Here’s a fine photo of Seattle at Third & Cherry — still in its infancy and long before I-5.
Notice the many examples of grading work still in progress.
Is it strange to daydream about the chance to walk around these streets just for a day
? Click on the thumbnail for the super high res copy.
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| Third and Cherry Streets, Seattle, date unknown. Photo taken from above shows a brick building in foreground labeled “Seattle Theatre.” There is also a large Bull Durham advertisement painted on the building and a “Seattle Theatre” sign across the street. There are many other buildings, including one resembling a mosque. Image courtesy Washington State Digital Archives. |
If you look at the hi-res, the “mosque” has a cross at the top pf the center dome. Looks more like greek or russian orthodox?
Is the “mosque” being referred to the sturcture at the top of the hill left with the dome? That is St James Catheral before the dome collapsed.
As for dating the picture, from left to right we can see the spire of the First Baptist Church on First Hill (built 1912), the Sorrento Hotel (built 1909), St. James Cathedral (built 1907, dome collapsed in 1916), and the spire of Trinity Episcopal Church (built 1902) next to James St.
Using those markers appears to place the picture sometime between 1912 (First Baptist built) and 1916 (St. James dome collapse).
Yes, the “mosque” is St. James Cathedral.
I agree, Bryan. Nice work. I like those octagonal signs that hung off the sides of buildings, that seemed to be so popular. I see one in the lower right portion of the photo.
Love those crazy Victorian houses in the center of the photo too…a lot of detail went into everything.
The Seattle Theatre (1892) in the very foreground would be replaced by the Arctic Building in 1916.
Also, “The Oakland Hotel” (the overexposed building on the left) is now part of the base of the Rainier Tower (or Columbia Tower).
So what building was this picture likely taken from? Would it be the Alaska Building (Seattle’s first “skyscrapper” built in 1904) if the Seattle Theatre was replaced by the Artic Building?
No the Alaska would be off to the right, south of Cherry. If Cherry is the street going up the right side, this is from the Dexter Horton, no?
…or, what was that building that preceded the DH there at the northeast corner of Second and Cherry. The “New York Block” I think?
Dexter Horton was my first thought as well, but it was not built unitl 1921 – 1924 — after the St. James dome collapse in 1916.
My other thought was the Artic Building itself while under construction (finished in 1917).
the roof-line that appears just before the Seattle Theater is the Seattle Block which was located just east of the New York Block.
The tall brick building on the right is that of the Seattle Athletic Club (not sure of construction date but it’s no later than 1905). The St. Elmo Hotel is in front.
That entire block was replaced by the Public Safety Building in 1949.
That doesn’t help a bit but I just wanted to share.
The large building on the upper left was The Columbus Sanitarium (now demolished). The Sorrento Hotel (1908) appears to not have been built yet as it was located a little NW of that building.
I wonder where any people or vehicles were when this was taken? The streets are empty. It looks like late afternoon from the shadows. Is the shadow on the Seattle Theater of the building from which this was taken?
I’m stickin’ with the New York Block for ground zero, especially after Colin’s additional info.
Most likely this was taken from the Hoge Building (1911) at 2nd and Cherry. The shadow cast by the photo platform shows a slim building with a rooftop elevator equipment structure on the left side. The Hoge Building fits that exactly.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/imlsmohai&CISOPTR=2063&CISOBOX=1&REC=16 clearly shows the Seattle Theater on 3rd Street, and the building behind it, exactly matching our photo here. Also note that there is the edge of a building visible between the Seattle Theater and our photo platform; this is on the block between 2nd and 3rd. That was the New York Building, now site of the DH building.
That would make the photo title somewhat misleading, since the most clearly visible intersection (just beyond the Seattle Theater sign) is actually 4th and Cherry. Also there’s snow on the ground, making this afternoon on a winter day.
I can’t stop looking at this image. Jess, this is really a great post, thanks.
One other clue to the year might be the big bare-earth spot at the upper left, between 5th and 6th and Columbia and Marion. This was where the Rainier Hotel (1893) stood until (I think) 1910. I don’t know how long that block stood razed and waiting, nor what building immediately followed the hotel — the Bank o’ Cal is there now — but if we knew what that next building was, and the year it was built, it may (or may not) pinpoint it. I would risk a guess that this photo is 1911, but if the next building on the Rainier Hotel site wasn’t built until 1915, for example, then this won’t help that much. Still, this photo is full of information…surely there’s more.
Oh, and I think the Sorrento was built at this time, it’s just not in the picture, it’s one block off to the left.
There’s a great shot of the two buildings on Fourth between Cherry and Columbia at the King County Snapshots database, here:
http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm-desmo/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/warner&CISOPTR=272&CISOBOX=1&REC=1
No date given there, but obviously it’s after the street-lowering that we’re getting hereabove.
When you blow up the photo, in the lower right it looks like lightly dusting of snow. Given the angle of day light, the lack of leaves on the tree… it appears as if it was shot the morning or day after a light snowfall…
I think it was pretty clearly taken in the afternoon since the picture is looking east and the shadow of the building it was taken from is casting that way pretty far. It does look like winter with a dusting of snow on the sidewalk in the right corner of the picture, but looks like that was left in the shadows of the buildings just to the south since the sun would be in the south during winter.
It had struck me as odd that there are no people or vehicles in the picture though. It it was a winter afternoon, then this would have been taken probably sometime between 2 – 5pm presumably when the sun would still be up.
There is one blurry person crossing Fourth at Cherry, or maybe that’s the ghost of someone who got run over there.
There are some significantly less blurry people at Sixth and Columbia and a few more straggling along the sidewalk halfway between Fifth and Sixth on Cherry. Place is bustlin’.
So we’ve got a shadow of the building the photo was taken from, and also it appears from the building to the south. Does that help anyone determine where they were taken from?
I agree that looks like snow, so why are all the windows open in the building in the foreground? It appears to be the only one with open windows. That’s one heck of an overactive boiler!!!
Perhaps we’re seeing dust from the regrading and it’s not a frosty/snowing day?
I do think it’s winter but I don’t know about the snow. You’d think there would be more evidence of it on the rooftops…
At this time Photographs didnt show things in “Motion” very well, I remember seeing the first Picture ever taken (1830′s) anyhow the street was busy with folks and buggys etc according to the author, yet all we see is a guy getting his shoes shined because he was the only one who stood still long enough to get photographed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boulevard_du_Temple_by_Daguerre.jpg
I suspect there are a lot more folks about then we realize in this photo!
Here’s another photo taken from the Hoge Building. link
The building in the extreme lower left is the same three-story building as in the extreme lower right of our subject photo here. In fact the shadow on the seven-story building on the extreme left is positioned almost identically to the one on our picture here.
The photographer’s mark in the lower left of both pictures is almost identical. I suspect that both photos were taken by the same person from the same spot on the Hoge building on the same date.
Dan. What you say makes sense, Hoge-wise. Shooting east from the Hoge would put you right over the tops of the New York Block and Seattle Block, as we see above, although the photographer must have changed lenses because the focal length on ours is different. Another plus, the Hoge went up around 1914, didn’t it? Which would mean it would be there in time to support a photographer within our latest-date limit of 1916.
I dunno, though. I still like the New York Bldg for this shot. Gut feeling.
I sent the following monster comment to Jess privately so as not to overburden the board here, but he told me you knuckleheads would be all over it and that he thought I should post it here. So…
P.S., it seems like we should have an investigative committee with a special name that can go out and stomp around in the BE (built env.) when a question like this comes up. We’d have printed cards. And bowler hats.
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Hey Jess,
I wanted to enthuse some more about the Cherry Street post, but I didn’t want to continue making a fool of myself in the comments.
Here’s what was digging at me: Colin mentioned that the “overexposed” Oakland Hotel was now part of the Columbia Tower (Bank of America, whatever), and yet I kept thinking that, in an immediate way, it didn’t make sense visually that this Oakland building would be on the east side of the street. I couldn’t make it work with my eyes in the photo you posted. It seemed to me that Fourth Avenue was passing between the Oakland and the fancy Victorian mansion just beyond. If Colin was right, it meant
Fourth was passing between the Oakland and the house just in front of it toward the camera. The shadows there seemed too immediate to accommodate the space Fourth Avenue would take.
Then when I found the other photo of that Victorian mansion (the photo I mentioned having found at King County Snapshots -
http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm-desmo/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/warner
&CISOPTR=272&CISOBOX=1&REC=1)
I was even more sure that I was right, because it showed the mansion on that corner. However, a little googling quickly shows that the Oakland is indeed still on that corner to this very day, just as Colin said. But then why wasn’t the Oakland visible in that shot I found? It was clearly already there when they were tearing up the street in your photo, and (I assumed) the King County Snapshots photo was taken after that regrade work.
The only way I could make any sense of what I was seeing in your post was if the two buildings — the Victorian mansion and the Oakland Hotel — occupied the same corner in your photo, which of course was impossible. Looking closely, though, I began to wonder if maybe it WAS possible. I grabbed my coat and headed up there an hour or so ago. (It’s amazing how those old photos don’t capture how steep these streets are.) I found the Oakland, sure enough, on the corner of Fourth and Columbia. I didnt’ know exactly what I was doing, but I thought there would be an answer somewhere. I found my way into the interior of the Oakland via the interior of the Columbia Tower, and encountered a friendly
woman at the reception desk of the famous ARUP engineering firm in Suite 200. I asked if she knew anything about the history of the building we were standing in. She didn’t, and said she wished she did, but told me there were some old photos up the stairwell inside the building. (I told here about your website.)
I was SO GLAD I asked.
In the stairwell was exactly what I was looking for, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Several old photographs that are missing from online collections (at least that I’ve found) showed that the Oakland (which is not very “deep” in its extent eastward from its facade), was built almost directly underneath the Victorian house in the space that was scraped out of its front yard during the regrade. My assumption about the King County Snapshots photo had been wrong — it was taken BEFORE the regrade (and when you look at it it makes sense, there’s an upward hump in the street coming from the Rainier Club that is not there after the regrade), which explains why the Oakland was not yet there, yet was plainly visible in your photo.
All this doesn’t get us any closer to a date for your photo, but it sure was exciting. There’s more. I pestered the Security person, Craig, at the Fifth Avenue entrance, who told me that the owners of the Oakland had already renovated it and put the funky extra floors on top of it before Martin Selig raised his Columbia Tower on that block. Of course Selig had tried to buy it (to knock it down), but the little owner held out, thereby preserving a little piece of Seattle History for us (thanks whoever you are), until after the Columbia Tower was built. After that, they sold it to Selig, who by this time no longer had any reason to tear it down. He took out part of the Oakland’s back wall to allow access from inside the Tower and changed its name to Columbia House. It now houses Arup, Logic 20/20, and TrueBenefit.
Anyway, your post has provided me two days of fun sleuthing. You asked if it is strange to wish for just a day to walk among these streets in times past. I think there are more of us who share your daydream than you know. I walk around all the time imagining how these streets used to look.
Thanks again for your work.
Matt
Hoge Building was 1911… I do think it might have been a frosty mid morning… Where sunlight hit, the frost had melted. Perhaps Armistice, or Christmas or New years morning? Everyone in Church or at friends… and the lack of trolley and taxi?
From: http://www.nps.gov/history/nR/travel/seattle/s24.htm
An interesting sidebar to the construction itself was the competition between Hoge and fellow financier L. C. Smith to own Seattle’s tallest building. Smith was simultaneously erecting a tower he would also name after himself, and although the two friendly adversaries had agreed that 14 floors would fulfill their business needs, the Smith Tower’s original plan called for 18 stories. The Hoge Building also had 18 stories, but its elevated site and the extra height of each floor allowed it to temporarily become Seattle’s tallest building. Smith, however, permanently regained the title by adding a 24-story tower to his building, a physical feature the Hoge building could not structurally support
I still contend that the Sorrento Hotel is clearly in this picture on the upper left portion of the picture between the First Baptist church spire on the far left and St. James further to the right. The position is clearly one block north of Marion (north side of St. James) which would put it on Madison at the correct location.
The “watermarks” on the picture that Dan linked looking at the old King County Courthouse to the SE and on the subject picture in this post do match pretty closely (both in the lower left corners).
Dan’s linked picture indicates circa 1908, but I think that is too early to be contemporary with the subject pictures because 1.) the Sorrento Hotel was not completed until 1909 just in time for the AYPE, and 2.) the First Baptist Church on first hill was not completed until 1912.
That “ca. 1908″ is misleading. The Hoge wasn’t finished until 1911. The Seattle Theater building was demolished in 1915.
I can’t agree with you about the Sorrento Hotel being in this shot, Bryan. I think it’s just barely out of frame to the left. The four story brick building (just to the right and slightly below the First Baptist spire) is at 9th and Marion. Sorrento is still another block north. I do agree with the 1912-1915 timeframe.
The Not-the-Sorrento building is the Perry Hotel, more recently the Columbus Sanitorium/Cabrini hospital as noted by someone above. It was on Madison, but on the south side (SW corner Madison and Boren). The Sorrento is a block nearer (NE corner Madison and Terry), but being on the north side of Madison it just misses being included here. Furthermore, you can clearly see the large building that shared the block with the Perry and partially obscures it. This building is visible in aerial data from 1936 and 1968.
I’ve placed a copy of this at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seattle_-_looking_up_Cherry_Street_circa_1911.jpg, incorporating the identifications given here and some other remarks of my own. If anyone wants to add further appropriate annotations there, they’d be welcome.
Thanks so much for this post and the interesting comments. I love the detail. Amazing. It would be interesting to know what kind of equipment the photographer used.
congrats on having a successfull amazing lookin blog.. I wish I could write like you man.. seriously