THEN: The driver, lower left, leads his team towards First Avenue up a planked incline on Madison Street. (Courtesy MOHAI)NOW: Looking west towards the waterfront on Madison Street through its intersection with Western Avenue.
I’ll venture that this look across Railroad Avenue (Alaskan Way) and Elliott Bay as far as West Seattle’s dim Duwamish Head, far-left, was photographed some few weeks after the city’s Great Fire of June 6, 1889, burned everything on the waterfront south of University Street. The fire was ignited by a volatile mix of upset boiling glue and carpenter’s shavings scattered on the floor of Margaret Pontius’s frame building at the southwest corner of Front (First Avenue) and Madison Streets, about a block behind the position the unnamed photographer took to record this rare scene of the waterfront’s revival.
This post-1889 fire claims to show its ruins at the foot of Madison Street. (Courtesy Michael Maslan)
Before the “providential fire” this part of the waterfront was covered with the Commercial Mill and its yard. Built in the mid-1880s on its own wide pier off the foot of Madison Street, this specialist in sash, doors, and blinds was nearly surrounded by stacks of lumber, great contributors to the conflagration. On the night of the ’89 fire, when seen from the safety of First Hill, burningboardsfrom the lumberyard carried high above the business district put on a rare fireworks show.
Photographed by Morford from Yesler’s Wharf in late 1887 or 1888. Madison Street lumber-bound wharf is on the far right, Denny Hill behind the tall ship.
The small warehouse in the featured photo at the top, right-of-center, was built by and/or for F.A. Buck for his business, California Wines, which he advertised with banners both at the roof crest of the shed and facing the city. It seems that the shed was also being lengthened on its bay side. Railroad Avenue is also being extended further into the bay. This work-in-progress can be seen between the vintner’s shed and the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad’s boxcar No. 572. Far left, a pile driver reaches nearly as high as the two-mast vessel anchored, probably at low tide, behind the vintner’s warehouse. This ‘parallel parking’ was not what the city council envisioned following the fire. The city expected and eventually got finger piers that extended into the bay, where visiting vessels were tied in the slips between them.
Railroad Ave. ca. 1903 showing the then new long finger piers north of Madison Street. The shorter piers to the south (left) of Madison were built after the Great Fire of 1889. They would sooner ( or later) be either moved further into the bay on new pilings are replaced with longer piers like the Grand Trunk Dock and Colman Dock.
In the featured photo, the bales of hay stacked both beyond the horses, left-of-center, and at the scene’s lower-right corner, have come to the waterfront either over water, often aboard steamers from Skagit valley farms or over the rails of the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railway, which had, only recently in 1888, reached both the agriculture hinterlands of King County and the Seattle Coal and Iron Company’s Issaquah coal mine.
The D.H. Gilman engine on the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad line – perhaps in Gilman, later named Issaquah.
The smaller shed in the right foreground of the features photo at the top is outfitted as the waterfront office for the coal company, which in May of 1888 sent from Yesler Wharf, probably to California, its first load of coal aboard the ship Margaret. Within two years the Seattle Coal and Iron Company’s growth, disrupted the wine-sellers quarters. The long shed was removed to allow construction of an elevator and overpass for moving Issaquah coal from the SLSER coal cars above and over Railroad Avenue to the company’s new bunkers that extended into Elliott Bay. The coal bunkers stood over what is now the dining area of Ivar’s Acres of Clams on Pier 54.
This detail, pulled from the 1893 Sanborn real estate map, shows the coal bunkers on the left and the trestle (for the coal) over Railroad Avenue and to the coal facilities between Railroad Avenue and Western Ave. The next photo below looks up Madison from that trestle in 1890 or 1891. (I’ve forgotten for this “fog of blog” moment.)The Northern Pacific photographer F.J.Haynes look east up Madison Street from the coal trestle that passed over Railroad Avenue to the coal pier at the foot of Madison. (Courtesy, Tacoma Public Library)Looking north on the waterfront with the dark timbers of the Madison Street coal bunkers showing right-of-center, ca. 1898.F. J. Haynes ca. 1891 look at the waterfront from a vessel on Elliott Bay. Madison Street is just left of the bright navy vessel at the center. On the horizon above it is Central School at the southeast corner of 6th and Madison. Is it brand new, and so it the King County Court House on the horizon, far right. (Courtesy Tacoma Pubic Library)Another 1890s look down on Railroad Avenue south from the Madison Street coal trestle. The several afternoon shadows of the short pier sheds along the waterfront then appear on the right.Another early post-fire Haynes view of the waterfront, this one most likely from the Madison Street coal wharf. The competing King Street coal wharf and bunkers reaches into the bay at the scene’s center. Yesler’s post-fire wharf is marked left-of-center. (Courtesy, Tacoma Public Library)
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? For sure Jean. Of the five waterfront links that Ron Edge has attached, the first one especially is filled with Madison Street relevance – and more. That is there are many other features embedded for the reader to release merely by clicking on it (and the others). And may they also remember to click on the images to enlarge them for studying details. That’s why we scan them big for the blog.
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One of Muybridge’s early motion studies, and not a Seattle subject necessarily. Like all else, CLICK to ENLARGE
THEN: In 1852 many of Seattle’s first pioneers removed from Alki Point by dugout canoe for the deeper and safer harbor along the east shore of Elliott Bay (our central waterfront). About a half-century later any hope or expectation that the few survivors among these pioneers could readily visit Alki Beach and Point by land were fulfilled with the timber quays and bridges along Spokane Street. (Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archive)NOW: The undulations and elevations required to lift Spokane Street high above the waterways and railways are evident in the Jeanette Williams Memorial Bridge (aka West Seattle High Bridge), barely seen just left of its west end extension with the ascending Fauntleroy Expressway on the right.
Across the tidelands of Youngs Cove, here at low tide, is Pigeon Point. From central Seattle Pigeon Point is a headland that often blends in with the greater mass of West Seattle and its pronounced Duwamish Head. On the far right, looking over part of the Seattle Steel plant, is a glimpse into the Youngstown neighborhood.
Here Pigeon Point and West Seattle have sorted themselves out with the aid of atmospheric perspective. The point is the darker headland entering the subject from the left. The featured text for this look west to Pigeon Point and beyond it to West Seattle is included in the bundle of features grouped under the first of the three links placed following this week’s feature text.
Jogging through Youngstown, trolleys from Seattle first reached the west shore of Elliott Bay in 1907, the year of West Seattle’s annexation into the city. They came by way of a new swing bridge over the Duwamish River that was roughly in line with Spokane Street. After swaying around Pigeon Point, the electric cars turned south into Youngstown. From there the tracks turned north to Duwamish Head, reaching Luna Park on June 27thin time for most of the summer play. Built on pilings below the Head, Luna Park was the grandest of the many Alki Beach attractions that extended to Alki Point, which the trollies reached in 1908.
Spokane Street with the slight obstruction of Pigeon Point on the right. The prospect looks east from near 26th S.W. on Oct. 4, 1920.A detail from the 1912 Baist Real Estate Map with Spokane Street at the top and the Youngstown neighborhood at the bottom and south of Andover Street.With trolley track on the left, Youngstown’s “main street,” West Andover, looking east to Pigeon Point (with the Point out-of-frame to the left./north.) Courtesy, Lawton Gowey
By 1914 the circuitous route to Alki Beach previously running through Youngstown was straightened. The Spokane Street trestle had been recently extended west across the head of Youngs Cove, reaching West Seattle here at Admiral Way. Captioned at its lower left corner, the feature’s “top” subject’s long look east on Spokane Street was recorded on April 16, 1916.
A Seattle Times clip from April 30, 1916 reporting on the neighborhood’s activism for more trolley service.Looking northeast from Avalon to the point where the early – Oct. 23, 1913 – Spokane Street trestle reaches West Seattle. Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archive
As evidence of Spokane Street’s development into a West Seattle funnel, city engineers counted the traffic using it between 5 am and midnight on one day in early November 1915. The partial list recorded that two-hundred-and-ninety one street cars carried 11,699 persons, 692 passenger automobiles carried 1,501 persons, 203 jitneys (taxis) carried 744 persons, and 155 horse-drawn vehicles carried 187 persons across the West Seattle Bridge.
A Seattle Times report on the city’s study of bridge traffic, Nov. 6, 1915.
In 1916, the year of the feature’s lead photograph, the West Seattle Commercial Club began the long campaign for a “high bridge” to West Seattle, with grades lifting the traffic above the railroad tracks. In 1929 the trestle shown here was replaced and Spokane Street lifted with fill. The concrete Fauntleroy Expressway, high-flying through Jean’s “now,” was added in the mid-1960s. After another high bridge rebuff from city council, The Times for April 22, 1978, polled West Seattle citizens on secession. A majority favored it.
A pull-page from The Seattle Times on Nov. 26, 1916. Click it – perhaps more than once.
In 1929 the trestle shown here (again, with the featured photograph) was replaced and Spokane Street lifted with fill.
A detail of the neighborhood from the city’s 1929 aerial survey. The “fattening” – but not the lifting – of Spokane Street as seen from high above. The scan is used courtesy, again, of Ron Edge who scanned it all: the entire city in 1929, the first such aerial hereabouts.With a glimpse of the steel mill on the far left, here Spokane Street is being reshaped and lifted above fill. The view looks west on July 11, 1929. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archive)
A month earlier on June 6, 1929 looking east over the same Spokane Street approach to West Seattle (proper) with construction about to begin on new concrete ramps for the Avalon-Spokane-Harbor-Admiral nexus. Pigeon Point is on the right. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archive)At least from my print, the full date, bottom-left, for this look into the construction on the new interchange is cut off. The view looks northeast. (Courtesy, Lawton Gowey)Blue lines, upper-left, on this ca. 1931 Sandborn Real Estate Map, mark the construction site on the Spokane-Avalon-Harbor-Admiral interchange.The ornamented and almost completed intersection looking east – asking to be compared to the featured photograph at the top.Below the same ramps (as those one image above) on April 26, 1930.
The concrete Fauntleroy Expressway, high-flying through Jean’s “now,” was added in the mid-1960s. After another high bridge rebuff from city council, The Times for April 22, 1978, polled West Seattle citizens on secession. A majority favored it.
The Fauntleroy Expressway gaining altitude above our and Lawton Gowey’s – the photographer – intersection on May 10, 1`968
Less than two months later, Capt. Rolf Neslund began the rescue of these angry neighbors from their jams and closed bridges on Spokane Street when his gypsum ship Chavez rammed the West Seattle bascule bridge beyond repair. The new high bridge – and heart’s desire – was dedicated on a windy November 10, 1983.
Well, in part. Here we learn from Clay Eals, West Seattle champion and director of its Log House Museum and all that is connected with it, that we are half correct on the date of completion for the high bridge. We quote Clay.
But you may say that a 30th anniversary doesn’t square with the Nov. 10, 1983, date at the end of your column — and it doesn’t. That’s because the high bridge wasn’t fully opened on Nov. 10, 1983. Only the eastbound lanes were opened on that date. The westbound lanes were opened July 14, 1984, making the bridge fully open then, hence the 30th anniversary.
Might you be able to change the Nov. 10, 1983, date to July 14, 1984, if not on the Times page then on yours?
Here is a pertinent paragraph of info, taken from the web link above:
“The high bridge didn’t open all at once. Following the ramming of the low-level bridge by the freighter Chavez on June 11, 1978, construction on the bridge began in 1980. Eastbound lanes opened to the public on Nov. 10, 1983, and westbound lanes opened on July 14, 1984.”
Clay Eals, just before the unveiling of the West Seattle totem pole, in his natural setting
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? Surely Jean. In the three features that Ron Edge has posted below with picture-links there is an array of past features that touch on subjects that themselves – most of them – touch on Spokane Street. Here is a general list for what one who clicks the links will find within “Coming Home to Riverside” and the last of the three, “Luna Park Entrance.” The second link is an Addendum to the first.
COMING HOME to RIVERSIDE
* A Riverside Family
* Six Bridges to Riverside (and West Seattle)
* Riverside Junction
* Spokane Street Trestle from Beacon Hill
* West Seattle Ferry at Colman Dock
* Fukii’s Bridge (to West Seattle)
* Elevated Railway on Marginal Way
* The “Shoe Fly” on the West Seattle Bridge
* Trolley Wreck on Spokane Street, Jan 8, 1937
* The Star Foundry, (on Spokane Street)
* Pigeon Point Fire Station No. 36
* Spokane Street Substation – 1926 (on Spokane Street)
* West Seattle High School (not on Spokane Street)
RIVERSIDE ADDENDUM
LUNA PARK ENTRANCE: Sept. 10, 2011
* Luna Park
* West Seattle Harbor
* How to Get to West Seattle
* West Seattle Ferry at Colman Dock
* Sea View Hall
* Halibuts Below Duwamish Head
* Novelty Mill
* Luna Park Below Duwamish Head
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The THREE EDGE LINKS
1. Coming Home to Riverside
2. Riverside Addendum
3. Luna Park Entrance
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MORE FOSTER KLEISER BILLBOARD SURVEY EXAMPLES – with once exception for comparison. All are on Spokane Street an all come with their own captions, which are coded-described in order to put the sign company’s billboards in their proper places for potential clients to imagine their own message. In many of the original negatives for this collection, the billboards have been whited-out so that when the negatives are printed the prints appear without content, the better to imagine your own.
Looking west on Spokane Street a few blocks east of the 1929/30 work on the ramps into Spokane’s intersection with Avalon, Harbor and Admiral Way. Although well-stocked with ads, this is not from the billboard company’s collection but is used courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archive.
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A SOLEMN CALL FROM THE RAMPS – 1937
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A TEST
The subject below looks west not on Spokane Street but on James. That is Trinity Episcopal on the right at 8th Avenue. I am cleaning up and clearing out old stuff and this is one of many hundreds of screened prints – prints exposed through a half-tone screen for off-set printing – I discovered on a bottom shelf in one of my archival cubbies. It was probably printed in the early 1980s for possible inclusion in “Seattle Now and Then, Volume One.” I am testing it here to determine if its like the other screen prints found might be recycled with some tweaked scanning.
Included here as a text to determine if a screened print (made of little black dots) might be scanned for on-line use without interference. Click it to see if it succeeds or flops.
![8.-FK-SPOKANE-ST.-(SL-200'-E-of-26th-P-1)[Lk-e-to-Pigeon-Point]-R-176--Nov.-31,-1936-WEB](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/8-fk-spokane-st-sl-200-e-of-26th-p-1lk-e-to-pigeon-point-r-176-nov-31-1936-web.jpg?ssl=1)
