed bravery and strength:

1. of W., Siah! Siah!
   U. of W., Hiah! Hiah!
   Skookum, Skookum, Washington!

This first graduation on the new UW campus, held May 28, 1897, marked another milestone in its 36-year history.

The school was founded on 10 acres downtown in 1861 by Arthur Armstrong Denny (1822-1899), leader of a 22-member party that had arrived on Alki only 10 years earlier. By 1891, the UW was bursting at its seams. Seattle’s population had exploded to more than 50,000, inhibiting further expansion.

To redress the pinch, the state Legislature approved relocating the UW to the then-rural Brooklyn Addition on the shores of Union Bay. The elderly Denny, still a tireless higher-education supporter, donated most of the 350 acres for a campus with room to boom.

Ground was broken for the university’s first north-end structure in 1894. A French Renaissance design by Charles W. Saunders (1858-1935) topped 24 other submitted sets of drawings. The resulting Administration Building, later renamed Denny Hall, came in well under its $150,000 budget, fed by low labor costs stemming from the depression of 1893.

Its 20,000 square feet housed all six of the university’s colleges and included 10 classrooms, a 6,000-volume library, faculty and administration offices and a 736-seat auditorium, all crowned by a belfry.

In September 1895, the edifice, comprising four floors of light-colored Enumclaw sandstone and pressed brick, trimmed with terra cotta and outfitted with the latest heating and plumbing, welcomed more than 200 students.

Our “Then” photo was snapped using Carrie Coe’s camera, likely in 1895, during a family outing to admire the newly completed building. Her husband, Dr. Frantz Coe, after whom Queen Anne Hill’s Coe School is named, was a future Seattle school-board member and friend of the Dennys. The tangle of bushes and a fresh-cut stump provide evidence of still-undeveloped wilderness on every side.

For his part, my great-grandpa Dailey made good use of the sheepskin, serving as principal to schools across the region. By 1899, he felt secure enough to marry his sweetheart, Ballard schoolteacher Agnes Johnson.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 degree narrated video version of this column, please take a short trip here!

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on June 2, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on June 5, 2022

Index’s only inn perseveres amid historic charm and challenge

By Clay Eals

For more than 100 years, as a gravel road or streamlined pavement, the Stevens Pass Highway has beckoned as a cross-Cascades catalyst to intimate scenic bliss.

As we motor through a succession of tiny towns on the west side of the mountains, a rich palette of trees, bridges and railroad tracks along the Skykomish River feels so fresh, green and close, it’s as if we can reach out and touch the wide, deep swaths of crisp, wooded splendor.

The former timber and mining burg of Index, roughly 60 miles northeast of Seattle, once welcomed such pass-through traffic along its few unpretentious blocks via a 10-mile winding road from Gold Bar.

But the early 1930s brought modernization. The state constructed a shorter stretch of the highway that bypassed Index, leaving the hamlet one mile northeast of the new artery. It was, The Seattle Times stated on Sept. 13, 1931, part of “the steady movement to minimize the blockade of the Cascade range against the vast hinterland that feeds Seattle and Tacoma with produce for export and manufacturing.”

Accessible via a turn-off road and ringed by four “Washington Alps” from to 5,464 to 6,244 feet in height, Index has persevered through the decades as a mini-paradise. Remoteness has both bolstered the town’s charm and embodied its challenge.

Enter the Bush House Inn. Built in 1898 (some say earlier), the three-floor structure competed with four other hotels for hungry lodgers when the Index population topped 500. Now it’s the only hotel in the riverside town of 150.

It presides on Index Avenue, nestled against a sheer, 1,270-foot climbing wall and a stone’s throw from Great Northern rail tracks whose freight trains and Amtrak cars regularly roll through town.

The inn suffered from disrepair and closure early this century. But after a decade of energy and financing marshaled by a pair of couples — Blair and Kathy Corson, proprietors of an Index recreational firm, and Dan Kerlee and Carol Wollenberg of Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood — the extensively restored and remodeled 10-room hotel reopened last fall.

This effort merited a salute at last month’s gala of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, which in 2009 placed the inn on its list of Most Endangered Places.

The building holds promise as not only a travelers’ getaway but also a center for weddings, events and, with a new, expansive stage, concerts and dramatic productions. To echo its original incarnation, the owners are even searching for an on-site restaurateur.

Invisible from the highway, however, the Bush House Inn begs a “Field of Dreams”-like riddle: If you rebuild it, will they come?

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Blair & Kathy Corson, Dan Kerlee & Carol Wollenberg, Louise Lindgren of the Index-Pickett Historical Museum, Jack & Heidi Miller of Husky Deli, Huy Pham of Washington Trust for Historic Preservation and Bob Carney for their 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 7 additional photos, 2 video interviews of the couples who co-own the Bush House Inn and 38 historical articles and ads from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Also, check out links to stories on the Bush House Inn  from the Daily Herald of Everett on Dec. 27, 2021, and July 3, 2017.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on May 26, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on May 29, 2022)

Visitors aboard a 1950s waterfront tour had to walk the prank
By Jean Sherrard

During her first visit to Seattle, Gwendolyn Dixon wrote home to her parents in tiny Green City, Mo., that she having a whale of a time. On the backside of this Boyd Ellis postcard, postmarked Aug. 25, 1953, she mentioned plans to take a one-hour boat tour of the harbor.

Would that we could scratch and sniff Ellis’ photo, snapped a year earlier in 1952! A pungent working waterfront would spring to life.

Add the sound of ferry whistles, harbor gulls and the booming voice of Seattle Harbor Water Tours’ barker Rudi Becker (lower left) for full effect. The skipper on the flying bridge is likely Lynn Campbell or Joe Boles, company co-owners.

Campbell and Boles were particularly proud of their recent acquisition, named for a freak swell that nearly capsized the vessel on its passage from San Diego. After a $21,000 repair and facelift, the owners claimed the Wave was unique on the waterfront. Though sporting a conventional, 50-foot-long hull with a 13-foot beam, the cabin featured large, stainless-steel-framed, shatterproof panes of glass, providing spectacular harbor views for its 68 passengers.

And business boomed. Tourists and locals alike took in waterfront highlights, from Coast Guard weather ships and Smith Cove to United Fruit Company’s banana terminal. Most impressive, Campbell said, were the Todd drydocks at Harbor Island, “where you get to see how big a ship really is … and wonder how anything so heavy can float.”

During evening tours, Becker, a self-described “wharf rat,” could be heard tickling eager passengers: “By special permission of the chamber of commerce, we are permitted to include on this trip the sight of the setting sun.”

In the postcard’s background, above Alaskan Way, looming are pale concrete ribs of the nearly completed viaduct, which opened in April 1953. At right, near an octopus mural at the northeast corner of Pier 54, a mounted sign supplies evidence of Ivar Haglund’s aquarium. It drew many visitors for 18 years, until it was shuttered in 1956.

A coda:

Joe Boles (1904-1962) made a late-life career change, improbably becoming the Northwest’s leading recording engineer, famously mastering the Wailers’ cover of “Louie, Louie.”

His partner, Lynn Campbell (1912-2013), offered harbor tours until his retirement, evolving the business into what is known today as Argosy Cruises.

Rudi Becker (1913-1976) served as a tour barker, wag and jokester for more than a decade. Watching tourists fill souvenir bottles with Elliott Bay water, he advised caution. “You better pour some out,” Becker said, “Come high tide, that bottle will break.”

Most tourists took it as Sound advice.

WEB EXTRAS

For our narrated 360 degree video of this column, please head over in this general direction.

And for further life aquatic, here’s a few photos of Ivar Haglund’s waterfront aquarium, courtesy of Ivar’s:

A late addition – the Times article from July 24, 1949 concerning the United Fruit Company’s Banana Terminal.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on May 19, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on May 22, 2022

A lovingly preserved house can help us find our way home

By Clay Eals

Can we go back home again? An oft-quoted aphorism says we can’t. But we all yearn to click our figurative ruby slippers.

In March, I learned that the home my grandparents had built 97 years ago on Walnut Avenue in West Seattle was up for sale. At its open house, I languished for two hours.

I imagined my young mom and her three older sisters running up and down its stairs and singing by an upright Ludwig piano in the first-floor sunroom. I pictured their pranks, one mischievously flushing a toilet while another talked with a boy on the nearby phone. I envisioned my parents’ wedding in front of the golden-brown tiled living-room fireplace, where in 2000 I posed them for a matching “Now” photo on their 50th anniversary.

Preschool-age recollections also surfaced as I sat on front-porch benches that opened into ostensibly secret storage pods. And I lingered in the remodeled kitchen where, in its former breakfast nook, I learned to sip from a straw.

In one sense, this house isn’t distinctive. Just a two-story, four-bedroom prairie Craftsman.

Yet its context, a stone’s throw from Seattle’s first indoor-outdoor community center at Hiawatha Park, has, for nearly a century, conveyed unspoiled neighborhood warmth. Seemingly everything one could want — schools, stores, even a library, ravine, wading pool and movie theater — was mere steps away.

Mainly, however, I marvel at a dwelling that has been owned by only three families, each one stewarding it with loving care.

The soon-to-be fourth family, Brandon and Alisa Allgood, hail from California’s Silicon Valley. Brandon, 47, is an artificial-intelligence executive, and his wife, Alisa, 53, is an architectural and interior designer.

Because Brandon grew up in Marysville and on Capitol Hill and has family near Arlington and Darrington, the two have long eyed a move to Seattle. They got serious in February, gravitating to the Walnut house because of its streetside stature, open floor plan, plentiful light, proximity to Alki Beach and what today is called walkability. “We didn’t want run of the mill,” Brandon says. “We like aesthetics and uniqueness.”

The pair anticipates electrical and plumbing upgrades but will retain the house’s integrity. “We realize,” Alisa says, “we have a responsibility to keep it up.”

In Seattle’s dizzying real-estate spiral, preservation comes with a price — in this case, a purchase in excess of $1.4 million. As the cliché goes, for many the so-called American Dream remains just that: a dream.

But I also know that my early time at the Walnut house eventually led me to claim West Seattle as my own Emerald City base. May similar homes survive everywhere to inspire us all.

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Bill Reid, Whitney Mason, Midori Okazaki, Ann Ferguson, Mahina Oshie, Joe Bopp and especially Deb & Bill Bigelow for their 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 Deb Bigelow, 7 additional photos, a property record card from the Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives and 12 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on May 12, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on May 15, 2022)

A surviving signpost to Belltown’s origins soon will fall
By Jean Sherrard

Some ancient parchment, as historians know, is scrubbed clean and rewritten upon while leaving behind faint traces of the original text. Such a page is known as a palimpsest.

When exploring the crosshatch of Seattle streets and architecture with this column’s founder Paul Dorpat two decades ago, I realized that his X-ray photographic vision of our ephemeral city included similar traces. The residues, like double exposures, appeared in unlikely places and cracked open historical clues and mysteries aplenty.

This week’s “Then” photo revisits an early discovery of Paul’s that cemented his vocation as historical detector and photographic repeater. He penned a lengthy account of his efforts in the Dec. 20, 1978, edition of the weekly Seattle Sun. The headline: “Digging Up the Past of the Late and Great Denny Hill.”

Perusing a photo collection, he came upon a portrait of the city unlike any he had seen. While “uncannily familiar,” this image did not seem to match Seattle’s existing topography. Paul concluded that it was a place “that had somehow lost its future, for it appeared to be in no way findable in our here and now.”

Then came a “Eureka!” moment.

With a magnifying glass, the name “Bell” emerged on a street sign. Familiar with Mama’s Mexican Restaurant at the corner of Second and Bell, Paul was thrilled to recognize the triple set of bay windows belonging to the Wayne Apartments, built in 1890.

The original clapboard had been covered with asbestos “war brick” siding, but the pictorial puzzle was solved. Denny Hill’s “back side,” 220 feet above sea level, was revealed in this rare, south-facing view of what today is called Belltown, captured just before an early regrade of 1903.

Among few remaining pre-regrade structures, the bay-windowed Wayne has shone prominently and repeatedly over four decades — in “Now & Then” in 1984 and in lectures and books, including our 2018 tome “Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred.” The edifice has born witness to change, loss and the thrill of discovery.

But not for long.

In early April, we received word from artist Buster Simpson and Steve Hall, a preservation advocate with Friends of Historic Belltown, that the Wayne and adjacent structures along Second Avenue soon will be destroyed. Though they achieved landmark status in 2015, exemptions to the ruling are allowing a prospective 9-floor retail-residential building to fill the space. Its height will more than match the original summit of Denny Hill.

In the rueful words of historian David B. Williams, modern developers seem to be “merely rebuilding the hill one banal building at a time.”

WEB EXTRAS

NOW2: Increasingly decrepit, the Wayne’s 132-year-old sagging roofline soon will be replaced by a 9-floor building, with retail on the bottom and apartments above. (Jean Sherrard)A few photos of the soon-to-vanish icon follow. Accompanied by Buster Simpson, I explored the back of the old Wayne apartments and crawled up a couple rotting staircases. A special prize for those who find the pigeon eggs.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on May 5, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on May 8, 2022

Seward Park’s torii was a welcome gateway, especially for a child

By Clay Eals

Unaware of her parents’ painful memories of World War II incarceration at Camp Tule Lake in northern California, preschooler Diane Taniguchi found that weekends in the early 1950s promised a family frolic.

“We used to take joy rides on Sunday afternoon after church,” Diane said in a 2015 video, citing drives from their home in the Publix Hotel in what is now called the Chinatown-International District to a South Seattle peninsular paradise — Seward Park.

“Dad called it ‘Suwado Pock’ because he couldn’t say r’s, and his pronunciation was still very Japanese right after the war. But those were great times. It was carefree. I was 4 or 5 years old. Not a worry in the world.”

Welcoming the Taniguchis and myriad other park visitors was a cultural symbol that Diane “really loved” — an imposing, reddish span modeled on entrance structures at Shinto shrines in Japan, called a torii. Pronounced “torr-ee,” the word means “bird perch,” but such structures have become known more broadly as gateways to extraordinary spaces.

The wooden Seward Park torii had a 50-year life, starting on University Street downtown at the 1934 International  Potlatch and bearing a pro-trade sign: “Seattle — America’s Gateway to the Orient.”

The following spring, the torii (sans sign) found a verdant site at Seward Park’s entry isthmus, joining other Japanese elements, including cherry trees and an 8-ton stone lantern. It oversaw festivals and countless informal meadow gatherings through mid-1984, when Seattle Parks removed it due to decades of decay.

In 2011, the park’s centennial organizers vowed to build a new version. Fueled by $360,000 in grants and donations, a 20-foot-tall basalt-and-cedar replacement stands today in a plaza 20 feet north of the original’s tree-confined concrete foundations. At an April 2 ceremony, a crowd of 200 enjoyed musicians, dancers and speakers exulting beneath the edifice.

Officiants included Don Taniguchi, 76, honoring his younger sister, Diane, a preservationist who helped raise money for the new torii but died of cancer in 2016. Don’s thoughts also drifted to their dad, originally from Hawaii, and mom, of Tacoma, who both stayed silent about their camp challenges and the complexity of their new life while working “all the time” managing the Publix.

“They didn’t talk about the hardships,” Don says. “I guess it hurt them too much.”

From youthful eyes, he says, Seward Park and its torii bespoke “family time,” a cheerful refuge. “You felt a little prejudice, like somebody getting in line ahead of you, but you didn’t really understand why,” he says. “You didn’t think about those things. You just played. … You cherish those days now.”

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Paul Talbert of Friends of Seward Park and Karen O’Brien of the Rainier Valley Historical Society, as well as automotive expert Bob Carney and former Seattle Parks staffer Bob Baines for their help with this installment. For more info, visit their Seward Park torii page.

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 Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below are 5 videos, 9 additional photos and 4 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Congrats! Award goes to our column founder

Longtime Seattle historian Paul Dorpat, founder of the “Now & Then” column that appears Sundays in The Seattle Times (and with “web extras” on this blog), will receive the 2022 Board Legacy Award of the Association of King County Historical Organizations (AKCHO).

The honor will be presented during AKCHO’s annual awards event, online, from 5:30 to 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, May 24, 2022. To view the event, visit this link. Paul’s award is being saved for the end!

The award to Paul is triggered by his recent donation of a vast collection of historical photos, videos and printed materials to the Seattle Public Library so that they eventually can be accessed by anyone free of charge.

The donation reflects “your legendary loyalty to identifying and celebrating Seattle history,” says Pat Filer, award chair.

Paul, the author of many local history books, originated “Now & Then” in the Sunday magazine of The Seattle Times in January 1982. He prepared more than 1,800 columns over 37 years before retiring in 2019.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 28, 2022
(visit that link for many extra photos!)
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on May 1, 2022

The Beatles found good fishing for young fans in 1964 Seattle

By Clay Eals

A long-ago best friend sometimes offered a question at social gatherings as an icebreaker: “What was your first concert?” One by one, all would mention fond memories of musicians and venues. Taking the final turn, my friend would stun everyone with three words:

“Beatles, 1964, Coliseum.”

The show was an instant Seattle legend. The third in 23 cities of the Beatles’ first North American tour, the Aug. 21 stop at what today is called Climate Pledge Arena drew a sellout throng of 14,045. Mostly young teens, reportedly “20 to 1” girls to boys, each paid just $3, $4 or $5 to contribute and/or endure waves of nearly continuous ear-splitting screams that all but drowned out the foursome’s half-hour, 12-song set.

This “Beatlemania” and attendant controversies typified the entire tour, reporters summoning the swoons historically incited by the likes of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and even silent-film’s Rudolph Valentino.

What gave the Beatles’ visit a distinctly Seattle touch was their overnight at the waterfront Edgewater Inn, then 2 years old. From room 272, the “moptops” leaned out a window and famously posed with fishing poles over Elliott Bay.

Did they catch anything? No, they agreed at a press conference. Drummer Ringo Starr deadpanned, “Someone on the other side of the bay kept shouting, ‘There’s no fishing here.’ ”

Endearingly, one floor above them, 11-year-old Sandy Fliesbach, attending a wedding at the Edgewater, cast her own line. On hotel stationery she wrote a note seeking the Fab Four’s autographs, lowering it out her window with ribbon from opened gifts. She whistled, and someone below pulled in the note. A minute later, it came back out the window, and Sandy reeled it in. All four had signed it. Hundreds of girls chanting outside the inn’s temporary plywood and barbed-wire barricade were not so fortunate.

Two years later, the Beatles returned for two shows at the Coliseum. After the group’s 1970 break-up, John Lennon never had another Seattle gig (he was shot and killed in 1980). George Harrison played the Coliseum in 1974 (he died in 2001). Starr and Paul McCartney have performed here in several separate incarnations, the latter’s Wings group notching the first concert at the old Kingdome in 1976.

Astoundingly, the still-boyish McCartney, just six weeks shy of age 80, will play Climate Pledge on May 2-3. Perhaps he would twist and shout over a 58-year-old crack by parodist Allan Sherman (“Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”), who played the Opera House and bunked at the Edgewater during the Beatles’ 1964 Seattle stay:

“The Beatles are really quite unpopular, but nobody knows it yet.”

Beatles, 1964, Coliseum — just the facts

• Set list: “Twist and Shout,” “You Can’t Do That,” “All My Lovin’,” “She Loves You,” “Things We Said Today,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “If I Fell,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Boys,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Long Tall Sally.” To hear audio of their show, click here.

• 

  Sound: The Beatles’ set, measured by acoustic expert Robin Towne, was 95+ decibels for 60% of the show and 100+ decibels for 30%. (Maximum exposure without earplugs, such as an industrial plant, was recommended as 85 decibels.)

• Bucks: The show grossed $64,000. The Beatles were to earn $25,000 or 60% of the gross, whichever was greater, so after $7,000 in taxes, they were paid $34,200. Minus fees for warm-up acts, their take-home was $32,000 ($278,000 today).
• Warm-up acts: the Bill Black Combo, the Exciters, the Righteous Brothers and Jackie DeShannon. (Smash hits for the latter two came later.)
• Security: At the Coliseum were 50 Seattle police, 4 King County deputies, 14 firefighters, 6 Armed Forces police and 100 Navy volunteers from Pier 91.
• Health: Hospitalized were 2 teens; 35 others received first aid. On hand were 5 ambulances, one of which carried the Beatles back to the Edgewater.
• Souvenirs: After the Beatles left Seattle, their room 272 rug at the Edgewater was cut into 2-inch squares that sold for $1 apiece at MacDougall’s department store, to benefit Children’s Orthopedic Hospital.
• Airwaves: The Beatles had five songs on KJR-AM’s Fabulous 50 the week of their Seattle show.
• Silver screen: Playing the Paramount Theatre during the show was the Beatles’ first film, “A Hard Day’s Night.”

(Sources: The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive, and a recording of the show.)

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Kelsey Beniasch and Claudia Lew of Wagstaff Marketing, to staff of The Edgewater Hotel, to Joe Wren and Gavin MacDougall and especially to Teresa Anderson, Garnis Armbruster Adkins, Carol Griff Reynolds, Joey Richesson and Kate “Bobbey” Blessing, for their help with this installment.

Click here to see a previous “Now & Then” column  on the Edgewater.

We offer no 360-degree video for this installment, but instead we feature a video with interviews of all the participants in our “Now” photo (plus a backup), in which they reflect on the Beatles’ 1964 show at the Coliseum. To see it, click here or on the image below.

In addition, below are 8 photos, an historical essay and 58 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

To start off the extras, we have an essay by Clay examining the orientation of our “Then” photo:

‘All I’ve  got is a photograph ‘ : Flipping over the Beatles

By Clay Eals

The topic du jour is the orientation of our color “Then” photo, the well-known image of the Beatles fishing out the window of their room 272 suite at the Edgewater Inn on the afternoon of their evening show Aug. 21, 1964, at the Coliseum.

On the internet, it’s easy to find our “Then” in two versions, one in which the Beatles face right, and one in which the Beatles face left.  But which version is correct? I was determined to solve the puzzle prior to our “Now” shoot.

Details of the Beatles’ hair parts and shirt collars in the photo, compared to the same details in several other photos from Getty Images of the Beatles inside their Edgewater suite, seemed to indicate that that the facing-right version was correct. I also was skeptical of a facing-left orientation because the low-level, indistinct masses in the background appeared to me to likely depict Harbor Island and its ships and shipyards. However, the Edgewater’s website, as well as a blown-up display inside room 272 and a framed photo in the hotel lobby all use the facing-left version.

With these conflicting notions in mind, before our “Now” shoot I made a separate trip to the Beatles Suite (still room 272) of The Edgewater Hotel (formerly Inn) in the hope of figuring out the correct orientation. The Edgewater staff asserted that room 272 is in the same west/southwest-facing corner spot today as it was in 1964. When I examined the room’s windows and leaned out them, taking sample photos, it seemed clear to me that the facing-left version had to be correct.

I had two reasons for this conclusion: (1) The positioning of the fishing window immediately adjacent to the building’s corner in the facing-left version is consistent with the present-day position of a similar window along present-day room 272’s exterior wall that runs northwest/southeast. (2) Given this, if the facing-right version were correct, from the window of today’s room 272 the photographer would have looked southeast and captured in the distance the Smith Tower and the rest of Seattle’s 1964 waterfront and downtown scene, but instead we see the low-level, indistinct mass. This argued for the photographer shooting in a northwestern direction — the direction shown in the version with the Beatles facing left.

As I looked northwest from outside the room 272 window, I noted that the end of Pier 69 that jutted out in the background was not present in the 1964 “Then.” But this could be explained by separate newspaper research indicating that Pier 69 had been redeveloped in the early 1980s.

Thus, the facing-left orientation seemed the better bet when Jean Sherrard and I shot our “Now” photo on March 24, 2022. Jean looked northwest, and our four “Now” posers matched the Beatles, facing left. That’s how they appear in this post and in the Seattle Times online and in print.

But on April 29, 2022, after this column had been posted for a day, the plot thickened. New evidence and insight emerged from one of our column’s stalwart volunteers, Gavin MacDougall.

Though I had searched Google Images and Getty Images for relevant Beatles fishing photos, Gavin’s own search turned up two Getty black-and-white versions of out-the-window Beatles fishing photos that I hadn’t seen — and that obviously were taken slightly before or after our “Then.” These photos, which you can see at this link, and at this link, provide definitive evidence that the correct orientation of the photo has the Beatles facing right, not left.

Here’s why: The background of these black-and-white photos is much more distinct than in the color photo of the same situation. Clearly in the background are not only Harbor Island and silhouetted ships in for repair but also a ribbon of white further in the distance reflecting construction underway on the Fauntleroy Expressway snaking diagonally up the east bluff of West Seattle.

But how could this be, if this view is not possible from the windows of present-day room 272? The answer, as the Edgewater had told me, is that in 1964 when the Beatles stayed in room 272, the room was larger and/or likely connected to adjacent rooms, whereas today’s room 272, marketed as the Beatles Suite, is smaller and designed for a couple, not a Fab Foursome. So in 1964, the larger version of room 272 had to extend around the corner along part of the adjacent exterior wall that ran due north and south and included windows that faced due west. Thus, when the Beatles fished out the southernmost window along that wall, the photographer leaning out the window to its north would have been facing due south and would have shown Harbor Island and West Seattle in the background of the resulting photos.

That room 272 was larger and provided windows straddling the Edgewater’s west/southwest facing corner is apparent from the Getty photo at this link. There, the fishing window is shown at right, and drapes cover another window at left on a wall that is at an irregular angle to the fishing-window wall, indicating the corner.

Bottom line: Though I tried hard to suss out this question before the “Now” shoot, I should have been able to dig up the Getty Images that served as the “smoking gun.” Had I done so, we would have flopped our 1964 “Then” photo so that the Beatles were facing right. We also would have sought access from the Edgewater to the room next door to — and around the irregular corner of — today’s Beatles Suite in room 272 to shoot our “Now.”

Why take pains to explain this how this error occurred? A whimsical answer may lie in the chorus of a 1973 Ringo Starr song, “Photograph”:

“All I’ve got is a photograph
And I realize you’re not coming back anymore …”

Incidentally, while versions of the out-the-window fishing photo have been widely circulated in both orientations, its photographer is rarely mentioned. KOMO-TV archivist Joe Wren notes that in a 1995 interview that Beatles companion and confidant Derek Taylor did with the station, the photographer for the exterior fishing shot was identified as the Beatles’ official photographer, the late Curt Gunther. But such attribution is made difficult by the assertion on the Getty Images website that several photos of the Beatles inside their Edgewater suite were taken by a William Lovelace. The mystery continues, but here’s the KOMO-TV story, aired April 28, 2022:

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More photos, a ticket stub, a letter, another video, an essay,
an array of news clippings and the Beatles’ 1964 tour booklet

Here are additional photos taken March 24, 2022, the day of our “Now” shoot, of the Edgewater’s Beatles Suite and of our “Now” posers therein. At the end of this gallery you will find a brief video of our posers standing before a Fab Four portrait in the suite’s bathroom gamely making their way through a minute or so of one of the songs the Beatles sang at their 1964 show: “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

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These 57 newspaper clippings document the Beatles’ 1964 show in Seattle:

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These photos depict the Beatles’ 1964 tour booklet “Beatles (U.S.A.) Ltd.,” available for purchase at their shows. The images are courtesy of Teresa Anderson. Click once or twice on each one to enlarge it. At the very bottom is the cover for the Beatles’ 1966 tour booklet, contributed by Deb Bigelow.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on April 21, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on April 24, 2022)

With a peaceful view, Silvana’s Little White Church endures
By Jean Sherrard

In an increasingly discordant world, we scan for hopeful signs and clues – some are lodged in the past. One symbol of reunion and healing might be found on a rural hillside an hour’s drive north of Seattle.

The tiny town of Silvana, founded in the 1880s by Scandinavian farmers, was both blessed and cursed by the fertile floodplain of the Stillaguamish River. To accommodate the river’s oft-overflowing banks, its houses and sidewalks were raised several feet above ground level.

Little surprise, then, that the vigorous young congregation of Zion Lutheran, led by itinerant pastor Christian Jorgensen, decided to build its church and adjacent graveyard on a hill above the river. The land had been donated by farmer S.A. Erickson in 1884 and on Dec. 3, 1888, the parishioners drew up formal plans for their parish.

As documented by Zion Lutheran’s historian Irene Vognild, the church’s 1890 construction proved no small task. Existing roads were “muddy, crooked trails along the riverbanks.” Without rail or paved highways to provide access, all finished lumber had to be towed east on scows from a sawmill in equally tiny Utsalady on Camano Island.

The materials were to be offloaded onto carts and drawn by oxen to the building site. But that year’s early winter, Vognild recounts, was one of the severest in the region’s history. Church members credited divine intervention when the Stillaguamish froze solid, ensuring much easier transport by sled across the snowy river and up the hill.

Having spent just $750 on materials, the closely-knit farm community donated all labor, plus extra timber and shingles. The new church was erected in mere weeks, with grounds cleared for a nearby graveyard. Zion Lutheran Church’s first services were held that Christmas.

It wasn’t long before a divide over religious practices split the young congregation. Should this new church observe the rites and traditions of the State Church of Norway or adopt revised forms of worship?

The unhappy result, Vognild notes: “a break with friends and neighbors [who had] worshiped and worked together for years.” A minority faction left and built its own church in town, Salem Lutheran.

After nearly 70 years of division, the two churches set aside their differences and reunited in 1963, adopting a name reflecting the harmony: Peace Lutheran.

Today, the church comprises two structures — a practical 1978 building in downtown Silvana and the original Little White Church on the Hill, which was listed on the Washington State Heritage Register as a historic site in 1972.

The hillside church is open for summer services and for special occasions, including weddings and funerals.

WEB EXTRAS

Just a couple extra photos this week.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on April 14, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 17, 2022

A trio from a century ago bids a
warm welcome to ‘Preserving Ballard’

By Clay Eals

From about 100 years ago, three young women cheerfully invite us into Seattle’s northwesterly neighborhood of Ballard.

Their sanguine salutation seems germane, given the area’s geographic separation; the formidable length of its namesake 1917 bridge; and its storied, early concentration of work-seeking northern European immigrants who arrived by train.

As the late longtime Ballard resident Maxine Shallow Tuck genially noted in an oral-history interview, “Bus drivers used to say, ‘You got your passports ready? We’re going into Ballard.’ … Because it was a foreign country. It was Scandinavian.”

In fact, when the Ballard News-Tribune produced a 304-page, large-format history book in 1988, the title reinforced that theme: “Passport to Ballard.”

The latest “passport” will be published this month by the all-volunteer Ballard Historical Society. “Preserving Ballard” is trimmer and slimmer at 128 pages, and, as an Arcadia book, it favors visuals over text.

But its narrative and nearly 200 images cover a wide swath, including the life of the Shilshole branch of the Duwamish people and Ballard’s 27-year stretch as an incorporated city before its 1907 annexation to Seattle, along with ample views of industries, businesses, residences and churches.

The book’s cover features our “Then” photo. Clad in bloomers (less restrictive than heavy dresses and promoted by women’s rights activists), the jolly trio looks south while cavorting on Ballard’s west-flank railroad tracks, symbolizing the area’s rapid initial growth.

“For non-Native settlers, this part of the world was about resource extraction from the get-go,” says Laura K. Cooper, who led production of the book. “This was a great place for timber. That’s what really built Ballard, and the fishing industry came along after that. So from the beginning there was the need to move things around.”

The rail line, opening in 1891 and featuring a Ballard depot from 1914 to 1948, runs roughly perpendicular to the Ship Canal locks, built from 1912 to 1917, and borders the bridge-hugging Fisherman’s Terminal, established in 1914. This formative infrastructure helps define Ballard to this day.

The book complements an online innovation of the historical society, funded by 4Culture, that lets visitors click a map to see photos and data linked to 60 Ballard residences and listen to complete, decades-old audio interviews of those who lived therein, some from Polish and other underrepresented nationalities. This parallels another project that tracked more than 2,200 Ballard buildings over 100 years old as of 2016.

The overall aim, Cooper says, is as straightforward as a welcoming wave: “There are a lot of cool things that have happened here over time, and we want people to know about them.”

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Laura Cooper, Peggy Sturdivant and Mike Bergman for their 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 Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below are a video of Laura Cooper plus a historical clipping from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on April 7, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on April 10, 2022)

A 1930s Seattle maritime museum was both fleeting and floating

By Jean Sherrard

For local maritime historians, there once was a Camelot. During a brief stretch in the mid-1930s, the sailing ship St. Paul served as Seattle’s first and only floating nautical museum, ideally situated on the freshwater side of the Ballard Locks.

Built in Bath, Maine, in 1874, the 228–foot-long vessel with a soaring 150-foot main mast was reasonably swift for its size. The St. Paul crossed the Atlantic in just 16 days and sailed between San Francisco and New York, rounding Chile’s Cape Horn, in a brisk 103 days.

After hauling cargo between Britain, America and the Far East for nearly three decades, the elegant square-rigged craft (identified by Bremerton maritime historian Michael Mjelde as a “down easter”) was consigned to service between Alaskan canneries and Seattle until its banishment to Lake Union in 1924 with other relics and obsolete tall ships destined for the scrap heap.

Only the timely intervention of a local band of fervent maritime and marine enthusiasts saved the St. Paul from demolition.

Founded in 1928, the Puget Sound Academy of Science dedicated itself to “the diffusion of scientific knowledge by means of … publications, expeditions and exhibits.” The brainchild of Henry Landes, dean of the University of Washington College of Science and husband of Seattle’s first female mayor, Bertha K. Landes, the academy also was the beneficiary of Arthur Foss, co-owner of Foss Launch and Tugboat Company.

A collector and history buff, Foss had purchased the St. Paul and offered it to the academy for use as a floating exhibit. Enlisting naturalist (and future peace activist) Floyd Schmoe as president, the group proposed a “marine museum,” merging maritime history and marine biology.

Schmoe’s promotional booklet asserted that the restored St. Paul would serve as the museum’s “chief exhibit. … Nothing will be placed on her deck or in her cabins which was not there when she was still in service.” Below the main deck would be “ample room for … exhibits of primitive and historical boats … and the story of man’s development of the ship.” Another lower deck would include a “salt-water aquarium (with) marine life from the waters and shores of Puget Sound.”

The Marine Museum and Aquarium opened June 16, 1934, welcoming thousands of visitors to its Ballard berth (admission: one dime) for the next two years. But the museum’s shining moment faded all too soon.

The wooden-hulled St. Paul fell victim to Northwest rain and a dearth of regular maintenance. In 1942, at age 68, the deteriorating vessel was towed to Vancouver Island’s Oyster Bay to be scuttled as a breakwater.

WEB EXTRA

For our narrated, audio-visual 360-degree version of this column, please click on through.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on March 31, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 3, 2022

Smile! Here’s where you can find a DNA test for your home

By Clay Eals

Whether we’ve been here 40 years or 40 days, we all yearn to embrace the place we call home. One way to do so is to see what came before.

The Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives — a godsend to some, unknown to others — provides just such a peek, drawing 5,000 research requests annually. Among its wide-ranging governmental records is a showcase collection that can touch nearly every King County resident.

The collection, starting in the late 1930s, assembled a Property Record Card for each of 146,000 buildings, revealing year of construction, structural materials and myriad other specifics, often with crisp black-and-white photos of same.

Taken with large-format view cameras, the photos bear dates and addresses hand-scratched into their negatives, appearing in white in corresponding prints. Today they might be called a DNA test for your home. But that wasn’t their original purpose.

In 1935, King County Assessor Roy Misener sought to jettison poor data and subjective appraisals that had produced incomplete property-tax valuations. With federal Works Progress Administration dollars, over five years he hired 700 workers to create maps, interview residents and create photos to equalize assessments.

After initial work ended in 1940, if a building was upgraded, staff updated its data and took a new photo. In 1972, high-grade imaging ended. Seven years later, the collection transferred to the state archives. Ever since, copies and reprints (digital scans today) have been available to the public for nominal fees. The reasons for such requests range from nostalgic to legal.

Photos for a few sites, such as areas beneath Interstate 5, are missing. But the collection, which often provides a historic building’s only visual evidence of existence, has remained largely intact— from 1979 to 1998 inside the jet-noisy former Sunset Junior High in the north clear zone of Sea-Tac Airport and since 1998 at a facility built for the archives at Bellevue College.

That the collection survives and thrives owes to a tenacious staff led by a regional archivist who retired in March after 46 years, Michael Saunders. He is quick to credit the “innate stubbornness” of his team and support from the Secretary of State’s office, partner agencies and scores of volunteers.

Of course, digitizing, gatekeeping and otherwise managing the records is an endless task fit for the mythical Sisyphus. It requires, Saunders says, “the ability to see how a bunch of mundane and even sometimes tedious work gets you to a better outcome.” Which is, he says, to serve “a legacy of societal memory.”

In other words, for our collective psyche, there’s no place like home.

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Michael Saunders for his invaluable help with this installment.

Below are 2 additional photos, 4 pages of a 20th anniversary program, a newsletter page and 24 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Also helpful was a HistoryLink essay on the King County Land Use Survey.

(Published in The Seattle Times online on March 24, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on March 27, 2022)

Distortion, half-truths, outright lies – our second April Fools’ quiz

By Jean Sherrard

(click to enlarge photos)

As cherry trees blossom, we at Now & Then extend the welcome mat for our second annual April Fools’ Day quiz. We trust this exercise in historical whimsy will entertain and challenge in equal measure.

Please note that each question has a single correct answer. All other choices are larded with distortion, half-truths and outright lies!

Question 1

A BLOB BY ANY OTHER NAME Originally Clyde’s Cleaners, built in 1946 to serve lower Queen Anne Hill, the building was refashioned in 1984 into the ferroconcrete mound popularly known as The Blob. Detested and beloved in equal measure, the structure was demolished in 1997. What was The Blob’s original purpose?

A: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s nascent first draft of MoPOP (his Museum of Popular Culture), also colloquially known as The Blob.

B: The bulbous Moorish fort/Spanish villa themes were the brainchild of developer Anthony Dadvar, who intended to house a Mediterranean/Mexican restaurant, the Isla del Sol.

C: The last Queen Anne communal dwelling of the Love Family, a New Age religious group founded in the late 1960s.

D: An early and failed attempt at architectural 3D printing, engineered by noted inventor John Williams.

E: A movie set constructed for Ridley Scott’s megahit “Aliens” (1986), never used in actual filming.

Question 2

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? In early fall 1918, the misnamed “Spanish” flu raged throughout the Northwest. On Oct. 6, city health commissioner Dr. J.S. McBride and Mayor Ole Hanson ordered the closure of schools, churches and theaters to combat infection (you know the drill). On Oct. 28, they added a mandatory mask order. Seattleites largely obeyed, until tearing off and twirling their masks to celebrate what notable event?

A: Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918.

B: Santa’s arrival by reindeer-drawn sled in Pioneer Square on Nov. 30, 1918.

C: The conclusion of the five-day Seattle General Strike on Feb. 11, 1919.

D: The return of the 63rd Coast Artillery from World War I on March 12, 1919.

E: The mask order was never suspended.

Question 3:

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS WHISTLE Vessels of the Black Ball Line, from which today’s Washington State Ferries are directly descended, signaled arrivals and departures with whistle blasts. To this day, each captain and vessel employs signature toots. Which is the standard whistle sequence used by Seattle ferries?

A: A single melancholy blast.

B: Three medium-long honks, translating “S” for Seattle into Morse Code.

C: One long and two short toots, known by maritime afficionados as “a warp and two woofs.”

D: All signal patterns are at the captain’s discretion, reflecting the skipper’s mood.

E: Short, repeat blasts, used solely as small-craft warnings during a pea-soup fog.

Question 4 (see “Now” photo):

THIRTY DEGREES OF SEPARATION Many readers will be familiar with the popular mnemonic: “Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest,” muttered under locals’ breaths to recall the sequence of downtown streets. Yet all bets are off at Pioneer Square, where, north from Yesler, every street veers 30 degrees to the northwest, resulting in an odd tangle of angles. How did this come about?

A: The Seattle Fault runs directly under Yesler. In 1854, an earthquake caused massive seismic displacement, forever altering the shape of the young city.

B: South of Yesler, soggy tideland marshes made accurate mapping impossible.

C: Yesler was the clergy-mandated northern boundary of Seattle’s original red-light district. Its angled streets, pontificated Rev. David Blaine in 1855, supplied “ample warning of a turn to sin.”

D: Unresolved land-plat disputes between early white settlers David “Doc” Maynard, Arthur Denny and Carson Boren resulted in colliding street grids.

E: Fake news. Cartographers and geographers are complicit in promoting this fictional twist. Actual Seattle streets run straight as an arrow.

Answers

1:B

2:A

3:C

4: D

The rubric

One correct answer:
You’re a Mercer Mess.

Two correct answers:
You tore down the Viaduct!

Three correct answers:
You’re a Pike Pundit.

Four correct answers:
You’ve attained Seattle Chill.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on March 17, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on March 20, 2022

Fifth Avenue Theatre endures as the pride of downtown Seattle

By Clay Eals

Pearls of promotion can bear timeless truths, as in this pair of catch-phrases 95-1/2 years apart:

• “The Magic Sign of a Wonderful Time.”
• “Joy is essential. Laughter is essential. Escape is essential. Inspiration is essential.”

The former graced ads for the Sept. 24, 1926, grand opening of downtown Seattle’s Fifth Avenue Theatre. The latter exhorts from today’s marquee. Either can apply to each era.

Beneath the hype is a bedrock message: An alluring array of entertainment venues can bolster a downtown’s durability and buoy the soul of an entire city.

No doubt the Fifth’s first-night throng — its girth likened to the spontaneous celebration that broke out at the end of World War I eight years prior — heartily agreed.

“More humanity to the square inch than was ever crowded into a similar space in this northwest corner of these United States packed the streets of seven city blocks radiating from the Fifth Avenue Theatre last night,” exulted the next-day Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The turnout, spurred by an outdoor carnival and free streetcar service, equaled “the populace of Ballard and Georgetown, Ravenna, Alki and the whole Rainier Valley.” It was “the closest approach to a human sardine can that Seattle has seen since Armistice Day.”

Inside the 2,400-seat, elaborately Chinese-themed palace, those with tickets enjoyed three stage shows, each climaxed by Cecil B. De Mille’s silent cinematic drama “Young April.”

Emblematic of a raft of vintage downtown theaters, the Fifth has stood tall through the years, supported crucially by a massive 1978-80 renovation. Sadly, many Seattle showplaces (notably the Orpheum, Music Box and Blue Mouse) have fallen, while one was preserved for a different use (the Coliseum, as the now-closed Banana Republic clothier) and two others (the Moore and Paramount) survived largely intact.

After a two-year pandemic-induced closure, the Fifth reopened in January, providing hope for all who see such institutions as instrumental to the physical and mental health of Seattle’s core.

Surveying more than a century of context and detail about the rich history of downtown theaters, longtime Seattle architectural historian Lawrence Kreisman has assembled a lavishly illustrated online talk, “Another Opening, Another Show,” which he will present at 5 p.m. March 31, for the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation.

The sponsor couldn’t be more apt, as the Trust, with the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, launched in 2020 a grant program to bolster the viability of 80 eligible historic theaters statewide.

That aim catches the 1926 sentiment of the P-I, which proclaimed the Fifth “a large asset to this city” that “far excels the ordinary.”

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Larry Kreisman and Huy Pham, program director for the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, as well as Victoria Dyson and Kara Terek at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel and Rachel Liuzzi of the Fifth Avenue Theatre, for their 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 Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below are 15 added photos and 24 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Published in The Seattle Times online on March 10, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on March 13, 2022)

Home was where photographer Anders Wilse’s heart ended up – after beating a successful path to Seattle

By Jean Sherrard

“You can’t go home again” was a sentiment my great-grandfather would have echoed. Ole Andreas Ringseth (“Daddy Andrew” to his extended family) was part of the Norwegian diaspora between 1860 and 1910, emigrating in 1902 from tiny Liabygda on Norway’s west coast to Tacoma, never to return.

One of his enterprising countrymen, 19-year-old Anders Beer Wilse had arrived in Minneapolis 18 years earlier. As a civil engineer with the ever-expanding railroads, he soon rolled  to the Pacific Northwest.

Uniquely, Wilse began documenting his surveying and cartography with photography, at which he became increasingly skilled. In 1897, he quit his day job and opened a photo studio in Seattle, fortuitously just as Gold Rush fever infected the city. Over the next three years, he captured the booming city and its environs.

In our evocative “Then” photo, snapped from a wharf at the foot of Pike Street on a sunny afternoon, a half-dozen pedestrians belie an increasingly active waterfront. At least five train tracks run along Railroad Avenue in front of Schwabacher’s Wharf, where the USS Portland, bearing a ton of Yukon gold, docked in July 1897.

Diamond Ice and Storage, founded in 1893, advertised its product as “The Best Ice — No Core in It,” available for home delivery.

The Hotel Diller, still standing today at the southeast corner of First and University, can be seen behind the crisply whitewashed ice-plant smokestack, across the street from its northern neighbor, the Hotel Vendome. On the skyline, past an oddly tall waterfront light standard, the King County Courthouse tower peeps out.

Wilse’s Seattle Photographic Company soon became profitable, hiring three assistants, including Ira Webster and Nelson Stevens, founders of the renowned Webster and Stevens photographic studio.

In spring 1900, Wilse sent his young family back to Norway for what was intended to be a short visit. By summer’s end, however, his wife, Helen, sent word that she had no interest in returning to Seattle. With no small regret, Wilse left his adopted country — and camera equipment — behind, opening a second photography studio in Oslo in 1901. But Helen’s instincts proved sound.

On the verge of regaining independence from Sweden in 1905, Norway provided an ideal subject for a talented photographer. Wilse dedicated himself to documenting its emerging cultural identity, recording more than 200,000 photographs until his death in 1949.

Today, his iconic images adorn Norwegian postage stamps and currency. Late in life, he expressed what might be a photographer’s credo: “I sought to capture for eternity the beauty of Norway’s landscape … something I believe can be of meaning to our descendants.”

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 video portrait of the waterfront, featuring Wilse’s original photo and Jean’s narration, go here.

For more on the remarkable life of Anders Wilse, click through to Carolyn Marr’s 1994 essay for Columbia Magazine. Scroll down for illuminating and fascinating details of this gifted photographer’s life.

And thanks to Michael Mjelde for pointing out the identity of the vessel in our late 1890s “then” photo – the steamship Rosalee:

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on March 3, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on March 6, 2022

The inexorable trend on many Seattle street corners: small to big

By Clay Eals

We at “Now & Then” usually focus on places we find distinctive. Meanwhile, on our city’s everyday corners, change is churning. So inured are we that our reaction is often a wan shrug.

Which brings us to this week’s “Then” photo, looking southwest across busy Northeast 45^th Street at 11^th Avenue in the University District.

Relatively few are old enough to recall this unpretentious 1906 home, with charming third-floor gables and a second-floor bay window. In this late-1930s view, the first-floor store sold furniture. In 1914, the retail space was touted in The Seattle Times as a “dandy little grocery.”

To its west, a General Motors billboard presages the property’s coming incarnation. In October 1949, the building was razed. In its place in 1950 arose a Shell service station, which, remodeled, survives today. But not for long.

A careful peek at our “Now” photo reveals a vandalized Seattle land-use sign. Beneath the graffiti, it discloses the planned construction of a 27-story edifice with 366 apartments and 52 parking spots, plus room for street-level stores and offices.

The working name of the high-rise, developed by global Onelin Capital Corporation, reflects the firm and the neighborhood: OneU. It’s one of several tall towers in the works between the University of Washington and Interstate 5, triggered by a 2017 upzone that allows construction up to 320 feet.

Julia Nagele, principal of Hewitt Seattle, which designed OneU, pinpoints the boom’s catalyst — last October’s opening of a new light-rail U District Station. “Because of light rail,” she says, “a person easily could work downtown while living near a very cool university.”

To her, the project’s symbolism is both stark and apt. “We are converting the site from auto-centric and not environmentally friendly to more than 300 places for people to live,” she says. “It’s going full-stop in a 180-degree direction, which is a good thing.”

An eye-opening feature is that into the face of floors 7-9 and 16-18 are to be carved “social greenways.” Drawings depict them as huge, open stairways to encourage residential mixing.

Symbolism and innovations aside, OneU is destined to become yet another big box in a metro area of so many new ones. Unsurprisingly, demolition permit applications have soared citywide: 609 in 2019, 676 in 2020 and 739 in 2021. Small to big is the inexorable trend.

So we are well beyond Joni Mitchell’s 1970 “Big Yellow Taxi” punchline: “They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.” But the lyric’s lead-in line still stings: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Larry Kreisman, Joe Bopp, Wendy Shark, Sean Ludviksen, Julia Nagele and Midori Okazaki as well as to Kurt Armbruster (who brought this corner’s pending development to our attention and is featured in this week’s 360-degree video) for their invaluable help on 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 Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below are three added photos, two documents and nine historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Feb. 24, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Feb. 27, 2022)

We can’t mangle women’s role in popular, early-day laundries

By Jean Sherrard

I’d never encountered mangles and yeggs until researching this week’s column, but both made an appearance at Troy Laundry, subject of our 1912 “Then” photo.

The mangle was a commercial version of my grandmother’s hand-cranked wringer, mounted in her Renton basement atop an antique washing machine, just below shelves of mason jars filled with applesauce and preserves. The wooden rollers, cracked and worn from decades of use, appeared in at least one child’s nightmares as instruments of torture.

At commercial laundries across the country, skilled mangle operators, mostly young women, were in demand. In 1912, they worked 48 hours a week for $9 pay (about $250 today).

In the first three decades of the 20th century, commercial laundries boomed. One of many, the Troy Laundry, on the northeast corner of Nob Hill and Republican — now within the footprint of Seattle Center’s Memorial Stadium bleachers — eased the drudgery of washing, drying and ironing clothes for Seattle families.

In her book, “Never Done: A History of American Housework,” historian Susan Strasser writes that doing laundry was women’s “most hated task” which they would “jettison … whenever they had any discretionary money at all.”

In 1909, laundries nationwide grossed more than $100 million, an average of $5.30 per American household. Notes Strasser, “Even the poorest people in urban slums sent out some of their wash.”

In coming decades, competition arrived with home washing machines and dryers. By the 1940s, these once-luxury appliances were standard in many households.

Troy Laundry moved from its lower Queen Anne digs (land originally platted by David and Louisa Denny) to Fairview Avenue in 1927, making room for a new Civic Field, Auditorium and Arena, planting seeds that eventually blossomed into today’s Seattle Center.

And, nope, I haven’t forgotten about the yeggs. Their name was most likely derived from John Yegg, alias of a late 19th-early 20th century bank robber. Stickup artists, dubbed Yegg-men, were tempted by easy targets, namely businesses with cash on hand.

On Oct. 9, 1926, as reported in The Seattle Times, one nefarious crew attempted to crack the Troy Laundry safe with nitroglycerin. Interrupted by a night watchman, the “thoughtless yeggs” aborted the effort, leaving an unstable “soup” behind. After consulting experts from the Diebold Safe and Lock Co., DuPont Chemicals, and the University of Washington chemistry department, police successfully defused the threat.

“Science triumphed,” the Times exulted. “Soon … (they) had the safe open, and the laundry girls, breathing sighs of relief, went to work with increased vigor.”

WEB EXTRAS

For our usual 360 degree exploration of the locale plus a reading of the column itself, mosey over in this direction.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Feb. 17, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 20, 2022

What can we learn about liberty from a replica at Alki?

By Clay Eals

When I led a tour for a mother and her 3-year-old daughter along Alki Beach a few years back, we stopped at the Statue of Liberty replica. I asked the girl to look up and tell me what she thought the statue was raising aloft in her right hand. Her innocent, timeless response:

“An ice-cream cone!”

The next question was tougher. What was the statue cradling in her left arm?

“A phone?”

Of course, the correct answers are a flaming torch and a tablet, the latter inscribed with the Declaration of Independence date of July 4, 1776.

The replica, in two renditions over the years, has prompted countless moments, teachable and otherwise, ever since 200 of the 8-1/2-foot-tall miniatures — modeled on the 151-foot, 1886 original in New York harbor — were erected across the country by the Boy Scouts of America following World War II. The patriotic campaign was dubbed “Strengthening the Arm of Liberty.”

At Alki, after filling a 15-block-long parade, 2,000 scouts dedicated a water-facing replica along the park’s promenade on Feb. 23, 1952. This Wednesday marks its 70^th anniversary.

Weather and dispiriting crime took a toll. By climbing her ridged foundation, vandals repeatedly yanked off Lady Liberty’s right arm, flame and seven-point crown. In 1975, she even was knocked off her base.

Further heartache surfaced in 2000 when, as scheduled, a 1952 time capsule of thousands of scout names and other ephemera in the base was opened, but water had destroyed much of its contents.

The replica assumed new poignancy after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. For days, locals congregated at its base, inscribing 1,000 paper bags that held tea-light candles and lined the Alki promenade as luminarias.

Messages ranged from anger (“You can hide, you cowards, but we will find you”) to hope (“We have really only one thing in common: freedom to believe what we want, in peace”). The Southwest Seattle Historical Society preserved and later displayed the bags annually.

A new replica arose on the old base in 2007 and, thanks to a campaign funded by inscribed bricks, was rededicated in 2008 on a sheer, lighthouse-themed base in a redesigned plaza. The battered earlier version was moved to the historical society’s nearby Log House Museum.

In 2009, fueled partly by children’s items, the historical society and Alki Community Council buried near the new replica’s base a better-protected time capsule, to be opened in 2059.

Only 100 of the replicas still stand nationwide. With liberty’s hard truths and stern ideals buffeted by today’s tyrannical forces, those visiting the Alki statue just might rediscover a measure of honest inspiration.

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Sea Scouts skippers Steve Grassia, Al Bruce and Robin Kolke for their invaluable help on this installment. Also thanks to Mary Kay Walsh, who loaned the U.S. flag!

Below are 8 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and West Seattle Herald that were helpful in the preparation of this column. At the bottom, we also present a brief reflection by Paul Monk, as related via his niece Kirstie Cameron.

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Building love over time

Our “Now & Then” column often focuses on the built environment, but in anticipation of Valentine’s Day, we turn our cameras (and hearts) to the architecture of romance.

We are delighted that PacificNW magazine of The Seattle Times granted Jean and Clay the opportunity to prepare this “Now & Then Special” cover story on four longtime couples for the print edition of the magazine’s pre-Valentine’s Day edition of Feb. 13, 2022.

Below are links to:

• The personal backstory
• The stories of the four couples, with “web extras”

You also can visit the Seattle Times website for the four couples in our cover story plus the backstory. Enjoy!

THE BACKSTORY

How much do we love love? Let us (re)count the ways

And here is the Seattle Times link for the backstory.

THE BRISCOES

‘A lot of damn questions’ helped romance bloom in their 40s

And here is the Seattle Times link on the Briscoes.

ILUMIN-ROTH

From stool to stool, and house to home, their love endures

And here is the Seattle Times link for Ilumin-Roth.

OSEGUERA-WILLENDORF

‘Could I have this (second) dance for the rest of my life?’

And here is the Seattle Times link for Oseguera-Willendorf.

THE SEDLIKS

Interruptions can’t interrupt this 55-year marriage

And here is the Seattle Times link for the Sedliks.

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Published in the Seattle Times online on Feb. 6, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 6, 2022

A walk can reveal the wonder of Willcox’ walls — and words

By Clay Eals

The key to outdoor living may be short and sweet. No big plan. No long trips to the hinterlands. No special equipment. Just get up on our feet and walk.

And one of the joys of life in geographically and topographically diverse Seattle is that so many enjoyable strolls and vistas beckon outside our doors, a short bus ride or drive away.

Among the most cheerful is a 4.74-mile boulevard encircling the crown of Queen Anne Hill. Technically, the scenic route’s southwest curve is a continuum of West Highland Drive and Eighth Place and Eighth Avenue West, but most people probably think of it as the stately street just west of popular Kerry Park.

One might say the promenade is Queen Anne’s version of Alki Beach. Or, Queen Anne might say, vice versa.

What makes this corner’s panorama possible is what’s beneath it: a retaining wall featuring criss-crossing steps and horseshoe arches, highlighted by decorative herringbone brick and 60-plus sphere-topped green light standards, a bold infrastructure known by locals as the Willcox Walls.

The name is that of architect and educator Walter Ross Baumes Willcox, who from 1907 to 1922 guided some 60 projects in the Seattle area, mostly residential but a few more publicly focused, including this massive west Queen Anne hillside undertaking whose construction began in 1913 and finished in 1916.

So unusual and simultaneously artistic and functional were the walls that they — and the entire boulevard — became one of Seattle’s first official landmarks in 1976. Thirteen years later, after residents complained of the walls’ deterioration, a voter-approved levy funded their restoration.

The walls reflected the activist philosophy of Willcox himself. Acquainted with and influenced by famed architects Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, he advocated for consulting engineer Virgil Bogue’s visionary 1911 Seattle comprehensive plan, which fell to voter defeat in 1912.

A selection of Willcox’ words, taken from the Feb. 16, 1910, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, bespeaks an articulate approach, both utilitarian and grand:

“Open air spaces in the heart of a city, as convenient to those who must dwell therein as are the parks and boulevards to the more fortunate, make for peace, happiness and good manners, which are conserving forces in the community. …

“A haphazard, piecemeal growth of a city defeats economy, efficiency and uniform contentment, while a systematic ensemble, encompassing the convenience, comfort and pleasure of its citizens, makes for all these things and results in a city from which those who have prospered largely do not hasten, nor those less fortunate long to depart.”

It’s as if Willcox were out on a Queen Anne constitutional, talking about today.

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to longtime historian and former president of the Queen Anne Historical Society Michael Herschensohn for invaluable help on 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 Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column as soon as it’s posted mid-day.

Below are (1) four added photos, (2) a video interview, (3) a map of Queen Anne Boulevard, (4) a Dec. 13, 1974, Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board nomination for Willcox Walls, (5) a Willcox chapter from an architectural history book, and (6) four historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 27, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Jan. 30, 2022)

Points of view less towering without divisive Alaskan Way Viaduct

By Jean Sherrard

No one on the waterfront misses the clatter and roar of cars and trucks overhead. But nearing the third anniversary of the closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle residents still confess to mixed emotions.

Kate Conger, state Department of Highways staffer, opined in 1953 that the elevated speedway offered “a breathtaking view of Elliott Bay, the Olympics … and of Seattle’s towering skyline.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer joined with hosannahs, proclaiming it “a royal necklace across the bosom of the Queen City.”

Yet over the decades, equally antiphonal voices cried for demolition. Paul Dorpat, in his encyclopedic book “Building Washington,” mourned that the viaduct “stretched a permanent cataract over the eye of the city.”

Truth be told, the prized, if fleeting, million-dollar views, available to rich and poor commuters alike, came at a price: a permanent concrete edifice dividing the city from its waterfront.

The initial vision for the double-deck structure, opened to traffic on April 4, 1953, emerged in the cash-strapped 1930s, but not until after World War II — and an exponentially expanding car culture — were plans finalized for a capacious roadway skirting the increasingly busy downtown core.

In its time, the 7,600-foot-long viaduct was an engineering marvel. Its twin 40-foot-wide roadways, each with three traffic lanes, comprised the single largest use of reinforced concrete (58,847 cubic yards, bolstered by nearly 8,000 tons of steel) in Seattle public-works history.

More than a decade before Interstate 5 carved its wide swath through our hourglass-shaped city, the viaduct served as the main north-south corridor, providing relief for tens of thousands of daily commuters. Today’s State Route 99 toll tunnel, which replaced the viaduct, allows for no less traffic but deprives photographers of a favorite perch.

Case in point: on April 3, 1953, Horace Sykes, longtime Seattle Camera Club member, strolled the speedway, opened to pedestrians for a day of traffic-free exploration. From this perch, Sykes snapped two dozen Kodachrome photos, most notably of two unidentified women in vivid, red jackets below the majestic Smith Tower, then still the tallest building in the west.

Before the viaduct’s demolition, I returned to that location several times, attempting to replicate Sykes’ dramatic panorama from moon-roofed cars, most recently in 2017 for our book “Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred.”

I captured the post-viaduct “Now” photo with my 22-foot extension pole at the same spot but 30 feet lower — further evidence of picturesque loss. Looking north at a tangled waterfront under seemingly endless construction reveals the immense work ahead as our city once more reinvents itself.

WEB EXTRAS

In addition to our usual 360 degree video, we encourage you to take one more tour of the Viaduct on its last day. Jean and Clay made a final commute on Friday, Feb. 1st.

For more photos from that last pedestrian weekend atop the Viaduct, please revisit a post we made shortly thereafter.

An update from Jan. 19, 2023:

That’s a Wrap! Guild 45th Theater to be fully demolished — makes way for 70-unit apartment building

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Jan. 20, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 23, 2022

Wallingford’s main-street movie theater is ‘ever in our hearts’

By Clay Eals

Along Wallingford’s main street has stood a theater known since 1957 as the Guild 45^th. It’s been shuttered since 2017. Early this month, its sign and prow marquee, deemed a safety hazard after a delivery truck hit them, were torn down.

The marquee recently had injected pandemic-era whimsy and inspiration. Starting Dec. 18, 2020, its east face displayed just one word: “Scarfface.” It switched last July 18 to another movie pun: “Vax to the Future.”

The pointed humor masked a dour trend. Virus-related restrictions have sent revenue plummeting at movie theaters nationwide. Insiders note that some demographic groups (such as older women) have stopped going to movies altogether, which in turn affects the types of films in production.

’Twas not always thus. Before video rentals, DVDs and the internet, not to mention TV, neighborhood movie theaters were ubiquitous magnets. For Wallingford, the love affair started a century ago.

What became the Guild 45th at 2115 N. 45th St. was opened in 1921 by W.C. Code as the Paramount Theatre. The 40-by-90-foot building seated 475 and hosted movies and live productions, with occasional political or business gatherings.

It was rechristened the 45th Street Theatre on Sept. 1, 1933, by its new owner, theater veteran H.W. Bruen. With a neon marquee, the art-deco mini-palace became what The Seattle Times called “symbolic in architecture and design of the Century of Progress.”

Two-plus decades later, in December 1956, the fledgling, non-mainstream Seattle Cinema Guild began bookings of classic U.S. and foreign films at the 45th.

The next year, the remodeled theater acquired its present name and became a so-called art house, screening “the world’s greatest” foreign films, banning anyone under 18 and supplying free coffee and cigarettes between shows. The first offering was a French sexploitation flick, “Companions of the Night.”

The fare had broadened considerably by February 1983 when, four years after joining the Seven Gables chain, the Guild 45th appended an auditorium with 200 steeply raked seats two storefronts to its west. In 1989, it became part of Landmark Theatres.

Citing too many alterations, the city landmarks board voted 6-2 in May 2016 not to protect the Guild 45th, and it closed abruptly 13 months later. Early in 2021, its deteriorating structures, including an ex-restaurant between them, were painted with a colorful mural by Urban ArtWorks to deter random graffiti.

What will become of the Guild 45th site? One clue is that last November, LA-based owner 2929 Entertainment applied for a demolition permit.

The 1933 films on the marquee in our “Then” photo provide us with additional insight: While the theater certainly is “Ever in My Heart,” no one would be surprised if it were to give way to yet another faceless, modern monolith — like the disaster befalling the characters in “Deluge.”

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Feliks Banel for his help on 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 Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column as soon as it’s posted mid-day.

Below are two added photos taken Dec. 18, 2020, by Seattle architect and guerrilla artist Todd Lawson of his clever and uncannily realistic marquee posts, 6 additional current photos by Jean Sherrard of the bedraggled Guild 45th (4 from Jan. 5 and 2 from Jan. 20), a late 1937 photo from the Puget Sound Regional Archives, 2 sets of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board minutes, and 22 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Also, here is a link to Paul Dorpat’s Jan. 31, 1993, column on the Guild 45th Theatre!

And the best “web extra” of all may be this innovative, time-lapse account of the changing Guild 45th prow marquee in 2008, created by none other than Paul Dorpat.

(Please click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 13, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Jan. 16, 2022)

At 40, ‘Now & Then’ celebrates the dawn of photography

By Jean Sherrard

This Sunday, “Now & Then” blows out 40 candles, celebrating the nation’s (if not the world’s) longest-running column dedicated to repeat photography.

It began on Jan. 17, 1982, when founder Paul Dorpat published his first comparison, an exuberant parade along Fourth Avenue welcoming home World War I artillery soldiers in 1919.

After more than 2,000 columns and four decades, we think it’s apropos to express belated gratitude for a 184-year-old gift.

The story begins in 1838, when artist and inventor Louis Daguerre positioned a boxy device in the window of his Paris studio to capture the dance of light and shadow on the busy street below. For at least four minutes, he exposed the plate and instantly achieved a fistful of firsts:

• The first photo of a city.
• The first portrayal of human beings in a cityscape.
• The first shoeshine caught on camera.

At first glance, the Boulevard du Temple in central Paris seems curiously devoid of people, save for one gent standing relatively still and getting his shoes polished by a bootblack on the sidewalk. The many hundreds of passersby were assuredly moving too quickly to be snared by the long exposure.

The long row of four- and five-story buildings housed many well-attended theatres. Parisians nicknamed it the Boulevard du Crime after the immensely popular vice melodramas they presented.

Paris, however, was on the verge of one of the greatest transformations in its long history. In 1852, a nephew of Napoleon Buonaparte grandly proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III and envisioned a capitol suitable for a French empire.

The narrow, medieval streets and alleys, beloved by many Parisians, were to be widened and straightened. Entire neighborhoods would be leveled while parks, grand avenues, plazas and vast public-works projects would be added. Beginning in 1853 and for decades to come, the City of Light became a construction zone.

The Boulevard du Crime, along with most of its theatres, was demolished in 1862, to the dismay of dramatic audiences, replaced by the expanded plaza now known as Place de la Republique.

Today’s square is a popular gathering spot for Parisians young and old. It has hosted events from concerts to mass demonstrations. A bronze statue of Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, stands at its center, surrounded by figures representing Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

Rights to Daguerre’s revolutionary invention, the daguerreotype process, were acquired by the French government in 1839 and offered unconditionally as a gift to humanity. Within months, daguerreotype cameras had spread throughout the world, recording images that we treasure — and, yes, repeat.

WEB EXTRAS

First, we offer boundless thanks to Berangere Lomont, whose friendship, generosity, and breathtaking photography have always provided inspiration and joy.

We also congratulate Paul Dorpat on the column he created 40 years ago. His remarkable contributions to our region’s history are unparalleled and will stand as monuments to his boundless curiosity, passion and scholarship.

We include a few photos of Paul exploring his beloved Paris in 2005 with photographers Berangere and Jean in tow. Also making an appearance is Paul’s dear pal Bill Burden, who joined us in Paris.

Let’s begin with a hilarious photo and video of Paul, meeting his twin in Paris:

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We are delighted that PacificNW magazine of The Seattle Times granted Clay the opportunity to prepare a cover story on Ruth Prins for the print edition of Jan. 9, 2022.

Below are links to:

• The cover story
• The personal backstory
• A wide array of “web extras.”

These items include kinescopes of “Wunda Wunda” shows unseen since they first aired in the 1950s and 1960s, along with photos, children’s drawings, fan letters, news clippings, songs, promotional items and original writings by Ruth Prins — all of which document the saga of the local TV pioneer who many of us as youngsters learned from and knew fondly as Wunda Wunda.

Enjoy!

COVER STORY

A pioneer for preschoolers: With ‘Wunda Wunda,’ Ruth Prins reached kids as an educator, an entertainer and an enduring emotional touchstone.

Enjoy this illustrated profile of a local legend!

THE BACKSTORY

Ruth Prins inspired an early devotee — and an entire audience

THE KINESCOPES

Enjoy this ever-expanding collection of recently transferred films of Ruth Prins’ “Wunda Wunda” shows, most of them not seen since their original broadcast — until now.

‘NOW’ VIDEOS

Longtime fans of “Wunda Wunda” sing the show’s welcome song and “I’m a Little Teapot” on Dec. 5, 2021, in Ruth Prins’ home neighborhood of Magnolia.

They also are interviewed about Ruth’s enduring and endearing legacy.

THE EXTRA PHOTOS

Enjoy this assemblage of additional images of Ruth Prins from her early days acting at the University of Washington up through her KING-TV and preschool days and beyond.

THE DRAWINGS

This sampling reveals artwork sent to Ruth Prins by her youngest of fans.

THE LETTERS

The parents of preschool “Wunda Wunda” fans overflow with praise and appreciation for Ruth Prins.

THE NEWS CLIPS

More than 200 articles, photos and ads from local — and occasionally national — publications illustrate Ruth Prins‘ impact.

THE PROMOTION

No effort was spared by KING-TV and others to promote the jewel they had in Ruth Prins.

THE ENDORSEMENTS

From tasty treats to delightful dolls, Ruth Prins was an eager saleswoman, as reflected in these materials.

THE SCHEDULE

“Wunda Wunda” generally aired at noon weekdays, but not always. Click here to see the schedule changes over its nearly 20-year run.

THE ARTIFACTS

What did Wunda Wunda’s costume, hat, puppets and dolls look like in color? Find out here.

RUTH’S WRITINGS

Unknown to many were Ruth Prins‘ writing skills. Out of her typewriter came down-to-earth, conversational and amusing prose. Here we present key samples.

THE MUSIC MAN’S SONGS

In her nearly 20 years as TV’s Wunda Wunda, Ruth Prins collaborated with several off-screen Music Men. The two longest-serving were Elliott Brown and Edward Hansen.

Here are two of Brown’s songs with a public-service theme.

See two more of Brown’s songs on The Endorsements page.

SPECIAL THANKS

This package of materials wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity and trust of Ruth Prins’ daughter, Debra Prins.

Click here to see acknowledgments as well as the clever birth announcements Ruth created for Debra and her brother Bob.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Dec. 30, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 2, 2022

Daughter’s ‘superpower’ uncovers father’s early Seattle story

By Clay Eals

Helen Sing thinks her father is the story, but I think it’s Helen.

Last May, her brother Allen opened a box in his garage and discovered a photo of 44 Frye meat-packing workers in what today we call Sodo. Therein, Helen’s father, James Sui Sing, stands eighth from the left.

The Frye plant was destroyed by the shocking Feb. 18, 1943, test-flight crash of a top-secret Boeing XB-29 bomber that killed at least 32 people. Helen knew her father was not among the deceased, but his early life remained largely a mystery that she longed to solve.

A DNA test had helped her locate hundreds of cross-country relatives and a flurry of photos and documents. Also, Helen had retained, after her dad’s 1985 death, 50 letters she had rescued from the garbage, written in Chinese from relatives in China.

The pandemic further unleashed the Rainier Beach resident’s inner bloodhound. Dating the Frye photo was key.

She consulted Seattle Public Library, Wing Luke Museum and Frye Art Museum (it holds the surviving art collection of plant owner Charles Frye and wife Emma). She studied everything from U.S. Census records to period fashion and hairstyles.

Her chief corroboration was a wall calendar in the photo itself (on post at far left). A high-res scan revealed its month: November 1931.

Along the way, Helen unearthed myriad other details, such as her dad’s true birthdate, Feb. 29, 1904, his tenure as a Frye printer (1930-1935) and later as a restaurateur, plus the surprise that he served, likely in the late 1940s, as Seattle chair of the Chinese Nationalist Party.

Her resulting dossier is an enduring family portrait and gift that reflects skill and tenacity. “I know a little bit about a lot,” Helen says, “but I like to think that my ‘superpower’ is that I know who to ask and where to search for information.”

She also feels “the guiding hand of my father, gently pushing me toward clues and answers and people to help me.” It’s “the stone that ripples through the water.”

Her lesson nestles snugly in this time of New Year’s resolutions:

“If you can understand the circumstances of your relatives’ lives and the choices required of them, the struggles they endured but kept hidden from their children, then you might arrive at a point of respect and gratitude for the sacrifices they made to raise their families to the best of their abilities.

“I regret not knowing my dad’s history until well after he passed away. I encourage everyone to start collecting memories from their elder relatives and document as much as you can.

“Now.”

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 Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are three historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Also, we include (1) a video interview of Helen Sing, (2) an illustrated essay by Helen, “The Stone That Ripples Through the Water: A Journey Through Time,” and (3) a portfolio of photos of a current exhibition kindly provided by the Frye Art Museum.

And at the very bottom, courtesy of stalwart archivist Gavin MacDougall, we add a link to Paul Dorpat‘s original 2013 “Now & Then” on the Frye plant, plus a related column from 1996.

= = = = =

Video of Helen Sing

= = = = =

The Stone That Ripples
Through the Water:
A Journey Through Time

Notes for My Family by Helen C. Sing

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Standing at the water’s edge, as you pick up a stone and drop it into the water, ripples extend out in concentric circles. The stone creates waves that grow wider from its point of entry.

This is a story of how with one dropped stone into the water, I found myself unexpectedly unwrapping family mysteries, each revealing more discoveries about my dad, James S. Sing, as he established his life in Seattle after his 1928 arrival.

My four brothers and I knew about our dad’s life after he married our mom in February 1946. From that point, our lives were documented with black-and-white photos of a growing family, typical of many Americans.

We knew very little about our dad’s life, “pre-mom.” As kids growing up in the late 1940s and 1950s, we exhibited an extreme lack of curiosity about our parents’ histories.

After collecting family narratives from our mom’s Canadian Chow branch for a 2006 family reunion in Vancouver, B.C., and updating the 190-plus family narratives in 2020, our paternal Sing side weighed in at a paltry 15 members at the time. In January 2019, we knew only that our dad had an older brother who lived in Portland, Oregon, by the name of Frank, whom we met, perhaps once or twice.

Dad James passed away in January 1985, and mom Nellie in March 2016. In our combined family trees, the Chow branches facing the West grew in leaps and bounds compared to the Sing branch, sadly lopsided. We knew next to nothing about our dad.

STONE #1

In November 2018, I bought a “23andMe” DNA test kit at a Black Friday sale because it was half-price. Why not?

By January 2019, the initial results had started populating my emails. By the beginning of 2020, I received three “2^nd cousin” hits from New York and one from Boston. A 2^nd cousin match has a greater-than-99% likelihood of being detected.

On February 15, 2020, just as the coronavirus became big local news, with Seattle as the initial ground zero, I started communicating with these cousins. None of the them knew each other. I asked the three New York cousins if they would be willing to move from “23andMe” messaging to a group email to share information and photos.

On February 25, 2020, we started sharing information, trying to figure out if they were related on my maternal or paternal side. On March 4, I visited mom Nellie’s grave on the fourth anniversary of her passing, took a photo of my parents’ headstone and sent it to our group chat.

By March 5, a translation of dad’s headstone showed that James was from the same village and had the same family name as the great-grandfather of Bet and Jeff.  Nearly five hours later that day, cousin Kat emailed a 1979 photo to me showing her grandparents, father and uncle immigrating to the United States, stopping in Seattle on their way to New York City.

In the middle of the photo, taken at Sea-Tac Airport, was my dad, James, sitting in a wheelchair! It was eventually confirmed that James was Kat’s great-grandmother’s big brother. I had an Aunt Chun! I was able to send a photo of my grandmother “DONG Shee” to these cousins. She would be these younger cousins’ great-great grandmother.

From February 25 to March 5, in a matter of 10 days after sharing photos and information by group email, we determined that Bet and Jeff’s great grandfather Frank was James’ older brother and that Kat’s great grandmother Chun was James’ younger sister.

I knew that a young James had traveled to the United States in 1917 with his father CHOO Chung Hock and his uncle. At some point, James’s father told him to return to China, as his mother was ill. Older brother Frank (b. 1896) was married with two daughters and had remained behind in Guangdong Toishan, China.

James married wife #1, who later miscarried twins. When James and Frank left for America, Frank left behind his wife and two daughters, ages 4 and 2. Based on these ages, we determined that they left China in 1925.

In May 2021, Kat and I determined that the 2^nd cousin from Boston (Henry) was descended from their great-grandmother Chun’s branch. Kat’s grandfather and Henry’s grandmother were siblings. We believe that between all branches, including those of James, Frank, Chun and their uncle, whose family also settled in the northeastern United States, along with the family of their younger brother, Siu Wai, there are likely more than 100 living relatives!

The East side of my family tree started sprouting sturdy branches. What are the odds that five cousins, strangers to each other, living in different parts of the country (Seattle, New York city, Brooklyn, Rochester and Boston) would take the same consumer DNA test around the same time? These younger cousins are my first cousins, twice removed, due to our age and generational differences.

STONE #2

In spring 1985, in one of my visits to mom Nellie after Dad James passed away in 1985, I saw that Mom had thrown away a stack of blue aerogram letters addressed to Dad. Mom explained that they were of no value to us because we could not read Chinese and we didn’t know the people in the letters.

Instinctively, I grabbed the whole stack of correspondence from the recycle bin, stuffed the pile into a garbage bag and placed it in the back of my closet.

Fast forward to June 2020: After Frank left for America with James in 1925, his wife adopted a son. KS was born in 1929. Frank’s two daughters eventually married Americans and immigrated to New York. KS remained behind in Hong Kong, married and had two sons, all eventually immigrating to the U.S.

After locating the two sons (my nephews CT and TM), I pulled out that garbage bag full of letters left untouched for 35 years in my closet. Of the 50 letters, 15 were from KS to his Uncle James in Seattle. After scanning the letters, TM provided general translations for the letters from James’s mother, younger brother, wife #1, daughter-in-law and granddaughter as well as correspondence from his father to his Uncle James.

After I had James’ headstone translated, I noticed that his 1904 birth year did not match “1903,” his listed year of birth on his legal documents. James wrote his headstone inscription and provided it to the monument company before his passing.

Translated, it says that he was “born in the 29^th year of Guangxu.” Emperor Guangxu lived from 1871 to 1908. I found an article online on how to read a Chinese tombstone. It stated that you add the number of years to the start of the emperor’s reign.

In Guangxu’s case, he was a 4-year-old child emperor beginning in 1875. So, 29 + 1875 = 1904.

Eventually searching through the lunar calendars for 1903 and 1904, along with a clue from one of the 1970 letters from wife #1, in which she stated that she celebrated his (Western) birthday in April that year, I determined that dad’s lunar birthday of Jan. 14 (1^st lunar month, 14^th day) converted to a Gregorian/Western birthday of Feb. 29, 1904, a leap year.

Because 1970 was not a leap year, wife #1 mistakenly took his Gregorian birthday (Feb. 29) as his lunar birthday (second lunar month, 29^th day) and converted it to a Gregorian date of April 5, 1970.

I don’t know why he recorded 1903 as his birth year unless he needed to be older, or perhaps because 1903 was a leap year in the lunar calendar, or he was confused with the Gregorian calendar.

STONE #3

In May 2021, brother Allen scanned and sent a photo he found in a box in his garage of Dad James standing among 44 employees while working as a printer at Frye & Co., a meat-packing plant in Sodo on Airport Way S. I wanted to date the photo to determine when dad worked at the plant.

Nieces Vanessa and Nicole scanned the photo at high resolution and noticed a wall calendar that seemed to indicate 30 days in a month starting on a Sunday, with the name of the month appearing to indicate a longer month such as September or November.

After finding articles about the Feb. 18, 1943, crash of the Boeing XB-29 bomber from nearby Boeing Field into the Frye plant, I wondered if James was still working at the plant in 1943.

In my research, I read that plant owner Charles Frye and wife Emma had an extensive collection of paintings, many of which were hung at the plant when they ran out of space at their First Hill mansion. Noticing that many large paintings could be seen on the plant wall in the Frye photo, I contacted Cory Gooch, chief registrar at the Frye Museum.

One of the men in the photo looked like the owner, Charles Frye. She confirmed that it was he. Charles Frye passed away on May 1, 1940. This left the calendar options of November 1931, September 1935 or November 1936.

Another man in the photo, wearing a heavy overcoat over his suit, seemed to indicate November rather than a balmier Seattle September. A search of women’s fashion and hairstyles suggested an early 1930’s date. An ad showing women’s fashion had a dress and hairstyle very similar to the one worn by the young woman standing in front of the counter (center) in the Frye photo. The ad line says, in part, “Only 1932 conditions make these low prices possible.”

Cory and Kayla Trail, collections & exhibitions assistant at the Frye, found a 1931 plant survey that seemed to indicate that due to the location of the Frye office, the fire would have been survivable. Frye property records from the Puget Sound Regional Branch of Washington State Archives sent from a friend showed that the office building constructed in 1927 contained a full basement.

Both my brother Phil and I remember seeing a second photo of James and another Chinese employee standing at their print-shop workstation seemingly in a basement along with other employees at their workstations. The photographer may have stood on a stairway or floor above the workstations. In the first Frye photo, another Chinese man stands 12^th from the left.]

In June 2021, while searching the Seattle Public Library website, I found the 1940 U.S. Census and located “James S. Sing.” James’s entry stated he was living at 719 ½ King St., Seattle. James filed his “paper son” documents (see footnote below) on Jan. 19, 1928 in San Francisco. By December 1928, James was already in Seattle.

In July 2021, I went to Chinatown to try to locate where dad lived in 1940 and at least from 1935 on, based on the census. I found that the current location of the Wing Luke Museum is at 719 King St. and that the Freeman Hotel was located in the upper two floors of the museum.

In August 2021, I emailed Special Collections at Seattle Public Library trying to determine when James worked at the Frye plant and when he worked as a printer at the print shop in Chinatown. Our family knew he had also been a printer in a Chinatown print shop.

A wonderful librarian replied that James Sing worked at Frye & Co as a printer from 1930 to 1935, based on the R.L. Polk city directories.

From 1937 to 1946, he worked as a printer/manager at the Chinese Star Printing Co., at 711 King St. We had not known the name of the print shop in Chinatown.

The mention of “star” jogged a memory, and I looked in Dad’s stack of correspondence and found a receipt/invoice pad with the name “Chinese Star Printing Co.” with a photo of a military man on the cover. Further research revealed that the star emblem was the official symbol on the flag of the Republic of China (1928-1949; Taiwan). The military man was a young Chiang Kai-shek, the military leader of the Republic of China.

The information on dad working at Frye & Co. (1930-1935) along with the fashion ad, would confirm that the Frye employee photo was taken in November 1931.

STONE #4

In September 2021, brother Allen found two more photos of Dad James in group photos of the Kuomintang (KMT), a political party of the Chinese Nationalist Party (anti-Communist).

One photo was definitely dated “December 9, 1928” and was the first meeting (grand meeting) of the NW branch of the KMT with nearly 70 people in the photo, taken in South Canton Alley, Seattle Chinatown.

On the back of the 1928 photo was a note “13 Goon Dip” and “9 James Sing” identifying the photo location of Dad James and businessman Goon Dip, who owned the Milwaukee Hotel. Revered by the community, Goon Dip was appointed honorary consul of China during the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and, later, permanent consul until his death in 1933.

I contacted the Wing collections manager, and after showing him the second photo, taken on Oct. 24, 1948 (likely for the 20^th anniversary of the original 1928 grand meeting), the manager indicated that it was taken downstairs on King Street in front of the KMT office, which also housed the Chinese Star Printing Co. I now knew where Dad James worked on his second job in Seattle.

With the knowledge that the print shop and the KMT office shared the same address, our family realized that our dad was more involved with the KMT than we had known. As a child, I remember Mom mentioning the “Kuomintang,” but I did not know what it was. According to the Seattle Public Library librarian, the Chinese Star Printing Co. was no longer listed as a business in the Seattle Street Address directory in 1947.

In February 1946, James married Nellie, and by October 1946, twin sons were born, with another son born in August 1947. It would seem that James, with a growing family, needed to earn more income.

By 1948, “Jim Sing” was listed in the Polk directory as working at Louie’s Chinese Garden. No Polk directory was produced in 1947, so James could have been working at Chinese Garden in 1947.

The Wing sent a copy of an April 10, 1951, Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, “Chinatown Detests Communism Evil,” with a photo of James Sing in front of the “Kuo Min Tang” office at 711 King St. It quotes James and identifies him as “past Chairman of the Seattle branch.”

James was probably the chairman of the KMT in the late 1940s when that 1948 photo was taken. He is standing in the back of the photo, against the KMT building, under the “K” on the window.

One of the translated aerograms (year unknown), which was a letter from a “nephew” from Taiwan, was addressed to James c/o Chinese Garden. James worked at Chinese Garden from 1948 to 1958.

The letter mentions that this “nephew” could make his way to the United States to carry on or share James’ duties so he could take a break due to his old age. He would need a job when he arrived.

In 1949, James moved his now family of six to a home on Beacon Hill. By 1951, James was the past chairman of the local KMT branch.

We knew that dad served as an informal banker, since Chinese families found it difficult to obtain loans from the local Seattle banks. Families paid a monthly fee, which James collected and recorded. When a loan was needed, he provided the funds and the recipient would repay the loan with interest.

While James worked at the Chinese Garden and Gim Ling restaurants, there was a safe that securely held the deposits. Several years ago, the father of one of my close friends recounted this arrangement. Shirley remembers sitting in her father’s car when he would stop by our house to drop off the money from his family. Dad was respected and trusted in the community.

From 1962 to 1972, Dad and a cousin co-owned the Sea Dragon Restaurant in Puyallup after finding Chinatown Seattle overcrowded with Chinese restaurants and hoping to take advantage of the untapped Chinese food scene about 30 miles south of Seattle.

Unfortunately, Dad retired, and the Sea Dragon was sold at the time of President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in February 1972, enhancing the popularity of Chinese cuisine in America. Charlie’s Restaurant & Lounge took over the space in 1972 and still stands today.

Dad constantly practiced his calligraphy even during his rest breaks at the restaurant and after he retired in 1972. Businessmen would have him draw Chinese characters for their business signs atop their stores or restaurants.

He once showed me a calligraphy project in which he compiled and demonstrated 10 styles of calligraphy. Dad even convinced a visiting Chinese master erhu musician to come to our house to show him how to play the erhu after he retired. I came home one day to find a University of Washington Chinese art professor showing him water color techniques!

Among one of the retrieved letters, I found one from January 1973 written by a San Francisco friend of Dad. Loosely translated, it said:

“Christmas greetings! I learned that you have retired and closed the restaurant. Good for you to enjoy your old age and have a good family. Your achievements were due to your talents and your abilities to adapt. If other people were in the same boat as yours, they might not have the same achievements.”

In today’s vernacular, Dad was able to “pivot” from immigrant to political party member to chairman, from printer to restaurant manager, owner and community banker. Add calligrapher, amateur painter and musician in retirement. Most important, he was Dad in our family of seven. Here is an overall timeline:

• 1917 arrived in the United States with his father and uncle.
• 1925 arrived in the United States for the second time with older brother.
• 1928 Jan. 19 filed his paper son documents in San Francisco.
• 1928 Dec. 9 in Seattle as part of the first meeting of the Northwest KMT branch.
• 1930-1935, printer at Frye & Co., meat-packing plant, 2305 Airport Way S.
• 1937-1946, printer and manager at Chinese Star Printing Co., 711 King St.
• 1948 Oct. 24, 20^th Anniversary of the Northwest Kuomintang branch.
• Late 1940s-1950, chairman of the Seattle Kuomintang branch.
• 1947-1959, manager, Louie’s Chinese Garden, 516 7^th Ave S.
• 1959-1962, manager & co-owner of the Gim Ling Restaurant, 516 7^th Ave S.
• 1962-1972, manager and co-owner of the Sea Dragon Restaurant, 113 E. Main St., Puyallup.
• 1972-1985, retired at his Beacon Hill home.

In the last three years, with one stone after another, and with the help of family members and the discovery of many more, this journey has filled in so many gaps in my dad’s early life in Seattle. It also has given his children a fuller picture of his struggles and sacrifices to make a life for his family.

I have so much respect and gratitude for both my parents in their respective journeys from China to the United States, twice for my dad, and from Canada to China to Canada and finally, to the United States for my mom.

We will never know their full stories, wasting too many years, left only with faint memories of a childhood full of mysterious clues, waiting to be pieced together to reveal the truth — their truth.

I would encourage you to speak with your parents and grandparents while they are alive, to follow and preserve their “footprints in the sand” before the incoming tide of time washes away their memory, leaving us with regret for time lost.

– – – – –

Helen’s footnote regarding the term “paper son”

A “paper son” is explained here. As an early teenager, my dad illegally immigrated to the United States in 1917 and again in 1925 through Mexicali on the southern California border. He jumped ship at some point before docking in southern California and traveled up through California.

By his second entry in 1925, the Immigration Act of 1924, according to Wikipedia, “introduced quotas for immigration based on national origin, creating a quota of zero for Asian countries, as well as forming the United States Border Patrol.” This required that Dad had to provide documentation. There have been many documentaries done on this “paper son” phenomenon.

In part, due to my dad’s immigration status, my parents were always careful not to tell us everything, although I knew that he came through Mexicali. That is why the translation on his headstone was important in telling the truth of when and where he was born. He literally took the truth to his grave.

That is why I believe he was actually born in 1904, based on his traditional Chinese listing of his date of birth. He would have had no reason to lie in Chinese on his headstone, written in a way that immigration officials would not understand. How many kids grew up knowing the name of prominent Seattle immigration attorney Dan Danilov? He was always concerned with the earlier version of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Chinese were allowed to remain in the United States if they could document that they were sons or daughters (mostly sons) of legal citizens (Chinese parents). They had to file affidavits declaring that they were the son or daughter of an American citizen (Chinese).

I have my dad’s “paper son” documents. This was common in the early 1900s, and many Bay Area Chinese would testify that their “government” documents were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The affidavit was signed by a known citizen who would testify that he “knew” this affiant was born in “such and such” city to “such and such” American parents.

When I started researching my dad’s early history, I knew that the typical Ancestry.com documents would not be helpful, because it was never going to be a matter of finding a straight-line progression of his footprints through government documents. Only when Dad filed his 1940 US Census, married my mom in 1946, applied for Social Security (enacted in 1935) and paid taxes would his U.S. government documents start to appear.

This is why I have such respect and gratitude for my dad in what he was able to achieve in his lifetime. He spent two years of high school (1940 Census), which was two years of night school at the old Broadway High School, learning English after he arrived in Seattle in 1928. Many immigrants did the same. Then in 1930, according to the Polk Directory, he was working at the Frye plant as a clerk and printer — hired by an American company!

= = = = =

‘Human Nature, Animal Culture:
Selections from the
Frye Art Museum Collection’

The exhibit opened June 12, 2021, and runs through Aug. 21, 2022. It looks at Charles and Emma Frye’s art collection through the lens of their businesses and includes archival materials and photos.

The images below are courtesy of the Frye Art Museum.
To see full descriptions for the entire exhibit, click here.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

= = = = =

Related ‘Now & Then’ columns

To see Paul Dorpat’s Feb. 9  2013, column on the another crash near Airport Way, click here. And to see his column about the fire station that responded to the 1943 bomber crash into the Frye plant, see below.

Here are two of what The Seattle Times calls “postscripts” — items that follow up stories (including “Now & Then” columns) printed in in its PacificNW magazine.

———

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on Dec. 19, 2021
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on Dec. 19, 2021)

The bigger picture: More rare photos of
Jimi Hendrix’s last Seattle concert emerge

By Jean Sherrard

Last summer, I naively thought it would be easy to visually verify Jimi Hendrix’s final appearance in Seattle and in the continental United States.

After all, the date was only a half-century ago, July 26, 1970, just a few weeks before the legendary guitarist died. The venue was the city’s prominent but fading baseball cathedral, Sicks Stadium. And thousands besides my early teenage self were there. Surely many were clicking away.

How wrong I was.

All the usual sources came up goose eggs. To my relief, however, Dave DePartee’s name popped up on a rock ’n’ roll fan site. DePartee, just 16, had used a point-and-shoot camera to snap two color pictures, one of which we showcased in our July 25 “Now & Then.” Grainy and distant, DePartee’s were seemingly the only stills of a major event in music history.

Wrong again!

After the column was published, an email from Scott Wyatt landed in my inbox. He had stood next to the stage on that soggy Sunday, wielding his Nikkormat camera. Proof was attached: a stunning, close-in black-and-white of Hendrix.

“I was just getting into photography,” Wyatt says, “but Hendrix’s was the only concert I ever shot. And it was like no other I’d ever attended.”

While studying architecture in New York, Wyatt held a summer job at a Longview sawmill. He and friends often trekked to Seattle for weekend shows. The Sicks gig was “uniquely intimate,” he recalls. “To me, Hendrix was a god, and I was right up front kissing his feet.”

In the early 1970s, Wyatt and his wife joined the Peace Corps and traveled to Iran, where his camera granted him special access in a country on the verge of revolution.

Back stateside, he worked as an architect, rising to become CEO of NBBJ, a Seattle-based global architectural firm. Retired after 30 years, he now attends Gage Academy, engaging a new passion: oil painting.

WEB EXTRAS

Here is the original “Now & Then” column on Hendrix at Sicks, published July 25, 2021 — click it to see the column and its own “web extras”:

Here are additional “Then” photos of Hendrix from Scott Wyatt:

For a photo essay by Scott Wyatt about his Peace Corps stint in Iran and Afghanistan, click here.

———

(click and click again to enlarge photos)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on Dec. 19, 2021
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on Dec. 19, 2021)

Good and grief, Charlie Brown: The razing of Mercer Island’s
former East Seattle School signifies a mixed preservation year

By Clay Eals

Undergirding this Postscript is one of the more charming homilies in comic-strip history.

“Life is rarely all one way,” says Linus in a Peanuts installment from Sept. 17, 1973. “You win a few, and you lose a few!” Charlie Brown replies, “Really? Gee, that’d be neat!!”

Two “Now & Then”-related preservation wins emerged in 2021:

• The La Quinta Apartments on Capitol Hill became a city landmark March 22, and its new owner signed a controls agreement Sept. 27. Tenants and Historic Seattle, whose quest to save the U-shaped structure we explored last Jan. 31, breathed a collective sigh of relief.
• The stunning, south-facing view of tiny Ursula Judkins Park in Magnolia was protected by a city hearing examiner’s ruling Oct. 19 that blocked proposed mega-mansions on the steep slope nearby. We featured a downtown skyline view from the park on Jan. 5, 2020.

But we were not spared the loss of the former East Seattle School on Mercer Island, near Interstate 90, at the turn of the New Year.

As we noted in “Now & Then” on July 28, 2019, the 1914 building had anchored the island’s first community hub, operating as a public school until 1982 and as a Boys & Girls Club until 2008.

Filling the 2.9-acre parcel will be 14 single-family homes. But the Mercer Island Historical Society is somewhat cheered that the city will require inclusion of a physical reminder of what came before.

“We have identified 200 square feet by the northeast corner of the property,” says Jane Meyer Brahm, co-president of the historical society. “We’ve talked about a paved area with an interpretive sign and hopefully a miniature representation of the archway that faced west, with information not just about the school but the entire East Seattle neighborhood.”

The extrapolated lesson becomes a Charlie Brown corollary: In preservation, often something irreplaceable has to fall for us to make sure that others remain standing.

WEB EXTRAS

Here are the original “Now & Then” columns on La Quinta Apartments from Jan. 31, 2021, and the view from Ursula Judkins Park from Jan. 5, 2020, along with the July 28, 2019, column on East Seattle School. Click on each to see each column and its own “web extras”:

Here are an additional photo and a video on East Seattle School:

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Photographs of Iran and Afghanistan 1973-74

[This essay is courtesy of Scott Wyatt, whose work is also featured today in a “Now & Then” Postscript that showcases his July 26, 1970, photos of Jimi Hendrix in concert at Sicks Stadium, the rock guitarist’s last Seattle show. Hendrix died less than two months later, on Sept. 18.]

By Scott Wyatt

I got my first 35mm camera in 1967 and fell in love with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” street photography. I took my Nikkormat with me everywhere, including the Hendrix concert at Sicks Stadium in 1970. Not much later, I was studying Edward Weston’s work and other larger format photographers and ended up buying a Hasselblad (a larger, medium format camera). When Jenny and I joined the Peace Corps in 1973 and went to Iran, I packed the Hasselblad too.

Well, Iran is no Point Lobos, and photographing peppers was missing the incredible opportunity in front of me. Iran is a rugged country with beautiful people and some magnificent architecture. So, back to street photography for me …. with a slow, clumsy Hasselblad!

It turns out, I think, that the medium format was perfect for portraits of Iranians in their surroundings and their architecture.

The sidewalks of Iranian towns and cities (sometimes just a dirt extension of the roadway) were magical. So much life and interaction. The sidewalk community would have made Jane Jacobs smile ear to ear.

A typical street would have bread shops next to the shop making shoes and buckets from old rubber tires, next to a yogurt shop, next to a shop selling live turkeys, and on and on. Sidewalk sitters everywhere. Stop and have tea and chat.

Hot from the oven, best bread I ever tasted. Many of our dinners (countless) were composed of one of these flat breads and a large bowl of yogurt. In the photo was our favorite, Nan-E Barbari.

Here is a different kind of “street” photographer. He would open and close the “lens” with his hands (shutter). The “film” was a positive paper. Developed with chemicals under a blanket while-you-wait. All for 7 cents. Jenny and I still have the photo of us he took.

We took our first New Year’s vacation (Iranian New Year is the first day of spring) and traveled to Afghanistan for three weeks. Farsi is also the language in Afghanistan. We each had a small backpack. My cameras and film pretty much took up the whole pack.

We traveled by train, bus, and hitchhike. Our Iranian friends told us that we should go to Afghanistan to see what Iran was like 40 years ago (now 90 years ago). It was the trip of a lifetime: spectacular sights and amazing people. We almost died from food poisoning and came back with some nasty parasites. Worth it, I think.

I took this photo of money changers in Kandahar, a tough town even in 1973. Happy to get out alive.

The religious architecture in Iran is second to none. You can get religion just by being in one of these great mosques. Isfahan has some of the best, still standing architecture thanks to being less prone to earthquakes.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 9, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Dec. 12, 2021)

In 1969 at Westlake, Santa sees when you’re protesting

By Jean Sherrard

On Santa’s watch, when you’re protesting, are you being “good for goodness’ sake”?

At four stories tall, the gargantuan Santa Claus sculpture that perched atop a brick chimney at Westlake Mall was oft proclaimed the largest in the world.

Commissioned in 1968 by John Gilmore of the Central Association of Seattle (now the Downtown Seattle Association), the jolly red giant waved an animated arm, puffed on a giant pipe and conversed with astonished children and their parents through hidden speakers. Young actors from Seattle’s Piccoli Theater, hidden behind one-way mirrors, provided Santa’s voice.

Jean and Wesley Stanley of Stanley Plastics Products Co. of Enumclaw designed and built the 30-foot-tall St. Nick, along with the 12-foot-high chimney. A steel armature covered with wire mesh. Fiberglass ensured structural stability.

Though divided into six pieces for transport, Santa’s journey from Enumclaw required wide-load permits along with a waiting crane to help hoist and assemble the 900-pound figure upon arrival.

But this version of Father Christmas was revised when he reappeared in 1969. A local PTA group lobbied the sponsoring Central Association to remove Santa’s jumbo pipe. Smoking was deemed inappropriate public behavior for the merry old elf, as per the U.S. surgeon general’s stance.

In addition, Earl Kelly, beloved Ballard High School drama teacher and founder of the Piccoli Theater, heard from church groups that actors who voiced Santa were “taking the Christ out of Christmas.” In response, Kelly advised his cast to moderate their expressions of pagan merriment (Ho ho ho?).

Childhood memories of Westlake Santa are a mixed bag. The massive, bearded, slightly bug-eyed face inspired delight and nightmares.

Westlake Mall has long served as Seattle’s unofficial town square, nestled between Pike and Pine Streets along Fourth Avenue. From the early 1960s to today, it has been a hub of protests, political events and community celebrations, often all at the same time.

The year of our “Then” photo, 1969, was marked by civil strife. More than half a million American troops were stationed in Vietnam. Although most Americans still approved of the war, huge demonstrations rocked the nation throughout the fall.

On Dec. 13, as reported in The Seattle Times, student protesters gathered beneath the colossal Kris Kringle to distribute leaflets to weekend Christmas shoppers while singing carols rewritten for the occasion. To the tune of “The First Noel,” anti-war carolers sang:

The Vietnam War
has lasted nine years
killing one million people
and brought many tears

The Westlake Santa was erected each December until 1976, after which he was decommissioned. An online researcher, however, traced the sculpture to North Pole, Alaska, 15 miles southeast of Fairbanks, which we trust is a place of peace.

WEB EXTRAS

To view the 360 degree video, narrated by Jean, please click right here.

Also, this coming Sunday at 2 P.M., join Jean for his 14th annual Rogue’s Christmas at Town Hall – with actors Kurt Beattie, Marianne Owen, and musical guests Pineola. Ken Workman, Duwamish elder and Chief Seattle descendant, will offer a Coast Salish welcome.

Calling all “Wunda Wunda” fans! Come honor her by taking part in a group photo with this “Wunda Wunda” standee at noon this Sunday, Dec. 5, 2021.

Ruth Prins, who played “Wunda Wunda” on KING-TV from 1953 to 1972, died Nov. 6 at age 101. Jean Sherrard and I are staging the group photo so that it can appear in an upcoming tribute to Ruth in PacificNW magazine of the Seattle Times.

The photo will be taken in Ruth’s longtime neighborhood, at Magnolia Boulevard Viewpoint, between Howe Street and Montavista Place. (See map below.)

The viewpoint has a large parking lot, and if it fills up, there is plenty of nearby parking space along the scenic boulevard.

We are grateful that no rain is forecast, but it’ll be a chilly 41 degrees, so bundle up. The backdrop will be the Space Needle, part of downtown and, if it’s visible, Mount Rainier. We will aim to take the photo shortly after noon, and we should be done by 12:30 p.m.

If you have any questions, please call or email me. Hope you can come!

Clay Eals
(206) 484-8008
ceals@comcast.net

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Dec. 2, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 5, 2021

Questions light up a childlike look at the Van Asselt flambeau

By Clay Eals

Today we return to you, dear readers, for help with one of our periodic puzzles. This one invokes the delights of childhood.

We speak of a 20-foot brick-and-metal monument that looks to be an elevated gyroscope, standing sentinel at the east end of Van Asselt Playground next to the mixed-income Seattle Housing Authority neighborhood of NewHolly (formerly Holly Park) in South Seattle.

In summer 2020, George Scarola, a friend and NewHolly resident, asked what I knew about this unmarked pillar. Off and on, through sporadic digging, I’ve learned some but not nearly enough.

From the invaluable, handwritten Don Sherwood research files at Seattle Parks comes its name — the French term “flambeau,” which Sherwood describes as “a flaming torch sundial that was common in the South: a gaslit smudge in the orchards and by whose light the children played.”

As verified only by a 1964 Seattle Times photo caption, it was sponsored by local garden clubs and built by the federal Works Progress Administration in 1940. Sherwood adds that it bore a lighted wick, and a paved area and fireplaces were part of its “pageantry.”

Which garden clubs? Who designed it? What did it cost? Why was it erected in Holly Park? Did it salute flight and next-door Boeing? Was it ever lit? And why does no plaque interpret it?

Larry Webb, a retired auto-service manager and pro-racecar driver from Covington, grew up in Holly Park starting as a first-grader in 1943. He and friends played hide-and-seek in nearby brush but never saw the flambeau lit. Once, he recalls, vandals wrested an adjacent softball backstop and hung it from the tower’s speared, rounded top.

Karen Spiel, a West Seattleite who retired this fall after 33-plus years at Seattle Public Library, grew up “a few skips away” from the monument in the 1960s.

“We used to call that thing the sundial,” she says. “We couldn’t figure out how it worked, but we had lots of weird kid games where the sundial was home base. Sometimes we would walk around and peer up at it, trying to figure out how it worked. We were sure that it could tell you the time, if we just knew how.

“When it got dark, we wanted to stay out as long as we could. We pretended that we couldn’t hear our moms calling us, but when Vern’s mom, whose house was closest, started calling Vern, we knew it was time to head home.”

Her youthful wonderment is persistent, even today: “What a charming and mysterious thing it is!”

Indeed.

Readers, can you clear up any more of its mystery?

WEB EXTRAS

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

Below also are six historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

In addition, we report that a reader named D. Carver of Marysville posted this comment on the Seattle Times website today:

“My 1973 book about sundials says that this is an armillary sphere. The slanted spear, i.e. the gnomon, casts a shadow on the lower half of the ring, or band, where the hour marks are.”

(Click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Nov. 25, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Nov. 28, 2021)

Model Willowmoor (later Marymoor) farm sparkled from the start

By Jean Sherrard

A crown jewel among King County parks, Marymoor Park has sparkled through several incarnations.

At the north end of Lake Sammamish, Marymoor’s 640 acres attract an estimated 3 million visitors a year, boasting sports facilities, performance venues and a 40-acre, off-leash dog park.

Our “Then” photo, taken a century ago, features a landscape carved from a verdant river valley first inhabited by the Duwamish Tribe for at least 6,000 years.

Wealthy banker and investor James W. Clise, who had arrived in Seattle one day after the great fire of June 6, 1889, was lured to the property by its abundant fish and game. In 1904, he built a hunting lodge on 78 acres along the Sammamish Slough and named the estate Willowmoor, after the trees flourishing near the water.

What began as summer retreat from city life, however, soon evolved into something more substantial. Within three years, Clise had embraced the role of a gentleman farmer. He added 350 acres, converted the lodge into a 28-room, Tudor-style mansion and proposed moving there with his family from their Queen Anne home.

In a 1961 Seattle Times interview, daughter Ruth Clise Colwell remembered her horror at the prospect: “It seemed to me that it would be like living at the end of the earth and that I would never see my friends again.”

Her fears soon eased when the estate became a bustling hive of activity. Her ambitious father imported “tough and wiry” Morgan horses from New England and filled the farm with hardy Ayrshire cattle imported from Scotland. Clise deemed the stock ideal for the Pacific Northwest’s similar climate. “Father’s great interest,” Colwell said, “was to improve the condition of the farm and better the life of the farmer.”

Willowmoor’s model dairy was considered years ahead of its time, and milk from the free-ranging cattle was roundly prized for a rich flavor and high cream content. Convinced of its health benefits, carmaker Henry Ford insisted on serving milk only from Clise cows at his hospital in Dearborn, Michigan. Visitors from around the world studied Clise’s innovative methods.

The showcase eventually expanded to 28 buildings and 40 employees. Clise traveled widely, particularly to agricultural countries, continually seeking to improve and expand upon his bold experiment.

In 1921, in failing health, Clise sold the farm. A later lessee, Walter Nettleton, changed its name to Marymoor to memorialize a daughter killed in a childhood accident. In 1963, King County voters funded Marymoor as a park. Ten years later, Clise mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

WEB EXTRAS

To view our 360 degree video, please click here.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Nov. 18, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Nov. 21, 2021

‘The Spirit Returns 2.0’ unveils a dual look at landing anniversary

By Clay Eals

Time was, a round-numbered anniversary was a straightforward occasion to celebrate. No longer, in the case of our city’s birth. Today we can witness a more complex — and richer — commemoration.

This month’s round number is 170, the number of years from Nov. 13, 1851, the cold and rainy day when the so-called Denny Party famously landed at Alki Beach after traveling west from Illinois and sailing north from Portland to establish a new home.

It’s the date carved into the “Birthplace of Seattle” obelisk that has stood at Alki since 1905.

Of course, complications arise from long-repeated references to that simplified tale:

• The 22 who landed on Nov. 13 were not the first Euro-American settlers who arrived in what became known as Seattle.
• Besides Dennys, other families were in the Nov. 13 group, with the familiar names of Boren, Bell, Terry and Low, calling into question the “Denny Party” designation. (All except the Lows later were rewarded with Seattle street names.)
• The obelisk identified the married women in the group merely as “and wife.”
• The 1851 landing does not denote Seattle’s official birth. The city was incorporated in 1865 and, after its charter was voided, was re-incorporated in 1869.

The most egregious error, however, lies in the story’s neglect for the presence of Native Americans for thousands of years prior to the landing. The obelisk’s “birthplace” reference thus reflected solely the perception of immigrants, many who forcefully dismissed (and later eradicated) the lives and culture that existed before their arrival.

On Nov. 13, 2000, the Southwest Seattle Historical Society began correcting the course, launching “The Spirit Returns,” an exhibit telling the Duwamish and settler stories at the organization’s Log House Museum at Alki.

One year later, it unveiled new plaques on the beach monument. The markers recast the settlers as the Alki Landing Party, added the wives’ names and honored the generosity of city namesake Chief Seattle and his Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.

This fall, the historical society and the Duwamish Tribe have teamed to go further, mounting a thorough follow-up: “The Spirit Returns 2.0: A Duwamish and Settler Story.” This venture is hosted at two West Seattle sites: the historical society’s 1904-vintage museum and the Duwamish Longhouse, which opened in 2009 on West Marginal Way.

In conversations that shaped their displays, the organizations decided to focus on differing aspects but also to weave a common thread — the early acts of friendship between the natives and settlers. The quest, as the historical society says, is to “uncover a new way to think about Seattle history.”

WEB EXTRAS

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

Below also are (1) a photo of the exhibit poster, (2) an “epilogue” by Alki historian Phil Hoffman, (3) nine more photos from the 2000 opening of “The Spirit Returns” and (4) a photo and Seattle Times coverage of the Nov. 13, 1951, centennial of the settler landing.

Special thanks to West Seattle’s Deborah Mendenhall for preserving and sharing her 2000 slides of “The Spirit Returns” opening ceremony, and to Bruce and Emily Howard for their expert slide-scanning skills in helping make these images available to the public for the first time in color!

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 28, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Oct. 31, 2021)

Buskers bolster the Market soundtrack, but for how long?

By Jean Sherrard

Some sights peel back your eyelids and jet right into the brain, never to be forgotten.

In my mid-teens, I acted in a 1973 production of “Hamlet” at the tiny Stage One Theater in Post Alley, just north of today’s Gum Wall. Post-rehearsal, as I climbed narrow concrete steps up to Pike Place Market, a busker dressed all in white and sporting a mime’s makeup danced and lunged through a cheering crowd.

Armed with a set of spoons, he battered them against every available surface — from his knees, teeth and cheeks to pillars, sidewalks and banisters — scooping rhythmic staccatos out of thin air. He was Artis the Spoonman, and I was spellbound.

“I’d been playing spoons since I was 10,” recalls Artis, now living in Port Townsend, “and always wanted to be a performer.” Moving to Seattle from Santa Cruz, he frequented Fremont taverns, playing jukebox duets for tips, and soon established a fanbase.

Next stop: Pike Place Market, not yet a tourist haven but a place where locals gathered to shop and stroll.

“Aside from street fairs, the Market was one of the only venues for buskers in the early 1970s,” Artis says. “We had a busking community, share and share alike, performing in the commons for the people.”

Pianist Jonny Hahn, originally from Champaign/Urbana, Illinois, still shares that sensibility. Busking since 1986, he embodies the Market’s soundtrack.

“I play a combination of lengthy improvisational instrumental pieces and songs with lefty political lyrics,” he says. “The Market has been my home because of the artistic freedom quotient.”

Wrestling his 64-key acoustic piano onto a Pike Place corner every day, he bears bittersweet witness to a particular strain of social evolution.

“It started with smartphones,” he says. “People’s attention spans were diminished by orders of magnitude. Constant texting and Googling and taking photos completely altered public space.”

Dealing a further blow was Covid. In March 2020, Market busking was prohibited. Hahn relocated, playing his piano beneath the old Green Lake Aqua Theater until the Market reopened to performers last June 25.

Public response to his return moved Hahn deeply: “It was just heart energy spilling over. People just kept saying how glad they were to have me back. The music was something they really, really missed.”

However, few other performers have returned to a place once considered a busker’s paradise. Will they come back? Hahn is wary of predictions.

“I don’t have any idea what will happen next month or next year,” he says, “but I am committed to the Pike Place Market.”

WEB EXTRAS

Click through to our 360 degree video, featuring Accordion Cat playing a soulful cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Plus a couple more photos of Artis the Spoonman in an earlier Market, along with 1983 video footage of Artis at the Winnipeg Folk Festival:

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Oct. 21, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 24, 2021

From Blanchard to Bergman, Seattle’s transit saga keeps moving

By Clay Eals

While leading historical tours in West Seattle’s shopping hub, which in 1907 was named The Junction for its streetcar intersection, I often assert that transportation fuels our very existence. It guides where we reside, work and play. To live, we’ve gotta move.

This, of course, applied at the turn of the 20th century, when autos were new and owned by only a few. So to quickly cross town, Seattleites frequently rode the rails of a cable car or electric streetcar. Originally charted by 13 companies, the routes evolved into a grid that gave shape to downtown and outlying neighborhoods (dubbed “streetcar suburbs”).

To document this, historian Leslie Blanchard, a longtime city engineer, assembled a landmark book, “The Street Railway Era in Seattle: A Chronicle of Six Decades,” published in 1968.

Enter Mike Bergman.

Growing up atop Queen Anne Hill, Bergman pestered trolley-bus drivers about how their vehicles worked. Clerking at the downtown library in 1968 while a senior at the old Queen Anne High School, he repeatedly observed Blanchard examining documents and even introduced himself to the researcher. The seeds of Bergman’s future were growing.

Fifty-three years later, he is a retired planner, with 16 years at Sound Transit and 20 years at King County Metro. Emulating Blanchard with countless study hours at the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive in Burien, Bergman has produced his own large-format book, “Seattle’s Streetcar Era: An Illustrated History 1884-1941,” to be published by WSU Press.

The book’s launch event will take place 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, at Highline Heritage Museum, 819 SW 152nd St., Burien. Proof of vaccination and masks are required.

Blanchard’s 1968 primer is long out of print. Surviving copies go for hundreds of dollars online. But Bergman’s book, with 130 crisply reproduced historical photos and 13 new maps, offers a fresh chance to, as he writes, “give the reader more of a feeling of being there.”

That feeling — in today’s city of 737,000 people, clogged with 461,000 cars — might be elusive. But Bergman’s book evokes the social and political trends of a time when citizens surmounted Seattle’s legendary hills aboard railcars, akin to San Francisco’s famed fleet but enclosed because of our chillier clime.

Highlights include the saga of the Queen Anne counterbalance, the ingenious, gravity-powered underground rig that propelled cars up and down the district’s 18%-grade hill. Its can-do ethic reflected the era.

Bergman also charts the city’s bumpy takeover of the streetcar network in 1919, when yearly trips peaked at 133 million, as well as the system’s demise and conversion to rubber-tired buses by World War II.

Then, as now, civic debate over public transportation was rife. But as Bergman notes, today’s multi-jurisdictional light-rail web is steadily expanding while shaping a Seattle that just keeps moving.

WEB EXTRAS

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

Below also are (1) a video interview of Mike Bergman, (2) a photo of his book cover and Leslie Blanchard‘s, (3) a 1925 Seattle streetcar map courtesy of Ron Edge , (4) video of a 2017 Bergman presentation and (5), in chronological order, 15 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that document Leslie Blanchard’s pace-setting streetcar research. Of these clippings, six are earlier “Now & Then” columns by Paul Dorpat, our column’s founder.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 14, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Oct. 17, 2021)

Eagle Falls near Index: ‘An easy jump, but hell if you don’t make it’

By Jean Sherrard

Lee Pickett was surely the most prolific photographer to grace Snohomish County. His 1910 move from Seattle to the tiny mountain town of Index provided Pickett with opportunities aplenty to document the burgeoning highways and railroads and the booming logging and mining industries.

In the 1920s, he was appointed official photographer of the Great Northern Railroad. His stunning images recorded construction of eight-mile Cascade Tunnel (1929) — then the longest in the western hemisphere — and quickly cemented his reputation.

His more whimsical portraits reveal Pickett’s playful side. This pair of “then” photos, snapped a decade apart, feature Eagle Falls along the Skykomish River, three miles east of Index.

The first, from 1916, features boulders at the falls’ base, a perennial picnic spot and swimming hole for locals. The gent in jacket and fedora poses stiffly while, across the bottom of the negative, Pickett has written, in the reverse script mastered by period photographers: “Hell’s Gate at Eagle Falls. An easy jump — but — hell if you don’t make it.”

In our “now” photo at the same location, the boulders have shifted position, their top halves seemingly lopped away. These changes are due not to erosion or earthquakes but to explosives intended to reduce steep grades for adjacent Great Northern track beds.

During a recent visit, a members of a videography class from Hillside Student Community watch as 15-year old Will Maltz, trained in the urban gymnastic sport of parkour, leaps the gap between boulders.

Our second “then” photo features the upturned canoe of local lumberjack (and Pickett regular) Al Faussett. In 1926, Fox Pictures offered $1,500 to anyone who would row through nearby Sunset Falls. Faussett built a sturdy craft to survive the ordeal, but Fox reneged on its offer.

Undaunted, the newly minted daredevil persisted, reveling in his growing celebrity, but cashing in proved elusive. On Sept. 6, 1926, hundreds of onlookers crowded the Eagle Falls banks to watch Faussett risk life and limb. Most declined to pay for the privilege, and the drama of his descent fizzled when his canoe stuck partway down the run. A friend soon dislodged it with a long pole.

Faussett spent the next three years shooting Northwest waterfalls, breaking bones and suffering repeated concussions until retiring on his waterlogged laurels.

The photographer Pickett (1882-1959) ended his career in the late 1940s, health ravaged by decades of exposure to developing chemicals. Today, his Index home houses the Index Historical Society’s Pickett Museum.

WEB EXTRAS

And for a 360 degree video view of Eagle Falls, along with Jean’s narration, head in this direction.

In a late breaking addition, photo historian Ron Edge sends along the following Pickett portraits.

Click twice on the following panoramas to zoom in and explore. To create these spectacular images, Pickett used the Cirkut camera manufactured by the Rochester Panoramic Camera Company. Thanks, Ron, for these remarkable photos of a vanished landscape.

(click and click again to enlarge photos)

We are delighted that the editors of PacificNW magazine of The Seattle Times asked us to prepare a cover-story package for the magazine’s print edition of Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021, on the topic of vicarious vacations. Call it an epic “Now & Then.”

Here’s the introduction:

The places we visited when we were young stand stubbornly, often joyously, in our minds and hearts.

In this collection, we delve into these memories as illuminated by long-ago travel photos — many of them submitted by readers of our “Now & Then” column.

We also return to these sites, in images kindly contributed by professional and amateur photographers in places that we collectively cannot or choose not to revisit at present because of the coronavirus.

It’s a way of taking vacations without leaving home. Enjoy the trip!

And below are links to 12 fully illustrated vignettes, including video interviews, preceded by the Backstory. Special thanks to the friends and others we called upon to snap “Now” photos out of the goodness of their hearts. We hope you enjoy it all.

— Jean Sherrard and Clay Eals

BACKSTORY — by Jean

• 

  Savoring the sweet peach of memory
  ‘Somehow bouncing off all that ageless beauty can prompt the hitting of a reset button’

VIGNETTE 01 — by Jean

• 

  Mount Rushmore, 1994
  ‘When I was young, I wanted to hear about a place and wanted to see it’
  —Hai Thi Nguyen

VIGNETTE 02 — by Clay

• 

  New York harbor, 1963
  ‘I was obviously very secure in myself … that innocent confidence’
  —Marti Dell

VIGNETTE 03 — by Jean

• 

  Copenhagen, 1965
  ‘A text of independence … I passed reasonably well’
  —Astrid Anderson Bear

VIGNETTE 04 — by Clay

• 

  Iguazú Falls, Argentina, 2011
  ‘It was a moment of grace and gratitude’
  —Lizeth Gutierrez

VIGNETTE 05 — by Clay

• 

  The JFK Eternal Flame at Arlington Cemetery
  ‘There was absolute devastation … This was very important’
  —Linda Turner

VIGNETTE 06 — by Clay

• 

  Expo ’74, Spokane, 1974
  ‘This must have been what Century 21 was like’
  —Gavin MacDougall
  

VIGNETTE 07 — by Clay

• 

  Chicago lakeshore, 1988
  ‘To explore without having to go on an expedition’
  —Elancia (Lancie) Williamson

VIGNETTE 08 — by Jean

• 

  Australian outback, 1986
  ‘The most exotic place in the world’
  —Bruce Greeley

VIGNETTE 09 — by Clay

• 

  Lake Michigan chalet, 1966
  ‘It was magical … The soul is still there’
  —Kristen Woodward

VIGNETTE 10 — by Jean

• 

  Banff, Alberta, 1979
  ‘I had never seen a lake that was so blissfully blue’
  —Kara Kyro

VIGNETTE 11 — by Clay

• 

  Pinoy Hill, Seward Park, 1954
  ‘You really want to hold onto your culture’
  —Ranesto (Ron) Angeles

VIGNETTE 12 — by Jean

• 

  Paris, 1967
  A highlight of their lives
  —The Rev. Theodore and Cherry Dorpat

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Sept. 30, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 3, 2021

‘Important conversations’ fuel 130-year Woman’s Century Club

By Clay Eals

For whom is the 19th century known?

Answers abound, but a half-dozen progressive women from Seattle claimed it as their own during the century’s final decade.

Because of educational, occupational, social and political strides, especially the right to vote, this local group adopted the phrase “the Woman’s Century,” forming a club with that name in 1891. The designation also took off nationally throughout the 1890s.

To no surprise, the appellation was appropriated commercially. The Singer Manufacturing Co. placed full-page ads headed “The Woman’s Century” in turn-of-the-century editions of McClure’s Magazine. The ads touted Singer sewing machines and typewriters for providing “increased time and opportunity for women’s rest and recreation or for other occupations from which they had been debarred.”

In Seattle, club founders were more high-minded. An early organizational history states that amid “the sordid atmosphere of a rapidly developing western city,” they felt the need to gather “for intellectual culture, original research and the solution of the altruistic problems of the day.”

Leading them was Carrie Chapman Catt, who soon took on coast-to-coast fame, succeeding Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and, when ratification of the 19th amendment to the Constitution was nigh in 1920, founding the League of Women Voters.

Such sturdy stock flourished in the club’s early decades. In 1926, members helped elect the first female Seattle mayor, Bertha Landes, a former club president. In 1933, they hosted a reception for famed aviator Amelia Earhart.

The club’s talks and teas held an additional purpose, to raise money for a permanent headquarters and theater on Capitol Hill. A three-story brick edifice, with “Woman’s Century Club” etched above its entrance, took shape in 1925 at the southeast corner of Harvard and East Roy.

Club events took place there for 40-plus years, but thinning membership prompted its sale in 1968 and conversion to what became the charming Harvard Exit Theatre, with movie auditoriums on two floors. The club still met in its parlor, but screens went dark when the building was resold in 2014 and renovated by Eagle Rock Ventures. The main tenant today is the Mexican Consulate.

Now based at Dearborn House on First Hill, the club sponsors provocative presentations and funds an annual scholarship for a young woman “with promise.”

Members appreciate the club’s focus on history and the arts. They also revere its trailblazing legacy. In its 130th year, Debra Alderman, vice-president, says, “We need to continue to have important conversations.”

We are a little more than one-fifth of the way through the 21st century. For whom will it be named?

WEB EXTRAS

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

Here are video interviews of three Woman’s Century Club leaders: (1) Cheri Sayer, treasurer and past president, (2) Debra Alderman, vice-president, and (3) Twila Meeks, scholarship chair.

And here, in chronological order, are 21 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Sept. 23, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 26, 2021

In celebration out of darkness, Horiuchi mural inspires reunion

By Clay Eals

Memorable moments abound naturally at Seattle Center, our collective keepsake from the 1962 World’s Fair. And for me, its touchstone is the amphitheater west of the Space Needle, anchored by the rich hues and galvanizing composition of its 60-by-17-foot mosaic mural by Paul Horiuchi.

Both arresting and unifying, the juxtaposed Needle, green grass and mural bear a timeless appeal, enveloping us like a hug. Where else, over the past six decades, could we rather have passed time alone in urban contemplation or enjoyed an outdoor experience with a festive crowd?

I’ve long presumed that the mural’s warmth and complexity derived from the art itself, but thanks to a recent reunion of Horiuchis at the mural, I know it also springs from a stinging saga.

Born in 1906 in Japan, Horiuchi first delved into ink-wash painting as a boy. He came to the United States in 1920, becoming a railroad worker in Wyoming until World War II, when he was fired for being Japanese and lived largely in hiding with his young family in a truck while laboring as a janitor and gardener.

Postwar, after a move to Seattle, Horiuchi’s artistic career took off. Fifteen years later, the Century 21 Exposition commissioned what became the soft-spoken collagist’s best-known and most beloved piece. His melding of odd-shaped and multi-colored chunks of glass from Venice, Italy, was touted in 1962 as the largest single work of art in the Northwest.

Brian Horiuchi, a descendant and L.A. screenwriter-director who organized the reunion, sees accessibility and emotional truth in his great uncle’s creation.

“Though it’s abstract, it doesn’t strike me as intellectualized or at all forced,” he says. A family gathering at the amphitheater, he says, becomes a pilgrimage to a tangled but triumphant legacy: “I think there’s celebration with the darkness, for sure.”

His 5-year-old daughter, Cosima, a budding artist, catches the symbolism while twirling before the parabolic mural: “It’s about feelings.”

My own feelings about the mural hover to amphitheater events such as Pete Seeger inspiring a 1997 Northwest Folklife audience to sing along to “Amen/Freedom/Union” with the new Seattle Labor Chorus, as well as, more recently, the perennially mesmerizing performances of Eduardo Mendonça and Show Brazil.

The long ribbon of such occasions bespeaks permanence — and survival amid sporadic talk of redesigning Seattle Center, especially a scuttled late-1980s Disney scheme.

The mural’s endurance also breeds comfort that its maker expressed in a handwritten message, shared at his 1999 memorial service:

“I have always wanted to create something serene, the peace and serenity, the quality needed to balance the sensationalism in our surroundings today.”

WEB EXTRAS

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

Also please click here to see a Queen Anne Historical Society story on the mural’s 2011 restoration.

We present an array of additional extras related to this column’s topic.

Here are video interviews of four Paul Horiuchi descendants attending the July 13, 2021, family reunion at the Seattle Center Mural Amphitheater: (1) Brian Horiuchi, (2) Mark Horiuchi, (3) Grant Horiuchi and (4) Trish Howard.

We also present two other videos from the Seattle Center’s Mural Amphitheater: (1) a May 25, 1997, Pete Seeger performance of “Amen/Freedom/Union” at Northwest Folklife Festival and (2) a May 28, 2018, performance, also from Folklife.

Below we present three examples of other Paul Horiuchi artworks from the private collection of Brian Horiuchi and Rowan Maness.

Here, in chronological order, are 22 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 16, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Sept. 19, 2021)

Tower lets Port Angeles hear a regular ring of promise

By Jean Sherrard

On a warm evening in mid-August, smoke from hundreds of British Columbian fires had crossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca, turning the sun an unsettling red over Port Angeles, where I’d paused for a photo and a bite to eat. Offering solace, the Clallam County courthouse bell tolled the hour as it had for over a century.

For Port Angeles, 1914 was a banner year, pregnant with promise. A gleaming hydroelectric dam had just been erected on the Elwha River, supplying the county seat’s electrical needs. The city’s first large sawmill was built on the waterfront and connected by rail to stands of virgin timber to the west. A vast regrade was well under way, raising the waterfront, filling gullies and lowering the steeper hills. And work on the new courthouse, featured in our “Then” photo, was largely complete.

Evidence of the area’s human habitation reaches back almost three millennia, with two Klallam villages sharing the harbor for at least 400 years. They called it I’e’nis (reportedly meaning “good beach”), which morphed into two names now in use: Ediz Hook (the city’s long and protective signature sand spit jutting east into the Strait) and snow-fed Ennis Creek, which empties into the bay.

Port Angeles’ natural, deep-water harbor was noted by Spanish explorer Francisco de Eliza in 1791 and dubbed Puerto de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Port of Our Lady of the Angels). One year later, British Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver, a staunch Anglican, shortened the name to its current two words.

In the mid-1850s, the first permanent white settlers arrived, staking Donation Land Act claims near Native villages. Over succeeding decades, land speculators, shady political operators, a utopian colony and pulp and paper mill operations flourished while ejecting the Klallam from their ancestral homes.

Designed by early 20th century Seattle architect Francis W. Grant, the two-story neo-classical brick and terra cotta-trimmed courthouse was nothing if not aspirational. Built to replace a wooden structure destabilized by the regrade, its graceful, sturdy lines reflected bright boomtown hopes. Locals also appreciated its rock-bottom price of $64,000.

The four-faced clock/bell tower — today proudly featured on the Clallam County seal — was installed after a serendipitous discovery. Francis Grant unearthed an unclaimed, Boston-based E. Howard and Co. clock, manufactured in 1880 and shipped around Cape Horn to Seattle. It languished in storage for decades until the architect encouraged Clallam County to pick it up for a $5,115 song.

It continues to sing to this day, faithfully striking every half hour.

WEB EXTRAS

No 360 video this week due to the theft of my monopod on a beach near La Push. However, a few oceanside photos may help salve the loss.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 9, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Sept. 12, 2021)

Twin architects banked on a legacy of faith plus finance

By Jean Sherrard

Keen to serve both God and Mammon, Louis and Michael Beezer defied scriptural maxims to the contrary. Twins whose architectural firm produced edifices for faith and finance, they skillfully negotiated the two worlds.

Born on July 6, 1869, in Bellefont, Pennsylvania, the Beezers arrived in Seattle in 1907. Different from competing firms, they were hands-on designers, overseeing every step of the construction process.

In 1908, their vision for a new “mosquito fleet” terminal at Colman Dock, with its Italianate clock tower and dome, drew acclaim, Thereafter, the industrious pair enjoyed commissions from Alaska to California.

The Beezers were devout Roman Catholics whose extensive work for the Archdiocese of Seattle included the Immaculate Conception School (1909), Dominican Priory of the Blessed Sacrament (1909–25) and Edward J. O’Dea High School (1923). After the St. James Cathedral dome collapsed beneath a 1916 record snow, a trusted Louis Beezer helped rebuild the destroyed sanctuary while improving its abysmal acoustics.

Financial institutions provided bread to match the ecclesiastical butter. The Beezers’ neo-classic banks throughout the West include the focus of this week’s column.

Having relocated from downtown digs in 1895, the University of Washington was booming — in both enrollment and revenue. Its beleaguered comptroller regularly ferried cash and checks to central-city repositories, spending a half-day or more in weary commute.

Providing a sober solution was the University District’s first financial institution, Washington State Bank, founded in 1906 by professors, administrators and business leaders — and we do mean sober. By state law, the sale of alcohol was banned within two miles of campus.

By 1913, the bank, expanding with the university, commissioned the Beezers to erect a stately, two-story structure at 45th and University Way. It was such a calm, rural intersection that neighbors described choruses of frogs serenading from nearby ponds and swamps.

The establishment’s ground floor and basement offered opulence and security, while a lofty, second-floor ballroom and concert hall welcomed fraternity and community dances.

Our “Then” photo depicts a livelier U-District, packed with shops and businesses catering to students. A banner stretched across 45th Street publicizing a “University Legion Frolic” accurately dates the photo to 1925. In late September that year, the new American Legion Hall on the southwest corner of 10th Avenue and 50^th Street hosted the affair, which promised dancing, “free vaudeville” and a “Young Woman’s Popularity Contest.”

We offer a fiery footnote: In 1976, the legion sold its hall to Randy Finley, who converted it to the Seven Gables Theater. Shuttered in 2017, the charming moviehouse burned down last Christmas Eve.

WEB EXTRAS

We visit 45th and University Way for a 360 degree video featuring the column. To watch, click here.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Sept. 2, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 5, 2021

Tacoma’s totem-pole takedown aims to ease tribal trauma

By Clay Eals

All the arguing over tearing down what some consider to be inappropriate public monuments becomes palpable once you hear the revving-up of chainsaws.

The roar came to Tacoma’s Fireman’s Park, the South A Street vista overlooking the port’s industrial tideflats, at 7 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 3. That’s when Tacoma Power workers hoisted cherry-picker buckets and began slicing into pieces a 118-year city landmark — the Tacoma totem pole.

Capped by an eagle, it was erected just before then-President Teddy Roosevelt’s May 22, 1903, visit to Tacoma as a lasting way to promote the City of Destiny in favorable comparison to northern neighbor Seattle. Described as 75 to 105 feet long, with some 15 feet underground, the pole bore a plaque calling it “the largest totem pole in the world,” a status touted for decades but eclipsed elsewhere.

First it stood at 10th Street next to the old Tacoma Hotel, then was moved one block north in 1954. It came down in 1974-76 for extensive restoration and was steadied in 2014 by a tall metal brace.

Its most prominent national role came in the 1927 silent film “Eyes of the Totem” (working title “The Totem Pole Beggar”), helmed by famed director W.S. Van Dyke and restored and re-premiered in 2015 by the Tacoma Historical Society. As shown in our “Then” photo, the pole figured strikingly in the melodrama.

Trouble is, the pole, long said to have been carved by Alaskan Natives hired by Tacoma businessmen, recently has been deemed both inauthentic in origin and purpose and unrepresentative of the indigenous Puyallup Tribe, which sought its exile. “There has been a lot of trauma,” tribal council chair Annette Bryan has said, “and we have to tell the true story to be able to heal.”

Tacoma officials agreed. They plan to commission new Coast Salish art for the park while storing the pole’s pieces and working with the historical society to display them with appropriate interpretation.

Debate rages on, however. Doug Granum of Southworth, who led the pole’s mid-1970s restoration, calls its amputation tragic. “Destroying history,” he says, “is right out of the Communist playbook.”

The feelings of Don Lacky, former member of the Tacoma Arts Commission who fervently pursued the pole’s preservation, are more mixed. “I can understand why the Puyallup nation finds it offensive,” he says. “It would be like Russia putting up a monument here in the United States.”

Meanwhile, 46-year Tacoma resident Verna Stewart, one of a few non-city staff or media witnessing the two-hour chainsaw takedown, was grateful to see removal of what she calls “another American history lie.”

WEB EXTRAS

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

We present a huge collection of extras related to this column’s topic.

Below are 14 additional NOW photos, four other photos, one postcard and, in chronological order, 119 historical clippings from the Tacoma News Tribune and other online newspaper sources (including two period movie reviews!) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

We also present four videos: (1) comments from Amy McBride, Tacoma’s arts administrator, (2) comments from Don Lacky, former Tacoma arts commissioner, (3) comments from Verna Stewart, 46-year resident of Tacoma, and (4) a start-to-finish, 43-minute account of the totem pole’s takedown.

In addition, we present a provocative essay by Southworth artist Doug Granum, who led the restoration of the totem pole in 1976 and strongly opposed its takedown. Below the essay are photos of the pole taken by Granum prior to its 1976 restoration.

We also present (1) an Aug. 5, 2021, press release from the Tacoma Historical Society announcing the ability to see online its restoration of the 1927 silent film “Eyes of the Totem” and (2) extensive packets from three recent meetings of Tacoma’s arts and landmarks preservation commissions. The packets include letters from citizens, staff assessments and historical photos and graphics.

In addition, here are two “Eyes of the Totem” video links:

• “Eyes of the Totem” trailer (length: 0:44)
• “Eyes of the Totem” documentary by artTown (length: 8:52)

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Aug. 26, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Aug. 29, 2021

Old Sol came alive in Bob Hale’s wild art on early Seattle TV

By Clay Eals

Many of us ride a media treadmill, ingesting recorded events that we re-run at our command. But the most astonishing stuff of life often is ephemeral, solely in the moment. In other words, “You have to be there.”

Like the weather itself, Bob Hale, Seattle’s original cartooning TV weatherman, once wove such momentary magic. Maple Leaf-based historian Peter Blecha, though just a tyke at the time, was “there” to revel in it. He methodically collects all things Hale to keep his hero’s legacy alive.

Early TV weather reporting, Blecha says, was retrospective, documenting yesterday’s rain with only a touch of Farmer’s Almanac-like prediction. Hale helped change that. A commercial artist who left Bellingham for Seattle in 1938, Hale began doing illustrated forecasts for KING-TV’s fledgling news shows in 1955.

Hale’s magic derived from delivering jokey meteorological details while drawing wildly comic cartoons with personified characters such as Sammy Seagull. It was all live, in real time. Adults and kids alike couldn’t take their eyes off him.

His personal appearances, ad work and zany products (cans of “Pure Puget Sound Air”) ballooned. Clients ranged from Sunny Jim peanut butter to Seattle Rainiers baseball. His fame matched that of local TV’s other stars, from child-focused Wunda Wunda to sportscaster Rod Belcher.

A warm smile gave Hale a genial persona, while his eyeglasses and balding dome conveyed authority. But his calling card was a sharp visual style.

“He loved drawing people and critters in motion, Old Sol grimacing, shaking its fists, clouds angry with menacing eyes,” Blecha says. “It wasn’t just cutie-pie, easygoing fun. He was purposely adding drama to what otherwise could be a dry situation. He also was possibly projecting tensions from his own life.”

The tensions, Blecha says, included being a closeted gay man who battled alcohol addiction. His KING reign ended in 1963, the station eventually replacing him with cartoonist Bob Cram. Short stints followed in California TV and, in 1968-69, back in Seattle at KIRO-TV. Alcoholism recovery became a late-life cause. In 1983 at age 64, he died in obscurity.

Hale’s broadcast tapes do not survive, and he typically gave thousands of his KING drawings to kids. Undeterred, Blecha is preparing a cartoon-heavy Hale biography. It will reflect the quaint, in-the-moment sentiment of E.R. Babcock of Vashon Island, who, in a 1969 Seattle Times letter, lamented KIRO’s dismissal of Hale:

“In a world and area where protests, taxes, wars, politicians and you-name-it hog the news programs, it was a real pleasure to have a little humor on something, thank God, we mortals have no control of yet — and that is the weather.”

WEB EXTRAS

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

Special thanks to Denise Frisino, Harry Faust, Barbara Manning, Libby Sundgren and Peter Blecha for their invaluable help with this installment.

Below are three additional photos and, in chronological order, 64 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

We also present three videos: (1) a 360-degree Bob Hale residential room mural from 1946 previously unseen until now, (2) a story by KING 5 meterologist Rich Marriott about Hale in 1973, and (3) an assemblage of images and footage of Bob Cram that was shared at Cram’s 2017 memorial service.

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in The Seattle Times online on Aug. 19, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Aug. 22, 2021)

An aerial depiction of Seattle’s too-busy bay feels right for its time

By Jean Sherrard

The camera never lies, so goes the maxim. Yet photographers have stretched the truth on occasion, long before Photoshop made fakery a breeze.

Last Feb. 27, Clay Eals and I chartered a helicopter, the left door removed for photography. This week’s “Now” photo, from 800 feet above the waterfront, illustrates the potential for spectacle and perspective.

Seeing this elevated view, photo historian Ron Edge responded by sending me our serendipitous first “Then” photo — a shot I’d never seen. “Pretty close!” Ron marveled.

It was a prevalent postcard of a vibrant Elliott Bay, taken Sept. 15, 1936, by pilot/aerial photographer Charles F. Laidlaw, who apparently captured a miracle of near-misses. In it, various crisscrossing vessels provide visual bon-bons for today’s maritime historians.

Most recognizable at lower left is the beloved, streamlined ferry Kalakala, placed into service in 1935 and departing Colman Dock on the Bremerton run that she would make for 30 years. Above left, the night steamer Iroquois arrives from Victoria via Port Angeles. Puffing from Pier 3 (now Pier 54) is the sturdy oceangoing tug Goliah, built in 1882 and later converted from steam to diesel. Barreling south is the Coast Guard cutter Tallapoosa, fresh from fleet duties with the Bering Sea Patrol. At lower right, the Army Corps of Engineers dredger Michie heads due west.

Whew! Such a spectacular view of Seattle’s busy port.

Trouble is, it’s mostly fiction. Skillfully inserted, complete with brushed-in wakes and waves, none of these vessels (identified by veteran ship historians Michael Mjelke and Paul Marlow) were present in Laidlaw’s original photo, our second “Then.”

One explanation for the empty bay lies in the widening ripples of the Great Depression. Imports and exports had plummeted since the 1929 crash, threatening maritime commerce with ruin.

By the mid-1930s, widespread labor unrest sporadically shuttered ports along the West Coast. Under sympathetic President Franklin Roosevelt, unions flourished. William Randolph Hearst’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer even paused publication for the first time since its 1863 founding due to striking writers and editors.

What’s more, Puget Sound’s Mosquito Fleet, dozens of lively craft ferrying passengers and cargo bowed to grander but fewer vessels. “Suddenly, in the mid-(19)30s, people found that their Fleet was gone,” wrote marine historian Gordon Newell. “(Seeing) the quiet reaches of the Sound, they began to feel that something fine and exciting was missing.”

In that context, Laidlaw’s marine manipulations feel right for the time, a quiescent harbor being no subject for a popular postcard. With no end in sight to the Depression, maybe Seattle was ready for a boost, even one fabricated with a photographer’s fib.

WEB EXTRAS

In place of Jean Sherrard‘s usual 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect, below we have aerial video of downtown by Clay Eals.

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on Aug. 12, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Aug. 15, 2021

Backed by a bustling beach, old-growth endures at Schmitz Park

By Clay Eals

Next time you pull out your phone and aim it to snap a picture, consider the scene playing out in exactly the opposite direction. Sometimes what’s behind the camera is as important as what’s in front. Context can be everything.

Our 1918 “Then” photo illustrates the point. We are in West Seattle, looking south and slightly east to a unique, old-growth preserve, Schmitz Park. Yet over our shoulder lies our city’s sandy, saltwater showcase, Alki Beach.

Beneath a stone-pillared arch leading to the park, three gents in hats, suits and ties, with an equally fashionable woman in the driver’s seat, are eyeing the camera — and the beach. These unknown adventurers have pulled a 1917 Paige touring car to the side of 59th Avenue near its intersection with Lander Street, beyond which the park’s sturdy trees are visible in the distance.

The philanthropic Schmitz family donated the hillside property to the city in portions from 1908 to 1912, with the proviso that it be maintained largely in its natural state. The arch, erected in 1913, served as a grand entry through which motorists could parade their vehicles and pedestrians could stroll to the sanctuary.

But how did visitors get here? Likely via the beach directly in back of the photographer, one-half block away.

Of course, Alki was the site of the city’s first non-Native settlement in 1851, thus its vaunted “birthplace.” When this photo was taken, 11 years after West Seattle’s annexation to Seattle, Alki had become a crowd-pleasing daytime destination and summertime retreat. Easing access was a just-opened wooden swing bridge across the Duwamish River mudflats, augmenting a streetcar that had served the coastline since 1908.

Alki Beach Park had opened formally in 1911, its bathing pavilion drawing 73,000 visitors in 1913 alone. A mile northeast, on piers above lapping waves stood the private Luna Park amusement center, all of which but a natatorium (saltwater pool) closed in 1913 after a raucous, seven-year run.

Given the pressures of Seattle’s gargantuan growth, it’s astonishing that bastions of beauty survive intact near this photographic site. Creek-centered and trail-lined, 53-acre Schmitz Park remains a sensory refuge from urban life.

Likewise, Alki Beach Park encircles the peninsula’s northern tip on the water side of Alki and Harbor avenues, still providing a panorama nonpareil. One shudders to envision the vanished vistas had the city not acquired and protected these precious parcels.

So as we navigate and reinvigorate our society post-virus, we might do well to express gratitude for the context of our lives, before and behind us, a century ago and now.

WEB EXTRAS

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

Below are several interpretive signs from Schmitz Park plus, as provided and annotated by our ace automotive informant Bob Carney, a complement of vintage photos of cars on Alki Beach. Thanks, Bob!

UPDATE: You may recall our “Now & Then” column on the La Quinta Apartments from Jan. 28, 2021. The La Quinta tenants are attempting to buy the building, and today they announced that the sale of La Quinta to a developer has been successfully delayed to allow the tenants to prepare their offer. For more info, visit this link.

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UPDATE: The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted unanimously on March 17, 2021, to designate the La Quinta apartment building an official city landmark. Congratulations!

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Here is our “Now & Then” column from Jan. 28, 2021.

(click and click again to enlarge photos)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on Jan. 28, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Jan. 31, 2021)

U-shaped edifice courts its tenants in 1927 and today

By Clay Eals

How can a house feel more like a home if the home isn’t a house? That’s no trick question. It was a real concern for prolific Seattle developer Frederick Anhalt during the Roaring ’20s nearly a century ago.

Of note among some 45 buildings Anhalt constructed were 19 apartment complexes on Capitol Hill and in Queen Anne. Each exuded unique charm that eludes the modern tendency toward mega-unit boxes.

The first example of Anhalt’s approach and execution presides in our “Then” photo. Built in 1927, the La Quinta Apartments at 1710 East Denny Way in south-central Capitol Hill clearly reflect Spanish influences, with red-clay roof tiles and stucco embedded with colored stones and panels artfully arranged in arches.

Even more significant, however, is the early use of a U-shaped footprint surrounding an ample courtyard filled with foliage and places to sit. It’s long been a welcoming centerpiece for residents of the dozen apartments (two floors each), including units in the pair of turrets at the inner corners. This element creates the notion of “home” even today, when social gatherings are discouraged but an uplifting vision can provide at least the sense of belonging.

“I thought that people should have a nice view to look out to and the feeling that they were living in a house of their own, different from their neighbor’s,” the developer reflected in the 1982 book “Built by Anhalt” by Steve Lambert. “It didn’t seem to make sense … to spend a lot of extra money on a building site just because it had a pretty view in one direction. Somebody else could always put another building between you and your view.”

Small wonder that a for-rent ad in the Nov. 6, 1927, Seattle Times labeled La Quinta “the prettiest and best-arranged individual apartment building in Seattle.”

Today, tenants echo the sentiment. “I know all my neighbors, I talk to them all, I trust them,” says Chelsea Bolan, a resident since 2003. “You interact, you share, you see each other all the time.”

“There just aren’t places like this anymore,” says Lawrence Norman, who grew up there when his dad owned it in 1964-74. “It brings community together. That’s a special thing, and I think that should be preserved.”

Historic Seattle agrees and is nominating it for city landmark status. The first hearing is Feb. 3.

Heartily endorsing the effort is longtime architectural historian Larry Kreisman, who wrote the 1978 book “Apartments by Anhalt” and salutes the developer’s boomtime vision: “For an expanding middle class, Anhalt made dense city-living palatable.”

WEB EXTRAS

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

Below are five additional photos, a brochure, a landmark nomination, a support letter and, in chronological order, 10 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Special thanks to Eugenia Woo, Larry Kreisman and the residents of La Quinta for their assistance with this column!

(click to enlarge photos)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on Aug. 5, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Aug. 8, 2021)

In wartime fear, ‘empathy is the only thing that can bind us’

By Jean Sherrard

This week we interview Frank Abe, author of the graphic novel ‘”We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration” (Chin Music Press and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, 2021), illustrated by Ross Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki, and co-authored by Tamiko Nimura.

This powerful account of courage and confrontation offers compelling lessons for us today.

Jean: When and where does this story begin?

Frank: It begins with the FBI arresting 150 immigrant leaders in Seattle in the hysteria following the start of World War II. The men were marched in the pre-dawn hours from the U.S. Immigration Detention Building to King Street Station, where The Seattle Times captured a photo of them on the platform boarding a train for the Department of Justice alien internment camp at Fort Missoula, Montana. When I first saw this photo, I knew it would be central to the story of Jim Akutsu, one of our three main characters.

Jean: Why a graphic novel?

Frank: It matches the epic sweep of a movie at a fraction of the production cost. I asked Ross to draw Jim’s mother as clawing through the bars and screaming to her husband after reading the description in the Times of “tear-stained eyes” and the din of “staccato chatter” in the morning air.

Jean: Your book takes an uncompromising view of systemic exclusion and racism.

Frank: Many fathers were separated from their families, who were themselves incarcerated at camps like Minidoka, Idaho. Jim and his brother Gene refused to be drafted until the government restored their citizenship rights, starting with their freedom. We emphasize that the government was responsible for targeting these families based solely on their race.

Jean: The storytelling has a documentary feel to it but also feels intensely personal.

Frank: Everything is drawn from the historical record. Readers can immerse themselves in the personal stories of our characters in a way that generates empathy. Empathy is the only thing that can bind us when the same elements of wartime fear and ignorance of the “other” survive to this day.

Jean: So the empathy signals a warning bell along with possible remedy?

Frank: Our book opens with the FBI knocking on the door to arrest Jim’s father. It ends with ICE breaking down the door to deport unwanted immigrants. In 1941, America feared a second attack from the Pacific. Just one year ago, we had a pandemic-era president dog-whistle “China virus” and “Kung flu,” received by some as permission to kick and punch Asian Americans on the street. Some things haven’t changed.

WEB EXTRAS

This week features a special 360 degree video of Jean’s 12-minute interview with Frank Abe at King Street Station. Includes select illustrations from “We Hereby Refuse” plus Frank’s reading from the John Okada’s classic “No-No Boy.” Not to be missed. (And if you’d prefer to hear just the audio of Frank’s chat with Jean, click right here!)

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in the Seattle Times online on July 29, 2021
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Aug. 1, 2021

Half-size race cars sported big appeal, but not everyone applauded

By Clay Eals

Sports bear an ongoing tension with safety, as violence often shadows physicality. Since childhood, I have alleged this about football, and don’t get me started on boxing or our city’s beloved hydroplanes.

So what are we to think of auto racing? Within Seattle, it’s gone, unless you count a recent trend of midnight hooligans commandeering residential streets to screech tires. Still ringing in many ears, however, are the 1960s radio ads for dragsters and “funny cars” on “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!” at Seattle International Raceway (now Pacific Raceways) near Kent.

Nationally, amid the Depression, a popular competitive subset emerged, employing a since-disparaged label: “midget” auto racing. The adjective addressed the cars.

Also known as doodlebugs and “bucking bronchos on wheels” according to a 1938 full-page Camel cigarette ad in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the vehicles were half the length and height of a typical sedan but capable of speeds to embody “the World’s Fastest Sport.” The pastime even merited a glorifying 1939 Hollywood film, “Burn ’Em Up O’Connor.”

Several regional venues hosted these races, including one, shown in our “Then” photo, at Playland, the long-cherished amusement park that operated from 1930 to 1961 in unincorporated Broadview, between Aurora Avenue North and Bitter Lake. Playland Stadium, which presented greyhound racing in 1933 until the state shuttered it for betting, opened its track for undersized-car contests in mid-1941.

There each week, up to 6,000 adults (60 cents to $1 admission) and children (30 to 50 cents) witnessed up to three-dozen helmeted drivers seeking fame by propelling tiny racers in hundreds of laps around the quarter-mile dirt oval.

From the start, however, the noise, dust and traffic stirred neighbors’ ire (and lawsuits). Moreover, drivers’ rivalries often crossed the line to serious injury. Twice, in 1941 and 1946, Playland crashes produced fatalities.

Royal Brougham, P-I sports editor, cast an acerbic eye. The enterprise, he wrote, was rigged vaudeville “in which the drivers pull their punches with one eye on the gate receipts.” But he also soberly observed that a driver’s death was a “heavy cost to pay for a two-hour thrill.”

World War II, with rubber and gas rationing, forced a three-year hiatus in the races. In 1954, reflecting post-war growth, Seattle annexed Broadview, and in 1957 a real-estate firm bought the Playland track, converting it to commercial buildings.

Racing under the “midget” name surfaced into the 1980s within Seattle, inside the old Coliseum and Kingdome. Today it endures worldwide, sometimes with a newer descriptor: “open wheel.”

While closing this fossil-fueled saga, dare I note that climate change ensures us all a different kind of race to a safe finish?

WEB EXTRAS

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

Below are a full racing annual and, in chronological order, 96 historical clippings from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archives (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Plus, we have a song! Click on the record label below: