Here Max R.
Jensen captures a fire boat demonstration on Puget Sound. Since the caption mentions Seattle’s “newest” office structure being The Washington Building, that puts this photo in the early 1960′s. Not only is Max R.
Jensen known for
capturing The Washington Building on film — he also helped build it as an iron worker! Click for the high res.
Fire boat demonstration on Puget Sound. These are part of the Seattle Fire Department’s fire-fighting equipment protecting the waterfront.
The impressive white building in the background is Seattle’s newest office structure — The Washington Building — which also houses the new Post Office.
Color photo by Max R. Jensen.
That picture was obviously taken before the “gentrification” of the waterfront. That’s how the piers looked in the old days. And what is that thing sticking up above the fireboat’s bridge that looks like a skinny Eiffel Tower?
It looks as though that tower is sitting on the north edge of the roof of the Arcade/Rhodes building, opposite the water tower.
Water tower! (x4)
The Washington Building is now called Puget Sound Plaza, in case anyone is looking for it now.
That’s the fireboat “Duwamish”, when it was repowered with diesel engines (from steam), the pump capacity was increased to 22,500 gallons per minute (most fire engines pump about 1500 gpm). It was the highest capacity fire boat on the west coast.
I’m wondering if the “mini Eiffel Tower” was possibly some kind of radio transmission tower…for the police maybe?
The tower shown is atop the Rhodes building and is actually one of two, the second being on another building a few blocks away (can’t recall the name of this building). The antenna was used for an AM radio station that was located in the Rhodes store itself.
It was common practice in the early days of radio for advertisers to operate their own stations, and this was originally one of these stations. (This is how Fisher Flour got into the radio/TV business, but that’s another story…)
Here is a link to an article that talks about the Rhodes store and provides a little information on this radio station:
http://www.pstos.org/instruments/wa/seattle/rhodes.htm
Cool! Thanks for the info, Michael.