THEN: For his May Day, 1900 portrait of the Seattle City Council, the photographer, Anders Wilse, planted them, like additions to the landscape, on the lawn somewhere in the upper part of Kinnear Park. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archives)
NOW: Sitting among the VIPs attending the recent April 26th “Grand Opening” of Lower Kinnear Park’s restoration is HBB Landscape Architect Aaron Luoma and his son Owen. It was HBB that guided the design and work involved, including the paths, the 1947 tennis court, seen here, and the park’s new and popular Off-Leash Area for dogs. Dean Koonts, also of HBB, notes that the two trees “posing” upper-right are both included in the list of Seattle’s “Exceptional Trees.” The closer one with silver bark is a Copper Beach, and behind it stands a European Hornbeam. [ Marga Rose Hancock’s full list for Jean’s repeat reads, “Front Row: Brian Yee (FOLKpark), Acting Superintendent of Parks Christopher Williams, Deputy Mayor Andrea Riniker, Kay Knapton (FOLKpark), Deborah Frausto (FOLKpark), Jean Sundborg (Uptown Alliance), Karen O’Conner (Seattle Park staff), Ian Gerrard (with French horn), slamandir (trombone and no last name, no upper case letters) – Top Row: Matt Mulder and doggie Sam (FOLKpark), Michael Herschensohn (Queen Anne Historical Society), Seattle Councilmember Jean Godden, Seattle Councilmember Sally Bagshow, Kim Baldwin (Seattle Parks staff), State Senator Jeane Kohl-Wells, Aaron Luoma and son Owen (HBB Landscape Architects), Christa Dumpys (Dept. of Neighborhoods), Laurie Ames (Dept. of Neighborhoods), Marga Rose Hancock.)On Christmas Day 1894, a landslide dropped a 150-foot swath off the bluff between the lower and upper parts of Kinnear Park into Elliott Bay. Seattle’s third park sits on the southwest brow of Queen Anne Hill. From its northern border on West Olympic Place, it nearly plunges 250 feet in elevation to the waterfront.
For the Seattle Park Board, the slide of ’94 was encore to a swan dive taken a year earlier by the city treasury with the economic Panic of 1893. The board decreed that “the limited funds at disposal” be used only on the “upper portion of this park, which is upon the solid bluff.” When Angie and George Kinnear gave the park to the city for one dollar in the fall of 1887, the beach, backed by ancient Douglas Firs, was already a poplar retreat for those who could reach it. Its open view to the Olympics was blocked earlier that summer of ‘87 by the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad, the first of three off-shore trestles to run between the beach and the bay.
A crude copy of Parks Dept.’s engineer-historian Don Sherwood’s map of Kinnear Park included in his magnus opus handwritten coverage of the history of all Seattle Parks. Note the “viewpoint” comfort station hand-colored in red on the map above and reflecting a sunset in Lawton Gowey’s side below. The map, above, and also outlined in red, are the tennis courts in Lower Kinnear Park that are shown, in part, in Jean’s repeat.
From the upper park the views across Puget Sound were transcendent, (still are) and it was there that the Seattle City Council relaxed on the afternoon of its May 1, 1900 “official inspection tour.” City Engineer Reginald Thomson, sitting here directly behind the councilman on the far left, led the May Day tour that was primarily of the reservoirs and standpipes being then completed for the anticipated delivery by gravity of cool and pure Cedar River water in abundance. For his “repeat” one hundred and fourteen years later, Jean Sherrard took the freshly restored but still steep path down the bluff to record the Park Department’s and FOLKpark’s Grand Opening of the restored park on Saturday, April 26, last.
We take a chance that this is part of the original park department path that linked the lower and upper parts of Kinnear. We remember reading “Kinnear Park” written on the original slide . . . we think.
FOLKpark stands for Friends of Lower Kinnear Park. For this Sunday’s feature the most important member among them is Marga Rose Hancock. A neighbor of the park, she first suggested this “now and then,” and then, out of respect to the dress code of the city council in 1900, pulled from her large collection of purple hats, covers for the heads of those posing now, including one of a FOLKpark member’s dog named Sam. Jean’s “now” is a sampler of both happy and concerned citizens. It includes the department of park’s acting superintendent, the deputy mayor, several more members of FOLKpark, two council members, a Washington State senator, the director of the Queen Anne Historical Society, and a representative of the neighborhood’s Uptown Alliance.
Also posing are two members of the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band, which played for the dedication ceremony. Marga Rose is found, all in purple, behind the band’s trombonist named salamander. It is a moniker that by request includes no caps or first name.
Kinnear Park Playground, June 1913. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archive)Five blocks east of the park, the Kinnear mansion kept its own surrounding park until replaced by the Bayview Manor.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? We hope to – Ron and I. There are former features from this blog that have parts relevant to this southwest corner of Queen Anne Hill. Included are the blog features titled “The Whilhelmina / Winona;” “Smith Cover Glass Works,” published April 28, 2012; and “Testing Cedar River Water,” that appeared here on Jan 2, 2010. And there are others, as you will find if you use the KEY WORD approach offered above, and type there either “Kinnear” or “Queen Anne.” We sincerely hope to also put up actual links to some of these by the time the sun rises, illuminating the paper routes to your front doors.
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The Kinnear Park Mushroom with the southern head of Magnolia showing through the screen of park trees on the far west side of Smith Cove. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archive)
THE KINNEAR PAR MUSHROOM AKA UMBRELLA
Seattle’s earliest parks from the 1880s and 1890s were rusticated with park benches shaped from unhewn tree limbs, trestles, pergolas and gates that one might imagine were handmade by forest nymphs. Judging by the number of photographs that survive, one of the more popular examples was Kinnear Park’s romantic mushroom – or umbrella or parachute.
A “rustic parachute trellis seat” is what the Seattle Park Department’s annual report for 1892 calls it. Also that year a “rustic bluff barrier rail” was completed along the exposed edge of the upper level of Kinnear Park. Thee improvements were made two year after the Kinnear family’s gift to the city was cleared of underbrush. Beds of flowers and hrub were donated by neighbors and arranged by the park’s gardener. In 1894 a “picturesque pavilion” wa added atop a knoll and connected to the park by “rustic bridge.”
The Seattle Park Department’s archival “Sherwood Files – named for Don Sherwood and searchable on the park department’s web page – do not reveal when the umbrella was removed. Ultimately these rustic structures were too delicate – too organic — to survive the wear of admiring park visitors. And on occasions this narrow strip along the southwest slope of Queen Anne Hill was quite busy. For instance, the crowds attending the Tuesday evening concerts in the park during the summer of 1910 averaged more than 2,500.
This snow covered mushroom comes from a collection of glass negatives photographed by the Queen Anne Duffy family in the first years of the 20th Century. Consequently, this is most likely not the Big Snow of 1916.
Through the summer of 1936, Kinnear Park was used for Sunday forums on such uplifting topics as “How Cooperatives Help Our City” and “Are We Getting Better or Worse?,” and six-minute talks on “Why I am a Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Communist, Prohibitionist.” These assemblies concluded with community sing-alongs which, The Seattle Times reported, send the crowds home with their faces “wreathed in smiles.”
Another early-century snowscape in Kinnear Park.Most likely this look west from Kinnear Park and over Puget Sound is another slide by the helpful Queen Anne resident, Lawton Gowey.Another photo opportunity for the council member and by A. Wilse on the first day of May, 1900. (Courtesy Municipal Archive)
THEN: From the Fremont Bridge, this subject looks east northeast* across the torrent that followed the washout of the Fremont Dam in the early afternoon of March 13, 1914. Part of the Bryant Lumber and Shingle Mill appears left-of-center. The north end of the Stone Way Trestle appears in the upper right corner. (Courtesy, Seattle Municipal Archives)NOW: In the mid-1950s the former Bryant Mill site was converted into an industrial center, but it took until the 1990s for the site’s extensive architectural make-over to begin. On the Wallingford horizon many of the surviving homes predate the 1914 washout.The Stone Way Bridge from the Westlake Ave. and Queen Anne side. Across the bridge, above the center of the subject, the large box factory of Western Cooperage stands out.South from 34th Street on December 27, 1997 into construction for the new tenants of the old Bryant Lumber Mill site east of the Fremont Bridge
Two sensational news photographs appear on the front page of the Friday, March 13, 1914, issue of The Seattle Times. One is of the historic and deadly Missouri Athletic Club fire in St. Louis. The other from Portland, Oregon, shows a “flame-wrapped” steam schooner drifting along the docks on the Willamette River “starting a new blaze at every place she bumped.” Also sensational, standing above it all, the day’s headline reads FREMONT BRIDGE DESTROYED: Flood Threatened By Breaking Of Lake Union Dam.
Front page – top half – of The Seattle Times March 13, 1914 issue.
[CLICK to ENLARGE]
The Seattle Times next day – March 14. 1914 – report.
Soon after the Fremont dam, constructed to control the level of Lake Union, broke in the early afternoon, the bridge did too. It was a little late for The Times to get a picture in that day’s evening addition. However, over the weekend, The Times featured several pictures of the flood, including one that was very similar to the historical photo used here. Both photographers stood precariously close to the open center section of the Fremont Bridge that was swept away towards Ballard about two hours after the dam’s collapse. The Times 1914 photo was taken later than this one, for in the newspaper’s illustration the water level is lower and the dam’s surviving wing gate pilings, also seen here, stand out more. Employed by the city’s public works department, “our” photographer took several shots of the washout and its unsettling effects.
During its nearly day-long outpouring, Lake Union dropped about nine feet. Beside the bridge, at the lake’s north end the worst damage was to the railroad trestle along the north shore. At the south end of the lake the greatest casualty was the big new dock built by the then thirty-year-old Brace and Hergert lumber mill. Stacked with lumber, the exposed pilings supporting the dock gave way early Saturday morning. Nearby, on the lake’s east shore, those among the “houseboat colonists” who had dared to keep to their floating homes were awakened by the crash. By noon the houseboats tied to the shore were resting on the lake’s bottom at an angle that was good only for reading in bed. Also by noon on Saturday it was clear that Ballard would not be washed away.
[Courtesy, MOHAI]
Fortunately for the several trolley lines that served Fremont, Wallingford, and Green Lake, as well as the interurban to Everett, the long temporary trestle crossing from Westlake to Stone Way, seen here in part on the right, did not collapse. Traffic that normally crossed at Fremont was redirected there by Carl Signor, an alert neighbor with a hay, grain and flour store located near the south end of the Fremont Bridge. The bridge collapsed soon after Signor’s timely signal.
WEB EXTRAS
Much to add this week, Paul? Indeed, Jean and starting with an Edge-link to an opening day subject for the Fremont Bascule Bridge, followed by another beginning with the odd story of a crashed trolley in Fremont. And following these pulls by Ron Edge, we will string out a variety of photos of the Fremont Bridge thru time and from different prospects, beginning with a few from Queen Anne Hill. This chain will also feature a few construction shots of the bascule bridge, which is, of course, the one we still cross. We hope to be able to date them all – or nearly.
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I have pulled this from SEATTLE NOW & THEN VOL. 1, which was first published in 1984 and then reprinted about three times. I lived off it. Hopefully the text is accurate. On rereading old features I have found a few bloopers, I confess. Usually mistakes of directions. Still, question authority. This appeared first in the Feb. 12, 1984 issue of Pacific Magazine.
[CLICK to Enlarge and make it readable – we hope.]
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The FREMONT BRIDGE from QUEEN ANNE HILL
Probably the earliest extant panorama of Fremont from any prospect – circa 1891. The early low bridge is hard to make out through the atmosphere of the mill.The still “low bridge” in 1903, looking north again from Queen Anne. A feature for this subject is included as the 58th “story” in Seattle Now and Then Volume Two.An Oakes “real photo” postcard of what is still the “low bridge,” from Ca. 1907. Phinney Ridge is on the horizon with the forest of Woodland Park on the right.Construction of the new “high bridge” in 1911. Directly below is a detail showing the work-in-progress on this lifting of the grade, at 34th and Fremont.
Looking north into the same wide-body construction on the Fremont Bridge and dated June 21, 1911. This is somewhat earlier than the subject above it, which shows that the bridge has been considerably widened on its east side while here the “east lane” is still at the original elevation, on the right. (Courtesy, Municipal Archives)
The clip from Pacific on Nov. 28, 2004. [Click to Enlarge]Date March 18, 1915, this is the last of the old and short-lived high bridge. The disrupting work on its bascule replacement ran from 1915 until its opening in 1917.
The upheaval of early construction, again looking from the Queen Anne end, dated May 10, 1915. [Courtesy, Municipal Archive]=====
Early Army Corps work on the canal, looking east to the low bridge, ca. 1903.Improvement on the Fremont Dam ca. 1903, looking east to the “Wallingford Peninsula” where the gas works were implanted four years later in 1907. Note also the view of the dam directly below from 1907. There the gas works can be found along the north shore of Lake Union. [Courtesy, Army Corps]The Fremont Bridge looking east from the “low bridge” circa, 1907. Western Cooperage is on the far left, but the temporary Stone Way Bridge is still four years ahead.A trolley car heading for Fremont, crosses the “low bridge” as seen from the lower bridge that crossed the channel above the here bubbling Fremont Dam. Ca. 1907.
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March 3, 1915, from the Fremont side looking southeast to the “high bridge” repaired after the 1914 collapse, but here soon to be razed for construction of the bascule replacement.The Fremont spillway constructed with the 1914 repair of the collapsed timber high bridge. Dec. 11, 1914 Below is the “now” of this pair that first appeared in Pacific on July 7, 2006.
A record of the spillway (not spilling) from the Queen Anne side, with lines drawn indicating the expected level of the canal once the locks are closed and the canal is flooded. Again, that is the old pre-bascule short-lived high bridge beyond. [Courtesy, Army Corps]Looking southeast through the open wings of the brand new but not yet opened to traffic Fremont Bascule Bridge.
January 10, 1917. This look was photographed some few days before the one above. [Courtesy, Army Corps]=====
Early work on the north pier being prepared for concrete, March 23, 1916.Some of the hardened results on the north pier, April 8, 1916.An “aerial” panorama (perhaps shot from the tower showing above the south pier in the photograph two above this one) looking west down the canal to a Ballardian sky of mill smoke and airborne lefse particulates on May 4, 1916.Here the daring photographer has turned around (again on May 4, 1916) to look west over the Stone Way Bridge and the smoking Gas Works to a Capitol Hill horizon. Note the generations of Westlake (25 years worth) off-shore, hugging the shore and taking it on the right. Dexter descends to the bridge, far right.Work on the south pier, July 7, 1916. The Bryant mill is on the left and the Stone Way Bridge on the right.The South Pier from the north end on Aug. 17, 1916.
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“THE BUSIEST BASCULE IN THE U.S.A.”
Until the Aurora Bridge was completed in 1932, the bascule at Fremont was busy enough to be considered the busiest bridge of its kind in the U.S.A.. With the University Bridge, it was one of the two primary funnels into the north city and beyond. Here the “outbound traffic through Fremont” in the late afternoon of June 27, 1923, for the most part avoids the center of the street and the tracks for the several trolley lines – including the Seattle-Everett Interurban – that then used them. In the mere fifteen years between the opening of the bascule and that of the flyover Aurora Bridge, Fremont prospered as a mill town and roadside attraction.The congestion on August 15, 1923.. . . and sometime in 1924 (if memory serves) when the serious talk about building a high bridge was itself arising from warm to hot, photographs like this were produced as evidence for the state legislature. [Courtesy, Municipal Archives]The Aurora Bridge under construction seen from the Fremont Bridge.Thin traffic on the Fremont Bridge, looking north into Fremont, April 18, 1939. Within two years the trolley rails will be removed.
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FREMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY
If you find Fremont history alluring, as do I, you may want to join the Fremont Historical Society. I took this portrait of its first members at its first meeting in the summer of 2004. They are, left to right: Julie Pheasant-Albright, Audrey LIvermore, Roger Wheeler, Paul Fellows, Helen Divjak, Heather McAuliffe, and Carol Tobin. The second picture below it was taken within a year (or so) at another FHS meeting, that in the Fremont Library. At the bottom, the front page for the FHS web is added to help with your perhaps first search into Fremont history: finding and contacting the society.
UNDER THE BRIDGE, JUNE 15, 1917 QUIZ. Which end?
* CORRECTION: The caption to the topmost photo – the primary one for the feature – incorrectly described it as looking northwest. Actually, it looks northeast or to make a finer point of it, east-northeast. Although I knew the correct direction I wrote it wrong and the regrettable truth is that I am too often using left for right and north for south and so on and on. It might be that in this week’s blog, through its many pictures with directions, I have done this stupidly more than once. My editor at the Times has complained to me more than once about this. However, one direction I always get correct is up and down, and for that exception I am proud. When readers correct my either dyslexic or careless/spaced-out mistakes they sometimes do it with such cosmological concern that it would seem for them that the world would sit askew until my directional malaise is twisted back to health. And now once more, and something like Atlas, I have leveraged the world back it its original pose with the north pole pointing to heaven and Wallingford, where I live, northeast of Fremont and much else.
![[Courtesy, MOHAI]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/1-houseboats-stranded-1914-dam-break-lk-union-web.jpg?ssl=1)
![Improvement on the Fremont Dam ca. 1903, looking east to the "Wallingford Peninsula" where the gas works were implanted in 1907. Note the view of the dam directly below from 1907. The gas works can be found along the north shore of Lake Union. [Courtesy, Army Corps]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/5-1903-fremont-dam-ca03-then-web.jpg?ssl=1)
![A record of the spillway from the Queen Anne side, with lines drawn indicating the expected level of the canal once the locks are closed and the canal is flooded. [Courtesy, Army Corps]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xx-1914-dec-11-fremont-spillway-op-side-1914-web.jpg?ssl=1)
![January 10, 1917 [Courtesy, Army Corps]](https://i0.wp.com/pauldorpat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xx-1917-jan-10-fremont-bridge-1-10-1917-lk-se-f-fremont-web.jpg?ssl=1)
