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

Like fine wine, this Ravenna Avenue anchor has aged well

By Clay Eals

Do you yearn to travel in time — say, to a century ago? For the trip, you might hail this jaunty, four-cylinder touring car, a 1917 Studebaker Series 18 Model SF.

The gent standing by is likely the taxi’s driver. His territory, indicated on the windshield, was Cowen Park, west of Ravenna Ravine in northeast Seattle. If we assume the city license (left of the driver’s right shoulder) is current, you likely would be stepping into the year 1921.

We look almost due east across Ravenna Avenue at its intersection with 65th Street, just out of frame at right, which was Seattle’s northern boundary at this crossroads until the mid-1940s.

Beyond the taxi stands a charming, two-floor brick façade built in 1920. Topped by an apartment, its street-level retail space over the years supplied a range of what broadly could be called apothecary assistance, medicinal and non-.

In its earliest days, the building housed Ravenna Pharmacy, assuredly a center for prescriptions, but also general-store dalliances such as locally made Stokes Ice Cream (“supremely good”) and wind-driven whirligigs, both promoted in the front window.

The pharmacy signed on to newspaper ads offering free enticements, from Kotex sanitary pads (“each sample wrapped in plain paper”) to Gillette safety razors (“complete with blade”). Shoppers also could find Sunset dye (“58 fashionable shades, 22 standard colors”), Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral (a fix for coughs or colds “in a day or so” or money back) and Calport wine grape tonic (“brings to a tired world tingling, vibrant force”).

It also served as a polling place for elections, a meeting site for the Masonic-based Social Club of the Seattle Court (Order of Amaranth) and a hub for free tickets to see Independence Day fireworks at nearby University of Washington Stadium.

In 1937, the pharmacy became Monsen Cleaners and Self Service Laundry, which in the early 1960s gave way to Car-Tel TV Radio (featuring the Philco Cool Chassis TV “with 82-channel VHR-UHF tuning”), then Monsen’s Ivory Jade Collectors.

In the mid-1970s, Puget Mercantile, an adjunct of today’s PCC Community Markets, moved in. Also hosting speakers and gatherings there were King County NOW (National Organization for Women, promoting the Equal Rights Amendment, still unratified today) and the North End Housing Cooperative.

The edifice assumed its most enduring identity in 1980, as an award-winning wine shop that adopted the name of owners McCarthy & Schiering and continues today under new owners who kept the appellation.

In a city bursting with redeveloped business corners, such a mainstay anchor earns esteem. You might say it’s part of the cure for what ails you.

SIDE NOTE

Did any of you wonder about the little vehicle at the left side of our main “Then” photo? Reader Bob Bernstein did. And we have an answer from our automotive expert, Bob Carney:

“It’s probably a home-built version of a ‘speedster,’ which was an early version of a hot rod in the 1910s and 1920s. You remove the body and fenders and add a big gas tank and bucket seats, and you then have your personal version of a Mercer Raceabout or Stutz Bearcat at a fraction of the cost. Most were based on the Ford Model T, but any car could be the basis for a speedster. The one in the photo looks too big to be a Ford, and also has right-hand steering, which the Model T did not have. I think the wheels shown toward the front of the little car are not part of it, but rather leaning against it. Not sure why.”

Thanks, Bob (both of you)!

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Peter Blecha for his 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 43 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.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 27, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 30, 2022

As young vampires, ghouls and superheroes prowl our neighborhoods cadging for candy this Halloween, actual monsters roam the deeps — and the shallows.

Hideously transmogrified, they struggle upstream past the banks of Pacific Northwest lakes, rivers and streams in an intricate and terrifying water ballet.

While on the hunt for ghost stories suitable for this shivery season, I thumbed through regional reports of the supernatural, from a haunted Georgetown mansion to the spooky lower level of the Pike Place Market, but each tale seemed more trick than treat.

But I caught a break investigating a potential “Then” photo at the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery when serendipity inspired a question.

“Know any scary stories about fish?” I asked hatchery specialist J.J. Swennumson.

“Soos Creek Hatchery,” J.J. said, referencing an Auburn facility. “That place was super freaky.”

Mysterious, dead-of-night music and an apparition named Homer made regular appearances. After the hatchery’s eerie old building was replaced, however, the spooks fell silent.

“But,” J.J. added impishly with a twinkle, “we’ve got zombies.”

Out of dozens of state, federal and tribal hatcheries, Issaquah with 250,000 annual visitors is our state’s most popular. Built in 1936 by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, the facility aimed to restore historic salmon runs to Issaquah Creek, devastated by decades of coal mining and logging.

The hatchery’s first salmon stock, borrowed from nearby Green River, was released into the creek to general rejoicing, followed by decades of activity.

We’ll get to J.J.’s zombies, but if you have forgotten your salmonid factoids, here’s a quick refresher:

For at least two million years, Pacific salmon have flourished in our cold mountain rivers and streams. From freshwater spawning beds, hatchlings eventually head downstream to the ocean where, after several years of feeding and growth, they chart a course for home.

In what marine biologists describe as one of nature’s most remarkable mysteries, migrating salmon take cues from the Earth’s geomagnetic field to traverse thousands of miles of saltwater and arrive at their natal river’s mouth. Upon entering fresh water, a sense of smell thousands of times more sensitive than a bloodhound’s guides the fish to their original spawning grounds.

With the change in salinity, however, they stop feeding entirely. Their once-sleek silver bodies alter color and shape as their internal organs, save those charged with reproduction, begin to fail.

Battered, scarred, scarcely alive, these “zombie” salmon finally arrive home to spawn a next generation. But their contribution doesn’t end there. Their decaying bodies, strewn along riverbanks, provide autumnal protein for wildlife and nitrogen-rich fertilizer for surrounding trees.

In other words, tricks and treats!

WEB EXTRAS

A few more photos of the hatchery and Issaquah creek below. Also, check out our 360 video featuring a visit to the hatchery.

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

‘A dream to do good’ inspired steelworker to build Italian villa

By Clay Eals

The phrase “hidden in plain sight” could have originated with the Cettolin house in West Seattle.

Nestled along the unpretentious, extended block of 32nd Avenue between the Fauntleroy Expressway (opened in 1965) and Nucor Steel (opened in 1905 as Seattle Steel), the dwelling, upon further examination, looks to be a villa straight from Italy.

Which was the intention. It was created by Fausto Urbano Cettolin (sett-oh-LEEN), who came to the United States in 1913 from the northern Italian town of Pianzano. In 1921, he married Erma Dina Monti, also a 1913 newcomer, arriving from Italy’s coastal city of Livorno.

In 1926, the industrious Fausto, who worked in the steel mill’s open hearth, began giving shape to a vision. “My father had a great love for my mother. That’s why he built the house,” says Virginia Cettolin, youngest of their six children. (Her sister Emma Dina Wislocker is the only other living sibling.) The project took 13 years.

“It was all in his head. He never had a plan as far as we knew,” says Virginia, an 87-year-old retired teacher and Dominican nun, visiting the three-story house from the Washington border town of Blaine. “I think it was just in him to create a family memory.”

Fausto’s pride materialized in the house’s slender stature, terrazzo floors, leaded windows and the arches and columns of its front porch, which also bears a colorful, if weathered, inlay circled by the words “Cettolin Autore” (Italian for “author”).

Stewarding the house are Marilyn Kennell, a former yoga teacher, and Alan McMurray, a cabinetry engineer, owners since 2014. The charm of the light-filled home brings tears to Kennell’s eyes: “It’s got such a good feeling to it.” Adds McMurray, “There’s nothing like it around.”

Welcoming Virginia Cettolin to their home is part of the couple’s dogged effort to gather data to support a Seattle landmark nomination they have commissioned.

While they would vouch for preserving the home in any event, the two hope landmark status would help persuade Sound Transit not to threaten their neighborhood by constructing its West Seattle light-rail extension through their street. The light-rail decision could come in 2023.

In early years, the Cettolin house stood alone on three lots, with the Pigeon Point bluff, south Seattle and downtown as a stunning backdrop. Today, with subdivisions by later owners, the home is hemmed in, and the growth of greenery makes it nearly hidden and easy to miss.

But not for Virginia Cettolin: “It’s the fulfillment of an immigrant, and to me, that’s why it’s very important. It truly shows from nothing to something in America. You come with a dream to do good in America.”

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to Deb Barker and especially Virginia Cettolin, Marilyn Kennell and Alan McMurray 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 35 additional photos and 26 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.

 

Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 13, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 16, 2022

Bavarian-born Andrew Piper brought sweet treats to 1870s Seattle

By Jean Sherrard

“I scream! You scream! We all scream if we don’t get Piper’s ice cream!”

This advertisement, from May 1874 in the Puget Sound Dispatch, may be the first recorded version of the ever popular ice-cream lovers’ ditty. It was the brainchild of beloved Seattle confectioner, baker, ice-cream purveyor and socialist city-council member Andrew W. Piper.

At age 19, the Bavarian-born Piper had joined the 1848 German revolution, an expression of social unrest sweeping Europe. After its defeat, he fled to the United States to avoid political persecution.

After 20 years in San Francisco, and seeking greener, less-populated pastures, Piper arrived in Seattle in 1873, where he opened the Puget Sound Candy Manufactory, our region’s first candy shop. His large family, including wife Wilhelmina, three daughters and six sons, was welcomed by a community eager for sweets and treats.

Several years of bitterly cold winters provided more opportunities for the ambitious candy man. Hacking great blocks of ice from frozen Lake Union, Piper built the city’s first commercial icehouse. The summertime addition of ice cream to an already booming confectionary and bakery business enhanced his profits and popularity.

His capacious First Hill mansion and a Puget Sound shoreline homestead (today located in northwest Seattle’s Carkeek Park) only confirmed his business acumen.

The heavily accented German also was an artist. His sketches, paintings and sculptures were widely admired. In his spare time, he served as a scene painter to local theaters.

Our “Then” photo features a portrait of Piper in his prime. Posing with his 6-year-old son, Walter, and their dog, Jack, Piper pauses at the southeast corner of Front Street (today’s First Avenue) and Madison circa 1878.

Perched on the balcony of Maddock drugstore, the Peterson Brothers photographer also captured a view of Seattle’s first major public work, completed in 1877: the regrading of a stump-filled, uneven pathway into smoothly graded Front Street, elevated on timbers above the Elliott Bay tideline.

Piper’s businesses thrived until Seattle’s great fire of 1889. His shop and the Manufactory, along with 25 downtown city blocks, were reduced to ashes. Piper did not reopen until two-and-a-half years later, in November 1891. Increasing competition and a fragile economy hobbled his prospects.

Upon his death in 1904, his close friend, journalist and historian Thomas Prosch, offered an affectionate eulogy. Piper was “invaluable … always able and never failed,” someone of great kindness whom “everybody regarded as a friend.”

Today, the eponymous Piper’s Creek, Piper Canyon and restored Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park mark the only extant namesakes of this pioneer. The orchard’s apples reportedly filled his scrumptious strudel.

WEB EXTRAS

We can’t find an earlier version of “I Scream You Scream” than Piper’s from 1874. Here’s a link to Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians and their hit song from the 1920s:

Stay tuned for our 360 video narrated by Jean.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Oct. 6, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Oct. 9, 2022

Aided by a Rodriguez, baseball flag last flew over Seattle in 1966

By Clay Eals

Once upon a time, a Seattle baseball team thrived on playoff hope. News stories brimmed with “pennant,” “flag” and “magic numbers” to success.

Sound familiar? Except we’re not talking about the 2022 Mariners. Instead, we salute the last Seattle pro-baseball team to win a championship — the Seattle Angels, who, one step below the majors, topped the Pacific Coast League in 1966.

Based at venerated Sicks’ Stadium (razed in 1979, now the site of a Lowe’s home-improvement store ) and managed by former pitching stalwart Bob Lemon (Hall of Fame, 1976), the team was dubbed the SeAngels by sportswriters to distinguish it from its Los Angeles-based parent club.

Dotting the roster were former and future big-leaguers, including pitchers Jim McGlothlin, Roger Craig and Andy Messersmith and outfielders Jay Johnstone, Al Spangler and Bubba Morton. Veteran third-baseman Felix Torres led the team with 20 home runs and 90 runs batted in. Young first-baseman Charlie Vinson hit 19 homers, with 84 RBI.

But firing up the SeAngels in their final weeks was a sensation from the Mexican League, an 18-year-old infielder whose last name matched that of Julio, today’s megawatt M’s star — Aurelio Rodriguez.

In his first game Aug. 18, the 5-foot-10, 170-pound shortstop went three-for-four. The Seattle Times’ headline: “SeAngels Pick Up Three Hits at Airport.” The future longtime major-leaguer played 17 games down the stretch for the ’66 SeAngels, hitting 254 and adding vim to the lineup. He made his first appearance in the majors the next year.

Unlike latter-day M’s luminary Alex Rodriguez, he was not nicknamed A-Rod. In fact, his first name often was shortened to Leo. He didn’t speak English, writers said, so he used sign language and was assisted in conversations by roomie Hector Torres, an infielder. After the SeAngels’ Western Division clincher, the Times’ Gil Lyons noted Rodriguez’ “ear-splitting smile.”

Rodriguez played 17 seasons for seven big-league teams, most notably the Detroit Tigers from 1971 to 1979. He was a strong-armed third-baseman in the majors, winning a Gold Glove in 1976. Rodriguez appeared in 2,017 major-league games and hit 124 homers. Tragically, he died in 2000 at age 52  while walking in Detroit when a car jumped a sidewalk and ran over him.

The 1966 season  became a jolly run for a team that synonym-seeking journalists called the Halos, Cherubs and Seraphs. The nailbiter playoff victory against Tulsa (head-scratchingly far from the Pacific Coast) stretched to all seven games. The SeAngels won the final contest 3-1.

Masterminding 44 player transactions that year was SeAngels general manager Edo Vanni, no stranger to pennants, having starred for the PCL-leading Seattle Rainiers in 1939-1941. “It’s a thrill, I’ll tell you,” Vanni said as the Halos entered their playoff. “If that’s what it takes to get major-league ball here, Seattle is in.”

His words were prescient. The Pilots arrived at Sicks’ for their solitary year in 1969, and one year after the old Kingdome opened in 1976, the M’s sailed into Seattle for good.

The rest is history — to be made.

WEB EXTRAS

Special thanks to the incomparable  Dave Eskenazi for his 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.

For a comprehensive look at the SeAngels’ 1966 season, click here.

Below are 23 additional photos and 43 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.

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(Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 29, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Oct. 2, 2022)

Jean’s note: We must assign credit where credit’s due. The “then” photo attached to this column–and the original notion to tell the story of Major Cicero Newell–came from the ever-inventive and perpetually helpful photo historian and collector Ron Edge, whose name we praise! Thanks a million, Ron!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *  *   *   *

Stepping ashore on Mercer Island, my friend Mark and I were thrilled by our discovery. Both 13, we were keen to explore and plunder. Before us stretched acres of golden, waist-high grass, dotted with fruit trees and thorny Himalayan blackberry bushes, as well as crumbling old buildings promising untold treasures.

On this early summer 1970 day, we had paddled from Bellevue’s Enatai Beach, passing under arches of the old East Channel bridge (just days earlier, on a dare, we had leapt from the span’s deck) then muscling north to the grounds of evidently abandoned Luther Burbank Park. We did not know we were repeating a journey in reverse made 66 years earlier.

Just past midnight on a cold, wet November night in 1904, 13-year-olds William Kiger and Albert Cook, wearing only their skivvies and chained together with ankle manacles, cradled the shackles to stop them clanking. Labeled incorrigible “bad boys,” they were forging a second attempt to escape from Major Cicero Newell’s Industrial School, which had recently relocated to a dozen rural acres on Mercer Island’s north shore.

Kiger and Cook crept out of the recently built dormitory and down to the water’s edge. Having earlier noted a neighbor’s decrepit rowboat tied up nearby, the boys clambered in and pushed out into the channel.

“For hours they paddled, making little headway,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. “Several times their frail little craft came near swamping, and one of the boys had to bail water to prevent it from going to the bottom. Soon after dawn, the boys, exhausted and all but unconscious, made land opposite the island on the east shore of the lake.”

Sympathetic Northern Pacific belt-line workers used hammers and chisels to cut off the boys’ leg chains and wrapped the pair in borrowed jackets.

Newell (1840-1913), a Civil War veteran commended for bravery by President Lincoln and respected among the Sioux as an Indian agent, had arrived in Seattle in the early 1890s.

With wife Emma, he founded the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society, sheltering “homeless, neglected and abused children.” They garnered strong community support, including a Seattle School Board eager for solutions to a growing problem.

Early in the 20th century, however, Newell’s increasingly punitive methods, including beatings and chaining, drew increased scrutiny and criticism. Following newspaper accounts and public outcry, Newell was quietly replaced as school principal in spring 1905.

William and Albert were not recaptured, according to the P-I story.  “The boys were allowed to go on their way. Nothing has been seen of them since.”

William Kiger became a Seattle truck driver with a large extended family until his death in 1962. No further record can be found of Albert Cook.

WEB EXTRAS

For our 360 degree video of this column, please visit our YouTube channel.

Here’s several newspaper articles from the digital archives regarding Maj. Cicero Newell.

The first is an open letter from Newell published in 1900 that seems reasonable, laying out methods for addressing the needs of young delinquents which might help rather than harm. Within two years, however (see the next archival article from 1902), the Major’s shocking practices belie his stated good intentions.

Before moving to the Mercer Island Industrial School site in 1904, Newell located in Seattle. The 1902 escape of another boy–this one eight years old, found wandering on the waterfront, raised questions about the Major’s tactics.

The article from which we quote in the column is included below.

And, also courtesy of Ron Edge, a copy of Cicero Newell’s book about his years as an Indian agent. He found much to admire, even venerate, during his tenure with the Dakota Sioux.

Indian_Stories

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 22, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 25, 2022

Roosevelt alums create film to prompt ‘difficult’ talks about race

By Clay Eals

It probably was intended purely as creative expression, but today it holds potent symbolism.

When Roosevelt High School students designed their 1968-69 yearbook, on the title page and on each of six section-introduction layouts they paired two versions of a large photo — the first appearing conventionally and the second in a reversed, negative format, as in this week’s “Then.”

Thus, in the first version, the faces of students at the largely white north-end school appeared as just that, largely white. In the reversed version, the faces became dark.

It was the first year in which Seattle Public Schools implemented its Voluntary Racial Transfer Program, an effort to avoid litigation over a perceived failure to integrate schools as mandated by the famous 1954 Supreme Court decision that struck down “separate but equal” education.

As shown in Roosevelt’s 1969 yearbook, the program had a relatively small but visible impact there. Of 1,865 students, about 75 (or 4%) were people of color, many bused from southern neighborhoods. One of those was Lea Vaughn, a biracial sophomore whose parents (father Black, mother white) chose for her to bus from the Central District, near Washington Park, to highly regarded Roosevelt and back.

Vaughn, a retired attorney and emerita University of Washington law professor, is at the core of a grassroots nonprofit, Roosevelt Alumni for Racial Equity (RARE), formed via Zoom during the national upheaval over the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

With a 21-member multi-ethnic board, RARE provides scholarships for students of color and has produced an engaging half-hour documentary, “Roosevelt High School: Beyond Black & White,” which aired twice this year on KCTS-TV and is available online.

With historical data and footage, along with provocative observations from 20 alums, educators and present-day students, the film seeks to “stimulate difficult discussions about race and education.” Interviewees conclude that despite Seattle’s efforts at voluntary, then mandatory busing, racial equity in city schools remains elusive.

They also characterize a perceived “Seattle nice” as “performative, not reformative” and address the “baked-in” effects of racist covenants and redlining in real-estate sales and rentals that the city finally upended in 1968. Startling is a 1936 Kroll map that codes areas of Seattle as green (“best”), blue (“still desirable”), yellow (“definitely declining”) and pink (“hazardous”).

Today, Vaughn lives in a Ballard neighborhood that her family would have been disallowed to inhabit when she was young. But she asserts, “I think because we used busing as the Band-Aid to not face redlining, we never really dealt with it.”

Clearly, the complexities of race bolster the longtime name of Roosevelt’s yearbook: “Strenuous Life.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Lea Vaughn, Peggy Sturdivant and the members of RARE 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 PowerPoint presentations prepared for RARE by Vaughn and a list of discussion questions from the RARE video.

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(Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 15, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Sept. 18, 2022)

Philip Wischmeyer’s stunning panoramic view of Neah Bay circa 1910 features the Makah fishing fleet at its most active, comprising more than 200 hard-working vessels.

And while today’s protected harbor at the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula is much less busy, particularly after two years of pandemic quarantine, the Makah reservation reopened to visitors on March 15, 2022.

For Brian Parker, who graciously provided access from his Dia’ht Hill rooftop to repeat this week’s “Then” photo, the isolation was difficult but necessary to protect his community. Nevertheless, he welcomes the surge of vacationers who snapped up all summer lodgings in and around the bay.

Two-hundred-and-thirty years ago, this natural harbor, home to the Makah for millennia, briefly hosted another group of outsiders. Geopolitical competition among colonial rivals England, Spain and America to map and claim possession of the sketchily charted Pacific Northwest coast approached a high-water mark.

On April 29, 1792, English naval Capt. George Vancouver guided his vessel HMS Discovery into the strait of Juan de Fuca, beginning his mission to survey the inland waters of today’s Salish Sea.

Just two weeks later, on May 11, American merchant ship Capt. Robert Gray’s Columbia Rediviva negotiated the treacherous sandbars of a huge river and sailed into its estuary. After conducting initial surveys, Gray named the river Columbia after his ship.

On May 29, the Spanish naval frigate Princesa offloaded 70 seamen, 13 soldiers, 4 officers and a chaplain at Neah Bay. The settlers cleared land and built Fort Núñez Gaona, the first non-Native American structure in the future state of Washington.

Just across a stream from the Makah village of Diah, these modest barracks, storehouses, and a bakery — as well as palisades with gun mounts — promised a significant Spanish toehold at the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But unanticipated hurdles proved difficult to overcome.

The bay itself was too shallow to accommodate larger vessels. What’s more, says Makah Museum Executive Director Janine Ledford, the native residents of Diah, upon returning from annual spring fishing and whaling camps on Tatoosh Island, began to actively resist the invaders.

On Sept. 29, after the volatile summer, the fort was abandoned and the Spanish returned to their home port at Vancouver Island’s Nootka Sound, never to return.

At this year’s annual Makah Days festival on Aug. 26-29, the first held since 2019, guests were welcome to celebrate the reinvigorated culture, community and health of these proud people. And the Makah choice to isolate during the pandemic proved wise. Not a single tribal member died during the quarantine.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 11, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Sept. 8, 2022

Priteca’s captivating Coliseum still shines brightly downtown

By Clay Eals

Back in 1989 when I was helping to save West Seattle’s Admiral Theatre, word came out that downtown’s Coliseum Theatre, which opened in 1916, also was endangered. So I did what came naturally — went there to see a film. In it, Morgan Freeman portrayed the notoriously tough New Jersey high-school principal Joe Clark. Based on a song, its title was “Lean on Me.”

To appreciate the grandeur of what was considered the nation’s first movie palace, I climbed to the top of its balcony. The view was startling. I sat mere feet from the Italian Renaissance-style ceiling beams. The rake was so steep that only by splaying my knees could I glimpse the screen far below.

Today, as a theater, the Coliseum is largely a memory, its closing night coming 32 years ago, on March 11, 1990, with the sci-fi thriller “Tremors.”

When a plan emerged in 1992 to restore and convert the Coliseum to a Banana Republic outlet, then-Seattle Mayor Norm Rice declared, “There won’t be a more stunning building this side of the Taj Mahal” in India. The clothier operated inside the city-landmarked structure from 1994 until the pandemic sank the store in 2020.

The trendsetting, terra-cotta Coliseum was one of 60 major West Coast theaters (including the Pantages chain and, yes, the still-operating Admiral) designed by architect Bernard “Benny” Marcus Priteca (1886-1971). With 2,400 seats and hailed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as “the last word in picture playhouse construction,” the Coliseum opened when Priteca was just 26.

Scotland-born into an eastern European Jewish family, Priteca had been lured to Seattle by the city’s first world’s fair, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. His affection blossomed. As he told The Seattle Times’ Don Duncan while puffing on a cigar eight months before his death, “Washington and Oregon are the world!”

His designs — the lifelong bachelor never retired — extended to Seattle’s Bikur Cholim synagogue (now Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute), Renton’s now-gone Longacres racetrack and even a Paige auto grille and windshield. But the stage was his steadfast siren.

Arguably his most captivating creation was the Coliseum, whose showcase signage changed with the times. Notably, its concave corner half-dome, topped by a massive glass cupola, gave way in late 1950 to a rotating circular marquee and neon pillar featuring filmdom’s golden Oscar. The weather-damaged statue was removed in 1966.

Priteca told Duncan he wished that “Seattle would just stop growing, period.” Perhaps he also would have liked his Coliseum to screen movies forever. It still shines at Fifth & Pike. As the “Lean on Me” lyrics proclaim, “… there’s always tomorrow.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Lawrence Kreisman , Wendy Malloy, Dave Eskenazi, Colin Campbell and Gavin MacDougall 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 an additional video, 28 additional photos (including a gallery of 22 early 1920s Coliseum images from Historic Seattle) and 49 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. These include five previous “Now & Then” columns related to Priteca and the Coliseum by column founder Paul Dorpat!

 

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(Published in The Seattle Times online on Sept. 1, 2022
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Sept. 4, 2022)

In the after-hours during the early 1970s, the Pike Place Market neighborhood was run-down and gritty, even dangerous. Rex McDowell, a young actor who found digs off Post Alley below the Market, kept a knife near his front entrance to thwart would-be intruders. “When they’d bang on our double doors or try to break in, we’d stick the long blade into the gap and waggle it up and down to frighten them off.”

Rent was cheap and youth fearless.

Where Post Alley makes a sharp turn uphill and to the east (just beyond today’s “gum wall”), was wedged a tiny storefront. Reputedly a former speakeasy, it was first home to Seattle’s legendary, 50-seat Empty Space Theatre.

Fresh from the University of Washington theater program, founder M. Burke Walker sought to build a new and vibrant company featuring edgier, often experimental voices. In the underbelly of the then-untouristed Market, the minuscule stage became a hothouse of creative ferment while its somewhat unsavory setting kept costs low.

The seminal 1968 book “The Empty Space” by British stage director Peter Brook triggered the troupe’s name and offered keen theatrical philosophy. “I can take an empty space,” he wrote, “and call it a bare stage.” For a young company cobbling together budget-conscious productions, austerity was a welcome challenge.

“It was the best training ground for the best theater artists this town has ever known,” says musician-composer John Engerman.

“From the start, it was a great ensemble,” adds fellow company member Kurt Beattie, now artistic director emeritus of ACT Theatre. “Great ensembles make great theatre.”

The company also played a vital role in Seattle theater, says playwright Carl Sander: “The Seattle Rep was the living room, ACT was the dining room, but the Empty Space was the kitchen.”

The Space created and presented hundreds of celebrated productions over more than three decades while migrating to Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square and finally Fremont. Though the final curtain fell in 2006, Space alumni continue to serve as chefs de cuisine of Seattle theatre whose savory fare still inspires.

On a roasty July evening, more than 150 Empty Spacers gathered at Seattle Center’s Cornish Theatre to celebrate the company’s Covid-delayed 50th reunion. They included Walker, fellow founder Jim Royce, and other Seattle theater luminaries, sans one beloved ensemble member. Renowned actor John Aylward, who had hoped to attend, died on May 16 at age 75.

“For John,” memorialized Walker in words that readily apply to the Empty Space itself, “play was always a verb first and a noun second.”

WEB EXTRAS

A few photo from the reunion: