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    Vanishing Seattle
    Vanishing Seattle
    Vanishing Seattle
    Ebook204 pages55 minutes

    Vanishing Seattle

    By Clark Humphrey

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Though Seattle is still a young city, growing and changing, much of its short past is already lost-but not forgotten. Generations of Seattleites have fond memories of restaurants, local television shows, stores, and other landmarks that evoke a less sophisticated, more informal city. This new book explores Seattle at a time when timber and fish were more lucrative than airplanes and computers, when the city was a place of kitschy architecture and homespun humor and was full of boundless hope for a brighter future. These rare and vintage images hearken back to the marvels of the 1962 World's Fair, shopping trips to Frederick & Nelson and I. Magnin, dinners at Rosellini's, dancing at the Trianon Ballroom, traveling on the ferry Kalakala, rooting for baseball's Rainiers, and local personalities including Stan Boreson, J. P. Patches, and Wunda Wunda.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439634356
    Vanishing Seattle
    Author

    Clark Humphrey

    Author Clark Humphrey is the editor of the Belltown Messenger, a book reviewer for the Seattle Times, a former staff writer with The Stranger and The Comics Journal, and an acknowledged local expert on retro Seattle. Within these pages, he showcases more than 200 images of vanishing Seattle icons gathered from such institutions as the Museum of History and Industry, the University of Washington, and the Seattle Municipal Archives, as well as from various private individuals including the collection of Mary Randlett and the author's own collection.

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    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      This is a thoroughly enjoyable "picture book" recounting the physical history of Seattle through evocative black-and-white photographs. My biggest complaint is that few of the photos are dated, making it difficult to know (particularly with some of the downtown streetscapes) when a particular picture was taken. This type of information is critical to the value of any sort of historical text, and the omission is a serious oversight in Vanishing Seattle. That one complaint aside, this is an entertaining, if brief, visit to Seattle's recent past that manages to capture some of the flavor of what once was.

    Book preview

    Vanishing Seattle - Clark Humphrey

    today.

    INTRODUCTION

    Chief Sealth, for whom the city of Seattle is named, allegedly said in 1854, These shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children shall think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway or in the silence of the woods they will not be alone ... At night, when the streets of your cities and villages shall be silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land.

    Another wise sage, comedian John Keister, said in 2000, A city loses its soul one building at a time. Every neighborhood had its own unique gas station or retail core, like that row of businesses north of Green Lake that was knocked down for another condo with a bagel shop. Longacres, Abruzzi’s Pizza; they go one by one until you say, ‘Where did the city go?’ It’s pretty much gone.

    Northwest America’s premier city is only 155 years old. But what little history it has accumulated gets tossed aside too often in favor of something newer, bigger, more opulent.

    This place has gone through so many changes, ever since the first white settlers came and the original residents were moved out. The trees of First Hill were cut and skidded down Yesler Way, on the original skid road. The great Seattle fire of 1889 destroyed most of the original pioneer settlement; a new downtown of bricks and steel arose in its place. Entire hills were sluiced and bulldozed during the Denny Regrade, and the dirt was used to fill in tide flats and build Harbor Island. Prohibition came and went. The Japanese-American community was forced into relocation camps during World War II. Boeing aircraft became Seattle’s chief export product. The economy repeatedly boomed and busted. Suburban sprawl hit the outlying areas and took many working-class families away from the city. Advocates for race and gender equality demanded to be heard. High-rise office towers arose, followed by high-rise condominiums. Major league sports teams showed up. A growing professional class patronized foodie restaurants and chic boutiques. Software companies and dot-coms rose and, in some cases, fell. Postmodern showpiece architecture replaced efficient modern architecture. Dale Chihuly’s glass bowls became Seattle’s most recognized art exports, succeeding the modernistic mysticism of Mark Tobey and Morris Graves. Real estate hyperinflation helped obliterate the remaining vestiges of the city’s more downscale past.

    This book mostly depicts aspects of Seattle’s public life that (1) were prominent during the second half of the 20th century and (2) aren’t here anymore, at least not in the ways they used to be. Some of your personal favorites might not be here; that’s just the nature of such a project as this.

    These aren’t just memories. They aren’t even just fond baby-boomer memories. These are ghosts, apparitions of the city that was, America’s own shining City on Seven Hills, a place of informality yet of taste and class, of hard work combined with hope for a brighter future.

    This is a scrapbook of dreams that were lost but could return if we really wanted them.

    Shoppers and business people traverse Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle on a random morning in 1968. The view includes the Bon Marché, Bartell Drugs, a Societé candy truck, the Ben Paris restaurant, the Colonial Theater, a Manning’s coffee shop, and neon billboards for the Great Northern railway and Pan Am airlines. (Mary Randlett collection.)

    One

    STORES

    Our own remembrance of lost time starts not with a cookie but with a shopping bag. The marketplace is the classic urban gathering place. Seattle’s marketplaces have changed constantly, whether to meet changing consumer demands or to accommodate corporate consolidations.

    In 1964, there were six department stores downtown, none of which was Nordstrom. Today there are two department stores downtown, of which Nordstrom is the surviving grand old lady.

    Two dozen old mom-and-pop grocery stores could fit into each of today’s largest QFC or Larry’s supermarkets. Corner drugstores and hardware stores gave way to big-box behemoths. Even bookstores became huge.

    Recreational Equipment Inc., founded as a means for serious sportsmen to obtain serious mountaineering tools, is now a deluxe outdoor-recreation superstore complete with its own climbing wall and mountain-bike track.

    Delightful kitsch-decor boutiques and antique shops have fallen to high rents. Dingy, sleazy adult novelty stores have given way to female-friendly lovers’ toy stores.

    Even the Pike Place Market, administered under the official control of a Preservation and Development Authority, has changed. Originally devised to cut prices by bringing farmers and shoppers together, it’s now advertised as a tourist attraction and a gourmet’s paradise.

    Some big name operations have come to town and left again, such as FAO Schwarz. Others, like Wal-Mart and Ikea furniture, influence Seattle’s retail economy from suburban outposts without setting foot inside the city limits.

    And established commercial pillars, admired by all and seemingly destined to live forever, have shriveled and died off, including Littler, John Doyle Bishop, and the store where our journey begins.

    Donald E. Frederick and Nels Nelson started a used furniture store on Second Avenue in 1890. It initially thrived in helping families furnish their postfire homes. Over the next quarter century, the store expanded into apparel, shoes, and food. Frederick, who took over after Nelson’s 1907 death, built the business on quality merchandise, understated good taste, and impeccable customer service. In 1918, Frederick undertook a bold move away from Second Avenue, then Seattle’s premier shopping street. He built a steel and terra-cotta shopping palace at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street, initially dubbed Frederick’s Folly by local wags who thought it a dumb idea. Instead, Frederick thrived at the new store, which became the anchor for Seattle’s new principal retail district. It is seen here following a 1951 expansion, which added five more floors. The new store had three restaurants—an elegant tea room, the distinguished Men’s Grill (for husbands who sought a respite from chattering females), and the Paul Bunyan Room (a coffee shop and soda fountain in the bargain

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