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 “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.

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

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

I dunno, though. I still like the New York Bldg for this shot. Gut feeling.

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.