Today’s
Photo Exposure shot is an interesting one dating back to 1874.
It shows Second and Yesler as businesses started to sprout up in the city.
You can see a livery, lodging, laudry, dentist and so on. Click the thumbnail below for
the high res photo.
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| Photo shows unpaved street, smokestack, a bay, piles of firewood, and businesses, including “Livery & Harness,” “Wisconsin House, Meals & Lodging,” “Hop Sing Washing Ironing,” “J. S. Maggs Dentist,” and others. Mill Street 1874 in lower left “Seattle 134X W.&S.” in lower right “West from 2nd Ave & Yesler Way – Yesler’s mill in distance (stack) 1876.” Image courtesy Washington State Digital Archives. |
This is a good’n. I think that white structure on the right edge is the first Occidental Hotel, nez pah?
uh huh. and that brick building on the left is the first Coleman (a.k.a. Frauenthal) Building, which I though was built in 1876.
Looks like Seattle had its own Hop Sing.
The servile character of Hop Sing first appeared as a laundryman of the same name in 1876, in Bret Harte’s play Two Men of Sandy Bar. Folklorist Wolfgang Mieder cites his comically accented Pidgin English diction as the likely source for the proverbial ethnic slur, “No Tickee, no Washee”.
Hop Sing was the Cartwright family’s cook on the US television series Bonanza which ran on the NBC network from 1959-73. Victor Sen Yung played the Chinese immigrant.
Wow, RPH. A fax-inatin’ little bit of history, that. I didn’t even notice that sign, and would not have made those laundry connections if I had. I do remember the Ponderosa’s cook, though. Good cast in that show. I liked Candy. I thought it was cool that he could have a name like that and still be a wrangler.
But, Colin, I thought that James Colman didn’t arrive here until about 1872 — and that his namesake building wasn’t built until 1889. Plus, wasn’t it located Northward of Mill Street/Yesler Way — at Front & Columbia (which would place it to the right, not left, of the mill & smokestack)?