Here, in alphabetical order, are the blurbers and their endorsement blurbs for Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred!
———
Historian Paul Dorpat has been a Seattle treasure for decades, and his latest book, Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred, presents highlights from his rich and revealing career, peeling back the layers of Seattle’s myriad existences.
In his warm and engaging style, Dorpat offers rare glimpses into the city’s soul and tells its ever-intriguing story with new and often unexpected detail. A crowning achievement and a must-have for all who live in and love the Queen City of Puget Sound.
Kurt Armbruster,
author, Before Seattle Rocked
———
This gorgeous volume showcases Seattle’s vibrant present and insistent past, offering proof that what our city is remains a product of what it was. Paul Dorpat’s multi-decade take on Seattle’s history continues to beguile, and Jean Sherrard’s thoughtful repeat photography enacts a powerful alchemy.
Paula Becker,
Seattle author and HistoryLink historian
———
I am always amazed at the original photographs that Paul comes up with. Jean’s spot-on “now” pictures are shot so precisely, making you appreciate the history and the change. I can hardly wait for my Historic Hundred!
John Bennett, West Seattle and
Georgetown preservationist
———
Paul Dorpat’s and Jean Sherrard’s Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred is a brilliant, time-traveling, stereoscopic view of Seattle. It is no work of simple nostalgia — it contrasts past and present through historic images and deep research that put you in Seattle of old alongside Sherrard’s superb new photography rooted in the colorful present.
It shows the city as a continuum, provides context and records change. It should thrill Seattle-loving NIMBYs and YIMBYs alike, no mean achievement!
Knute Berger, Seattle author, Pugetopolis: A Mossback Takes on Growth Addicts, Weather Wimps and the Myth of Seattle Nice
———
Paul and Jean have created a real treasure for all of us who love Seattle. Much more than a beautiful art book, this is a fascinating history of how Seattle has changed, and it arrives at the perfect moment when Seattleites are focused on that subject. This book entertains and answers questions, but it also makes us think about the future of our precious city.
Fran Bigelow,
Seattle chocolatier
———
They say there are two kinds of cities: anywhere cities and somewhere cities. This splendid book poses the question, paired historic photo after ingeniously paired modern photo, of whether Seattle has traded in somewhere-ness – a rooted, distinctive, peculiar place – for anywhere-ness. It coyly avoids an answer, but there is plenty of material for enriching the debate, and maybe some suggestions for reversing a tidal wave of blandness.
More than that, Dorpat sneaks in a huge amount of Seattle history, sweetened with wit and his eye for the offbeat. No Seattle history book ever went down more easily. But watch out: It also sticks to your ribs!
David Brewster, founder of Seattle Weekly,
Town Hall, Crosscut and Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum
———
Paul Dorpat is a Seattle treasure, and now he has fashioned a graphical and textual delight that will grab you and not let go. It guides deeply into the city’s untidy past and emerges into its lustrous present.
But beware! Once you pick up this book, don’t even pretend you will sleep until you turn the last page – and even then, you will be tempted to start over again.
Scott Cline,
former Seattle city archivist
———
As someone who likes to put new restaurants into old buildings, I appreciate the way every urban ziggurat has a unique story to tell. Naturally, this means I’m also a longtime fan of Paul Dorpat’s photo-history column in the Seattle Times magazine. Seattle is morphing with dizzying speed into a future self, our streets blocked by cranes and our sidewalks teeming with tech workers.
What we all need is to take a breath and pick up a copy of this remarkable book. Pour a drink, settle into your favorite chair, and let Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred build you a bridge, photo by photo, to the shared past of who we are and where we come from.
Tom Douglas,
Seattle restaurateur
———
Seattle Now and Then: The Historic Hundred is a true treasure, an instant classic.
This gorgeous volume expertly captures the singularity of Seattle past and present. Page after page after page thrill the senses with interesting and evocative images, accompanied by Paul Dorpat’s inimitable text. This book is an absolute must-have for anyone interested in Seattle, past and present.
The dream team of Paul Dorpat, Jean Sherrard and Clay Eals has given us a beautiful and indispensable gift.
Dave Eskenazi,
Seattle baseball historian
———
Paul is the guru of Seattle history. He brings a formidable intellect to his research and an artist’s sensibility to its presentation.
This is history told with charm and lightness — and, thanks to steadfast help from Jean — spiced with amazing photos, past and present.
Sheila Farr,
arts writer and former Seattle Times art critic
———
Longtime readers of “Seattle Now and Then” will love perusing these 100 greatest hits for their favorites.
New readers will be entertained not only by the fascinating corners of Seattle’s history but also by Dorpat’s sense of humor and Sherrard’s sharp eye.
Anne Frantilla,
Seattle city archivist
———
If you love a city, you want its story, not only in words, but also with a vision of its evolution.
Paul and Jean meet that desire in these pages, a brilliant melding of story and photo – a vivid journey from that long ago Then to Now.
Mike James,
former KING-TV and KIRO-TV journalist
———
Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred inspires Seattleites to utter the all-too-familiar statement, “I remember when…”
We can hope that this work inspires more of us to put down our phones, raise our heads, look at the ever-changing urban landscape and ask a more substantive, less sentimental question: ”What can we do to ensure that Seattle does not destroy its own soul?”
Kji Kelly,
executive director, Historic Seattle
———
Our colleague Paul’s ongoing opera, with Jean’s accompaniment, has been a delightful and always engaging travelogue. Mssrs. Dorpat and Shepherd have been the essential visual phenomenologists of historic Seattle.
Going beyond the printed words and accounts to re-visualize the ghosts and constructions that are and were, bye and bye. Sharing scenes from a steamer’s deck or a widow’s walk on a hill, peeking around street corners into past times now remembered, returning to our minds histories remain alive, and at all times both generous to all of us who also dwell in then-and-now worlds. L’ENVOI D’UN FLANEUR!
Each street, alley beckoned; passers-by did not register, or shades, exposure far too long for these souls. Haussman and Yesler walk with us again, their boulevards gun-straight, flashpowder drifts away like mists from the river. In the Front Street shop windows, mannequins still seduce the sailors, while Paul, ever watching, his lens remains open to it all.
Stephen Edwin Lundgren,
Seattle historian and poet
———
When I started writing home design and preservation features for The Seattle Times magazine, in 1988, Paul Dorpat’s “Seattle Now & Then” columns were already a popular, long-running feature. People actually started their Sunday reading from the back of the magazine just to see the surprises Paul had pulled from his remarkable photographic archive.
His revealing comparative images, Sherlock Holmes-like clue-finding commentary and studied evaluation have been catalysts for learning, exploration, understanding and appreciation of the shifts and changes that have affected this place we call home.
Lawrence Kreisman,
retired program director, Historic Seattle;
author, Made to Last: Historic Preservation in Seattle and King County, editor and co-author, Tradition and Change on Seattle’s First Hill:
Propriety, Profanity, Pills, and Preservation
———
For more than 30 years, Paul has been dotting the map with golden nuggets of Seattle’s architectural and social history. With this compilation, the dots connect, creating a treasure map of sites significant in establishing our city’s legacy.
Flipping through the pages of The Historic Hundred compels one to hit the streets in search of these sites, to experience them and, with luck, to hit historical pay dirt the way Paul and Jean have been doing for years.
Chris Moore, executive director,
Washington Trust for Historic Preservation
———
Paul Dorpat is the undisputed champion of telling the story of Seattle through photography. Paul’s partnership with contemporary photographer Jean Sherrard makes this book the jewel in the crown of the Seattle Now & Then series.
This culminating compilation is a must-have for any collector of Northwest books.
Marie McCaffrey,
co-founder of HistoryLink
———
The best thing about writing Seattle: A Pictorial History with my dad back in 1982 was meeting Paul Dorpat. He and Murray were kindred spirits, delighting in the oddities and ironies of the city’s past and present and, in their overlapping ways, telling its story.
Paul is a treasure, and this book is a fitting sampling and tribute to his work.
Lane Morgan, Seattle author, Greetings from Washington,
co-author, Seattle: A Pictorial History,
editor, The Northwest Experience anthologies
———
I can remember the first time I picked up a Paul Dorpat publication. The booklet was called 294 Glimpses of Historic Seattle: Its Neighborhoods and Neighborhood Businesses. To me, it looked like it had been cut-and-paste. But as I began to page through, I found myself drawn in to the picture it painted of Seattle.
Each time I pick up a new Paul Dorpat book, I find myself in another voyage of discovery, experiencing the story of our remarkable city as nowhere else! This newest Dorpat with Jean Sherrard’s wonderful contemporary photography empowers us to peel the onion of Seattle’s evolution — but without the tears!
Greg Nickels,
former Seattle mayor
———
The beauty, depth and rhythm of Seattle are found in the hearts, minds and souls of those who built, lived, worked and played in it.
I am thankful for this walk through memory lane and the reinforcement of our dynamic city. It gives us life and legacy.
Norm Rice,
former Seattle mayor
———
If Seattle decided to honor the civic equivalent of Japan’s Living National Treasures, Paul Dorpat surely would make the list. He and his fellow time traveler, Jean Sherrard, give newcomers a root-growth booster and remind old-timers what was here before, what’s been lost and how much has survived despite all our grumbling.
It’s a bonus to have his best columns and photo face-offs assembled in a single, handsome volume. Like a living city, this whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Eric Scigliano, Seattle author,
Puget Sound: Sea Between the Mountains
———
Ultimately, Paul Dorpat, it seems to me, is some sort of humanist even though his weekly articles are always about place: store, building, street, church, barn or school. What they are really about is people: the pharmacist, grocer, photographer, teacher, and the occupants.
The wonderful histories that I looked forward to every Sunday are again available as a beautiful booked collection. Apparently having my cake and eating it, too, will be possible.
Paul Spitzer,
retired history professor, curator
and heritage manager and co-founder
of the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild
———
Like many, I have long been enthralled by Paul Dorpat’s and Jean Sherrard’s “Now & Then” series in the Seattle Times. These lyrical vignettes reveal the many-sided Seattle Story and provide a cultural portrait of our colorful and ever-changing cityscape.
No other book about Seattle tells it better. I could hardly pull myself away.
Peter Steinbrueck,
Port of Seattle commissioner,
former Seattle City Council member and son of
the late architect and preservationist Victor Steinbrueck
———
Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard have published a selection of the best of their “Now and Then” columns from The Seattle Times written over several decades. These columns reveal, explore and share Seattle local history by paralleling vintage photographs from previous years with photographs and commentary on these same spaces and places today.
In so doing, Dorpat and Sherrard are able to focus on recurring issues and complex ideas that have shaped our city. Their creation of a People’s History of the region has made our past and how we look at the present and design the future much more accessible to scholars, historians and people interested in Seattle “Now and Then.”
Marcellus Turner, Seattle city librarian
———
Few people have done more to help Seattleites understand our city’s history than Paul Dorpat. Through the timely creation of Seattle Now & Then: The Historic Hundred, he continues his long-term goal of revealing the myriad ways the physical and built landscape have morphed and yet also remained stable. In doing so, he helps put in perspective how and why we have re-imagined the city through boom and bust.
This is a book that will not only open viewers’ eyes to the past but also connect it to the present and perhaps help inform us to envision a better future.
David Williams,
Seattle author, Too High and Too Steep,
Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City
co-author, Waterway: The Story of Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal