THEN: Charles Louch’s grocery on First Avenue, north of Union Street, opened in the mid-1880s and soon prospered. It is possible – perhaps probable – that one of the six characters posing here is Louch – more likely one of the two suited ones on the right than the aproned workers on the left. (Courtesy RON EDGE)NOW: The sidewalk sites of Charles Louch’s storefronts are now held by tenants of the Harold Poll building, which was built in 1910 as the Hancock Building.
Englishman Charles Louch first crossed the Seattle waterfront, it seems, in 1885, and for many reasons, including the “bag of money” he reportedly carried, prospered and stayed for eighteen years. He returned to England in 1903 with enough American assets to purchase an estate near Southhampton, which he shared with his two single sisters.
A look directly across Front Street (First Ave.) and the Front Street tracks. (Courtesy, MOHAI)The Louch offerings seen from the front door. (Courtesy MOHAI)
Louch first opened a stand for “fancy fruits” on the east side of Front Street (First Avenue) but soon expanded his fare to the “cigars, tobacco, groceries and provisions” that are indicated on the sign above his front door located on the third lot north of Union Street. It is these “groceries and provisions” that are first noted in the 1885-86 Polk City Directory, where Louch is listed as one of twenty-two Seattle grocers.
In the Polk’s citizen section, Louch is recorded as living at the same address, almost surely in the back of the store. Based on the evidence provided by the 1888 Sanborn real estate map, Louch later installed both a “Sausage Room” and a “Smoke House” in his former living quarters. Louch’s ‘1888 Brand’ smoked hams were a long-time favorite and not just locally. During the Alaska Gold Rush, beginning in the late 1890s, many of the hams were shipped north.
A rare look at the waterfront ca. 1897 with the Hotel York escaping the horizon on the right, at the northwest corner of Pike and Front/First Ave. The Louch Augustine & Company waterfront warehouse is on the left. Pike Street climbs the hill as an irregular path. (Courtesy Ron Edge) CLICK TO ENLARGE
In 1888 Louch began promoting his hams by distributing to his customers a mounted photograph of his store, as seen from an upper window of a nearby building at Front and Pike. This second photo featured a panorama of Seattle rising above a roof top sign reading “Chas Louch” and running at a right angle to Front Street. Set on the crest of the roof, the corner of that sign is barely seen here above the “cigars and tobacco” sign that faces the street.
The store’s larger rooftop sign and much of the First Hill horizon from a prospect south of Pike and overlooking Front Street in 1888-9. Rolland Denny’s home is at the northeast corner of Front and Union, lower-right. This first appeared in Pacific on Oct. 4, 1987 and was later included in one of the three “Seattle Now and Then” books, all of them collections of the features.The Louch credit can be carefully read in the sign above the ham-burdened wagon. The Louch wagon is either in a local parade or making a very big delivery of 1888 hams. Someday some bright young scholar will figure out what corner this is. The original print was poorly fixed. (Courtesy, MOHAI)
The city’s great fire of 1889 was also good to Louch and his hams and sausages. As the fire moved north up the waterfront and Front Street it was stopped less than two blocks south of Louch’s grocery. About one-half of the 36 groceries listed in the year’s city directory we consumed. Also in 1889 Louch moved into a mansion-sized Beacon Hill home he had built on Othello Avenue overlooking Rainier Valley.
The Colman building at the southwest corner of Marion and Columbia with the Augustine and Kyer storefront near the middle of the block and the store’s delivery buggies posing in front. (Courtesy, MOHAI)The Colman Bldg first appear in Pacific on March 1, 1987. CLICK TO ENLARGE & READ
After partnering in 1889 with M.B. Augustine, a traveling food salesman from Nevada, the ambitious pair moved into the much grander post-fire quarters of the Colman Building, (still at First Avenue and Columbia Street.) There they became famous for their “upscale” specialty foods and the dozen wagons needed to make free deliveries throughout the city. After Louch returned to England, Augustine took on a new partner and the company was renamed Augustine and Kyer. It grew to five locations, with the last one, in the University District, holding on through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Christmas inside Augustine & Kyer. (Courtesy MOHAI)Care for a cookie from Augustine and Kyle’s formidable display topped by a happy boy and a happy girl? (Courtesy MOHAI)
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, boys? Yes Jean, more of the neighborhood and also a look up Front Street from Pioneer Square, which is the second Edge-Link that Ron has put in place immediately below. After Ron’s links we’ll pull a few clips from past “now and then” features. They are also from the neighborhood. Well Jean, you know this well, for this week it was you who did the scanning of the clips having nearly completed your inventory of all 1700-plus features on the way to publishing later this year another collection – which might even be permitted the cheesy title “100 Best.”
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The home next door to the south, the Rolland Denny home at the northeast corner of First and Union. First appeared in Pacific December 30, 2001.
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Across Union Street from Rolland, his parents, Arthur and Mary Denny’s home at the southeast corner of Front (First) and Union.
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Looking north on First across Union Street, The Rolland Denny home is behind the stylish couple and the Louch storefront up the way. First appeared in Pacific, April 18, 1993.
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Princess Angeline resting and/or posing on the boardwalk west of Front and Pike. First appeared in Pacific, March 13, 2005.
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EIGHT PAGES from the AUGUSTINE & KYER BULLETIN, from 1912. click to enlarge
THEN: Looking south on First Avenue from its northwest corner with Madison Street, circa 1905. (Courtesy Museum of History and Industry)NOW: The entire block bordered by First and Second Avenues and Marion and Madison Streets was cleared in the late 1960s for the construction of architect Fred Bassetti’s Henry M. Jackson Federal Office Building, which opened in 1974.
Through the late 1880s this east side of First Avenue – its was still called Front Street then — was distinguished by George Frye’s Opera House (1884-85). This grand pioneer landmark filled the southern half of the block until June 6, 1889, when Seattle’s Great Fire reduced it to ashes. While these were still cooling, Frye hired John Nestor, an Irish-born architect who had designed his Opera House, to prepare drawings for the Stevens Hotel, which we see here also at the south end of the block, which is the northeast corner of First Avenue and Marion Street.
Frye’s Opera House is about to be engulfed by the Great First of June 6, 1889 in this look south on First Ave. (then still Front Street) from Spring Street. The opera house, the tallest building on First/Front, is left-of-center.The above was most likely recorded during the Northern Pacific Railroad’s official photographer, F. Jay Haynes, 1890 visit to Seattle. Hayes climbed to the trestle built across Railroad Ave. to carry coal to the waterfront bunkers built where Ivar’s Pier 3 now stands on its brand new steel pilings. Center-right in the block below the temporary tents, vestiges of the commercial needs following the fire of 1889, a single story structure at the southeast corner of First and Madison will be short-lived. The changes made there for a long life of stage performances required much higher ceilings and added floors for the show girls to robe to disrobe. Central School on the south side of Madison between Sixth and Seventh Avenues tops the horizon at the center.With the Burke Building behind it at Second and Marion, the Stevens Hotel fills half of the block on First Ave., between Marion and Madison, far-left.Like the Wesbster and Stevens studio subject above it, Lawton Gowey’s record looks thru the intersection of First and Marion and the ruins of both the Stevens Hotel and the Burke Building. Less than ten years old, the SeaFirst tower ascends above the Empire Building with its rooftop Olympic National Life neon sign. The Empire/Olympic later provided Seattle’s first great thrill of implosion.
Next door to the north, the Palace Hotel, with 125 guest rooms, opened on the Fourteenth of April, 1903. The owners announced that it was “Artistically decorated and comfortably furnished, and equipped with every modern convenience.” They listed “elevators, electric lights, call bells and rooms with baths.” The owners boasted that their hotel had the “finest commercial sample rooms in the city, which makes it an ideal hotel for commercial travelers.” In the spring of 1905, the most northerly of the hotel’s three storefronts was taken by Burt and Packard’s “Korrect Shape” shoe store. For $3.50 one could purchase a pair of what the partnering cobblers advertised as “the only patent leather shoe that’s warranted.” Also that year, the New German Bakery moved in next door beneath the Star Theatre, which had recently changed its name from Alcazar to Star.
Early construction on the Henry Jackson “Federal” Building that replaced everything on the block except for a few ornaments saved from the Burke Building. The older Federal Building appears here across First Avenue, and sits there still.(Above) The Seattle Times Feb. 26, 1905 review of the Star Theatre.
On February 21, 1905, The Seattle Times printed “Vaudeville at the Star,” a wonderfully revealing review of the Star’s opening. “Vaudeville as given at the 10-cent theatre may not be high art, but it is certainly popular art . . . The performance started exactly at the appointed time, but long before that a squad of policeman had to make passage ways through the crowd of people on Madison Street.”
The Star Theatre with the Palace Hotel beside it.
The hour-and-a-half performance consisted of nine acts, and The Times named them all. “Claude Rampf led off with some juggling on the slack wire. Richard Burton followed with illustrated songs. Third came the Margesons in a comedy sketch, a little boy proving a clever dancer. Fourth were the dwarfs, Washer Brothers, who boxed four rounds. They were followed by Daisy Vernon, who sang in Japanese costume, followed by Handsen and Draw, a comedy sketch team, followed by Wilson and Wilson, consisting of a baritone singer and a negro comedian, and then by the lead liner, Mme Ziska, the fire dancer. The performance concluded with several sets of moving pictures.”
Lawton Gowey’s recording of the end – and rear end – of the Rivoli, recorded on January 21, 1971.
Until it went dark in 1967, the venue at the southeast corner of First and Madison had many names. In addition to the Alcazar and the Star, it had been called the State Ritz, the Gaiety, the Oak, the State, the Olympic, the Tivoli, and in its last incarnation as a home for burlesque and sometimes experimental films, the Rivoli.
James Stevens standing by his tales.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? Yup and again with help from Ron Edge who has attached the links below for readers’ ready clicking. The four chosen are, for the most part, from the neighborhood. Following those we will put up three or four other relevant features and conclude with a small array of other state landmarks or “icons” (and how I dislike using that by now tired term, but I’m in a hurry) including James Stevens, the wit who revived and put to good order the Paul Bunyan tales. We like him so much, we have put Stevens next above, on top of Ron’s links.
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Looking north on First thru Madison Street with a cable car intersecting on the right. Note the sidewalk awning of the German Bakery, far right. The Globe Building is on the left at the northwest corner. DOUBLE CLICK the text BELOWFIRST APPEARED in PACIFIC, JUNE 22, 1986. CLICK TWICE – PLEASE
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Clock on the southwest corner of First Ave. and Madison Street.First Appeared in PACIFIC , SEPT. 17, 1995.The Globe when nearly new.Lawton Gowey’s capture of the Globe on Sept. 16, 1981 preparing for its restoration as a swank hotel.
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Post Alley, looking north from Marion Street. The buildings on the right face the west side of First Avenue between Marion and Madison and so look across First Avenue at or into the featured block.CLICK to ENLARGE. First appeared in Pacific, December 6, 1987.The west side of First Avenue between Madison Street (in the foreground) and Marion. The dark-brick Rainier-Grand Hotel holds the center of the block.
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OTHER STEVENS
We might have begun this little photo essay with a portrait of the namesake, Washington Territory’s first governor, Isaac Stevens, but chose instead a landmark on Stevens Pass (named for the Gov), the Wayside Chapel. Lawton Gowey, again, took this slide. We do not know if the chapel has survived the wages of sin and elements.
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ABOVE, Pickett’s record of the Stevens Pass summit with Cowboy Mountain on the horizon, and BELOW, Jean Sherrard’s repeat, which appeared first in our book WASHINGTON THEN AND NOW.
Another Stevens Pass ski lodge. Photo by Ellis
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ABOVE and BELOW: Stevens School in Wenatchee. In the “now” the school has been replaced by a federal building. (This too appears in WASHINGTON THEN and NOW)
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On Alki Point, we’ve been told, across Stevens Street from what is now the Log Cabin Museum, a fitted tent for summer recreations at the beach, and now a street of modest homes.
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A rail-fan’s CASEY JONES SPECIAL heading east on the future Burke Gilman Recreation trail and over the Stevens Way overpass. It was under this little bridge that those attending the 1909 Alaksa Yukon Pacific Exposition on the U.W. Campus entered the Pay Streak, the carnival side of the AYP. Pacific Street runs by here just out frame at the bottom. Photo – again – by Lawton Gowey. Lawton was one of the area’s most learned Rail Fans.
