THEN: Following the city’s Great Fire of 1889, a trestle was built on University Street, between Front Street (First Avenue) and Railroad Avenue (Alaskan Way). By the time Lawton Gowey photographed what remained of the timber trestle in 1982, it had been shortened and would soon be razed for the Harbor Steps seen in Jean Sherrard’s repeat. (Courtesy Lawton Gowey)NOW: The Harbor Steps, which now join the city to its waterfront via University Street, is perhaps our best example of what might be once the Alaskan Way Viaduct is removed.
I imagine that many Pacific readers will recognize Lawton Gowey’s not so old “then.” Without comparing Jean Sherrard’s repeat, they may remember the location of this stubby trestle from the times they chose Western Avenue to escape the congestion of other downtown avenues. That was a handy avoidance strategy, which had begun already in the 1890s when Western was planked, supported then on its own offshore trestle.
A detail from the 1908 Baist Real Estate Map, showing the two blocks on University Street where the viaduct for wagons built after the Great Fire of 1889 reaches Railroad Avenue from First Avenue.
Here at University Street a timbered ramp that crossed above Western between Front Street (First Avenue) and Railroad Avenue (Alaskan Way) was built soon after the Great Fire of 1889. Plans to rebuild it in steel were never fulfilled, and so all its many repairs kept to wood. Gowey had studied the history of this bridge and many others Seattle subjects. He kept track of the changes in our cityscape. He was not a typical urban photographer; his interests were not so picturesque. These interests, I believe, explain this photo of the somewhat dilapidated trestle on University Street, and the scar where it had been cut short years earlier. Late in the 1930s the city’s engineers recommended removing the ramp’s center pier over Western Ave. That claim stopped all traffic on the ramp; only pedestrians could still reach Western Avenue by the stairway shown.
A clip from The Seattle Times on May 11, 1938.A mid-20’s aerial that is “bordered” by two viaducts, the one between the Pike Place Market and the Pike Street Pier, on the left, and, on the right, two blocks south on the right, the here still standing timber trestle between First Ave. and the Waterfront on University Street.. CLICK TO ENLARGE
I met Lawton Gowey early in 1982, the year he took this photo. By then Lawton was recognized as a local authority on the history of public transportation, and I went to him for help. He honed his interest in the 1930s, when he explored Seattle with his father and the family camera. Later, working downtown as accountant for the Seattle Water Department, he had ready access to many of the city’s archives. With his camera he continued to explore. Some of his
In his Tempus Puget for Nov. 4, 1960, Time’s columnist Lenny Anderson makes note of Lawton Gowey’s contribution to a book on the Seattle-Tacoma Interurban.The Seattle Times report on Lawton Gowey and Ted Carlson’s lecture on Seattle’s streetcar history. November, 27, 1982The SeaFirst tower seen over the wrecked of the Stevens Hotel, in the forground, and the Burke Building, still half-standing on the right, for the construction of the Federal Office Bldg (Named for Henry Jackson) in the 1970s. The Empire Building, with the Olympic National Life sign on the roof, later gave Seattle its first implosion spectacle.
subjects, such as the construction of the SeaFirst Building in the late 1960s, he tracked from his office in the City Light Building and other prospects as well. He used his lunch hours to explore and record changes in the Central Business District and on the waterfront. His collection includes the many shots he took over time and in all directions from the Smith Tower observatory. We’ll insert here two looks up a freezing Third Avenue photographed by Lawton from the Seattle City Light (and water) Building on the west side of 3rd between Madison and Spring Streets.
The fine snow of December 31, 1968. I remember it – a walk with about four others from the Helix Office north across the snowbound University Bridge to one or another coffee shop in the University District. I had an uncanny talent that day for hitting sekeced targets with my snowballs. Honest.A lighter snow (that I do not remember) about a month later on January 27, 1969, again from the City Light Building.
Lawton Gowey died of a heart attack in the spring of 1983 at the mere age of sixty-one. In the little time Lawton and I had to nurture our friendship, we shared many interests, including repeat photography, London history, and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This last fondness was also fortunate for both Bach and the members of Bethany Presbyterian Church. Beginning in 1954 Lawton, was both organist and choir director for that Queen Anne Hill singing congregation.
Lawton Gowey’s 1968 pan of the city from Beacon Hill. The SeaFirst building is approaching its topping-off. It is barely a year since the full-freeway’s dedication. Correction. Not quite full. Note the ramp to nowhere at the bottom. It would remain so for comedic years to come.Lawton Gowey captures the Virginia V and the Goodtime II, nearby, on Nov. 17, 1982.Lawton, on the right, with camera and joined by a friend below the Pike Street Hill Climb, and the then newly opened Waterfront Trolley, which was later mysteriously sent on vacation for, in part (or I believe) the needs of SAM’s sculpture garden at the foot of Broad Street, home then for the trolley’s parking and maintenance garage.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? Yessir. Ron has put up four former features. Startlingly, or predictable for those who remember the week past, the first if last week’s feature, which was also on University Street and near the waterfront. The other three edge-links stay near the neighborhood, and predictably, as is our way, some of the images will appear again and again but in different sets or contexts. This week’s fairly recent (from 1982) photograph is another by Lawton Gowey, and I’ll introduce a portrait or two of Lawton and a clip or two too. Contrarily, I may take some of them and insert it in the above – the main or featured text. Next week we return to another touchstone – Pioneer Square.
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Harbor Steps construction, April 1994. Here I used my architectural “correction” lens, which I later sent off to Berangere in Paris, where by now buildings require little correction. The photo below was photographed on the same spring day at the one above.
Sometime later (I’ve lost the date) with young Italian Cypresses (I believe) potted beside the Step’s fountain.. . . and later still. The Cypresses have grown and the sculpted symbol for Pi, has arrived. For trees and art this undated record may be compared to Jean’s near the top.
THEN: Looking west from First Avenue down the University Street viaduct to the waterfront, ca. 1905. Post Office teams and their drivers pose beside the Arlington Hotel, which was then also headquarters for mail delivery in Seattle. (Courtesy, Gary Gaffner)NOW: Jean notes, “The Lin family, visiting Seattle on a near-Spring day, takes in two views from the Harbor steps – one looking over my shoulder at the Seattle Art Museum and the other of a cherry blossom-framed, if blustery, Elliott Bay.”
Here we stand – about a century ago – with an unidentified photographer recording five U.S. Postal Service teams and their drivers. The year is about 1905, six years after the Post Office moved from its previous headquarters on Columbia Street here to the Arlington Hotel. Larger quarters were needed, in part for sorting mail.
The Arlington Hotel with tower, looking southwest through the intersection of First Ave. and University Street. Below: the hotel sans tower from a postcard.
On the left (of the top photo) is the hotel’s north façade extending west from the corner of University Street and First Avenue. Above the sidewalk on First, the hotel reached four ornate brick stories high with a distinguished conical tower at the corner, not seen here. To the rear there were three more stories reaching about forty feet down to Post Alley. First named the Gilmore Block, after its owner David Gilmore, for most of its eighty-four years this sturdy red brick pile was called the Arlington, but wound up as the Bay Building, and it was as the Bay that it was razed in 1974.
Frank Shaw’s record of work-in-progress on the razing of the Bay Building. The subject looks east from the viaduct on University Street to the Diller Hotel on the southeast corner of First and University.The caption that came with this look west on the trestle dates it Sept.8, 1946. It was photographed from a prospect near that used by the “more historical” photographer who recorded the subject at the top.Frank Shaw dated this August 18, 1973, which should be a sufficient clue for some curious reader to figure out what movie is being shot here. It is a quiz. Answer correctly and win the glory, or satisfaction if you prefer, of being right.
By beginning the construction of his hotel before the city’s Great Fire of June 6, 1889, Gilman performed a considerable, if unwitting, service. The south foundation of the structure was formidable enough to stop the fire from reaching University Street. Off shore, a chain of volunteer fire fighters, passing buckets of water pulled from Elliot Bay, stopped the fire’s northerly advance as well along the off-shore quays and trestles built of pilings for warehouses and railroad tracks.
A sidewalk view revealing the savior-wall at the base of the south facade following the June 6, 1889 “Great Fire” that consumed most of the Seattle waterfront – to the tides – and over 30 city blocks. The view looks south-southwest. The north facade of the ruined cracker factor at Seneca is seen in part at the top-left corner.
Free mail delivery started in Seattle on September 11, 1887, with four carriers. Remembering that booming Seattle’s population increased in a mere thirty years from 3,533 in 1880 to the 237,194 counted by the federal census in 1910, we may imagine that this quintet of carriers and their teams were a very small minority of what was needed to deliver the mail in 1905. Behind the posing carriers, University Street descends on a timber trestle above both Post Alley and Western Avenue to Railroad Avenue (Alaska Way). Most likely some of the mail was rolled along the trestle both to and from “Mosquito Fleet” steamers for waterways distribution.
[Click to ENLARGE] The swath of destruction along the waterfront seen from the northwest corner of Front Street (First Ave.) and Union Street. The rebuilding has obviously begun, and while the business district and waterfront are building, several business have temporarily taken to elaborate tents. The Gilmore/Arlington at First and University appears here at the panorama’s center where the hotel’s construction has laid a floor on its foundation. (Courtesy, Lawton Gowey)
After the post office moved three blocks to the new Federal Building at Third Avenue and Union Street in 1908, First Avenue between University and Seneca Streets continued as a block of hospitality with seven hotels.
WEB EXTRAS
Anything to add, Paul? A few variations from the neighborhood, Jean, beginning with a look south on First Avenue through University Street.
Another Gowey contribution. Lawton dated this slide May 23, 1969.
FIRST AVENUE SOUTH THRU UNIVERSITY STREET
Lawton Gowey dated this Oct. 25, 1974.
By April 19, 1976, Lawton’s date for his slide, the block is gone.
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Either Horace Sykes or Robert Bradley (they were friends in the Seattle Camera Club) recorded this look east on University Way in 1953 when the viaduct was opened to the club before, of course, the traffic. Here in the shadows at the bottom we see that the viaduct has been cut off at the east side of Western Avenue.Lawton Gowey’s up-close portrait of the viaduct’s stub, again looking east across Western Avenue, this time in 1982.
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WHERE THE UNIVERSITY STREET RAMP REACHED RAILROAD AVENUE
Looking west down the University Street ramp or viaduct in ca. 1900 towards ship impounded for and moving supplies for the Spanish American War. On the far right the Sung Harbor Saloon appears again, this time from behind. (Courtesy, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections.)
[NOTE: The NOW describe directly above has not been found, or rather a good print or the negative for it stays hidden.]
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WESTERN AVENUE LOOKING SOUTH FROM THE UNIVERSITY STREET VIADUCT
Another A. Curtis record, this one looking south on Western Avenue from the University Street ramp. The south end of the rank of hotels that crowd the west side of First Avenue between University and Seneca Streets rise above the narrow block of warehouse and manufacturing sheds that fill the block between Western and Post Alley (aka Post Avenue.)
Recorded from a back window of the Arlington Hotel, the subject looks northwest across the University Street viaduct to the industry to either side of Western Avenue and Railroad Avenue, circa 1899. The Schwabacher Dock, far left, faces Railroad Avenue. Next to it is an earlier version of the Pike Street Wharf, soon to be replace by what we still have as the city’s aquarium.
[ANOTHER NOTE: The “Contemporary photo noted in the paragraph directly above may have joined the other “now” subject missing above it. ]
The hole as Frank Shaw recorded it on March 11, 1975 and as many of us still remember it. Here the SeaFirst Tower still holds the majesty it grabbed with its topping-off in 1968.March 11, 1975, Frank ShawLandscaping, Nov. 21, 1975 (Frank Shaw)Terracing the hole, also Nov. 21, 1975 by Frank Shaw.October 25, 1974. Standing now almost in memoriam, the skin like a skull and the wits within nearly removed. “Thine are these orbs of light and shade; / Thou madest Life in man and brute; / Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot / is on the skull which thou hast made.” Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (Lawton Gowey)Less than three years later, a sampling of Friends of the Rag head south on First Ave., with the landmark Myres Music at 1216 and across First Ave. from “the hole,” during the Fat Tuesday Parade on Feb. 18, 1978. (Frank Shaw)
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Here – if Ron Edge reads his mail on awakening Sunday Morning – we may find a link for the story feature we published here on the Buzby’s Waterfront Mill, which was nearby at the foot of Seneca Street. After the story of Buzby and his pioneer flour, we follow Jean and his students off to Snoqualmie Falls for another now-then. After a few more digressions, the linked feature returns to the “hole,” above, for more of Frank Shaw’s photos of it. This may all transpire soon for Ron arises about the time I join the other bears here for another long winter’s sleep.
