Not long ago, John Chilson (author of one of my favorite blogs
Stumptown Confidential) sent along a couple goodies he had hiding out in his garage. Among them was a pamphlet titled “Seattle The Nation’s Most Beautiful City,” designed to hype up the city in advance of the ’62 World’s Fair. It starts out: “A well known world traveler once said that Stockholm, Sweden, was the most beautiful city in Europe; Seattle, Washington, the most beautiful in America. Though controversial, this remark about Seattle, we believe, is true. Many ‘pretty’ cities have their particular points of attractiveness, but none has such a complete variety of natural beauty within its city limits.” Two things were clear to me.
One, the well known world traveler had obviously never been to Newark, NJ.
Two, this pamphlet had some beautiful circa 1961 aerial shots of the city. Let’s take a gander. Click on the images for larger views.
Thanks, John! We’ll continue this series in the future.
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Looking southward across Seattle toward Mt. Rainier. Lake Union is in the center.
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Seattle’s downtown area along Elliott Bay waterfront.
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A view of the University of Washington with Lake Washington’s Union Bay in the background, before the 520 bridge had been constructed.
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Seattle’s Capitol Hill district showing Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains in the background. Near the center of the picture is Volunteer Park with its reservoir and Seattle Art Museum.
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very nice!
Great headline: Nation’s Most Beautiful City. And yet they show a picture of Seattle sprawl. Beautiful, indeed!
The viaduct is packed in the second shot.
I have been Newark and usually I can’t tell the difference between that and Staten Island.
wow, can’t wait to see the rest of that pamphlet! Maybe the viaduct just needs a good ol’ fashoined cleaning?
Since I used to live in NJ, I’m allowed to make fun of it.
Cliffe
When I was a schoolgirl, there was a big push to make Seattle the most beautiful city. There was a song we were taught in school about cleaning up litter. It had the tune of Glow Worm.
Glow little glitterbug, glitter, glitter!
Pick up all your litter, litter.
Ask your mother, father, neighbors
to help you with all your labors.
Make our city glisten, glisten,
Tell the world to listen, listen;
Seattle is the place to go,
Glow little glitterbug glow!