VintageSeattle.org

After enjoying your site for so long, I’m wondering if you can take a look at the attached photo that I think was taken in Seattle, and let me know what you think. If it were good enough to post on your site (solely at your discretion, of course), could some of those photo supersleuths who frequent your site possibly help identify if it’s a Seattle photo, and maybe even figure out where it was taken? They’re so good they’re almost scary sometimes!

From the store facade and signs, to the sidewalk styles, to the reflections of the other signs and buildings in the plate glass windows, do you think someone might have a clue what store and street we’re looking at if it’s a Seattle photo?

The lady in the photo is a relative who lived in both Seattle and Santa Cruz, CA during the 1940s, when it looks like this was taken. I think this is a Seattle photo because Santa Cruz may not have been big enough to have had any stores this large back then. But…?

Sue
Via E-mail
1/5/2010

Love the site, quite a resource. You’ve helped me Identify two pictures in my Fathers old army snapshots as the Lake Washington bridge circa 1954 (I assume he came thought seattle coming home from Japan).

I have two other I was hoping you might be able to Identify or provide more info on. One is of two sightseeing boats, the Wave and Harbor Tourist (only reason I knew these shots were from Seattle) The other is of an unknown intersection (I assume my Father was Impressed by the double deck highway). Thanks.

I wish there were more sites like yours there is a lot of history lying around in old shoe boxes that might easily be lost.

Tim Rosencrans
Via E-mail
12/24/2009

Two entrepreneurs from Nebraska, L.H. Griffith and E. Blewett, liked Seattle. It was 1888 - the Ladies Library Association was busy reviving the Seattle Public Library; Madame Lou Graham was busy herself, setting up an exclusive house of prostitution in downtown Seattle; Bothell’s first post office opened; the Queen City Cycling Club held Seattle’s first bicycle tournament; Robert Moran runs for mayor; and Griffith and Blewett, with a dentist named Dr. Kilbourne, platte a town on the northwest corner of Lake Union. They name the town Fremont for their old hometown in Nebraska.

At the outlet of a lake, it was a prime spot to bridge to Seattle proper. It would not be until June 15, 1917 when the current iteration, the Fremont Bridge, opened, but when it did it soon became one of the busiest bascule bridges in the entire world. It still is.

Some technical aspects - a bascule bridge operates like a seesaw by way of a balance. The bridge opens about 35 times a day. It had opened 500,000 times in September 1991. By 2006 it had opened 66,000 times more. It’s opening again as I write this. It’s 502 feet long. The two leaves that go up and down and up and down every day, is 3 million pounds and is tipped with 100 horsepower motors. The bridge clears the water by 30 feet. It has opened and closed more than any other Seattle drawbridge (there are four bascule bridges that span the Lake Washington Ship Canal - Ballard Bridge, Fremont Bridge, University Bridge, Montlake Bridge).

It was rails that first spanned the waters around Fremont. It’s what made Fremont flourish - a hive of lumber mills, shingle mills, an iron foundry - originally. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad cross the future Lake Washington Ship Canal (not completed in full until 1934) to Fremont in 1888 before following the north shore of Lake Union to Lake Washington (now the Burke-Gilman Trail). Real estate maven Guy Phinney’s street rail trolleys came to Fremont, too, taking passengers from Fremont up the hill to his privately owned Woodland Park. Griffin and Kilbourne’s trolleys ran to Green Lake. 1910 brought Stone & Webster’s Seattle-Everett Traction Company conecting Everett to Seattle proper via Fremont, crossing the channel. In 1914, Northern Pacific built a trestle to Fremont as well. These bridge ties made Fremont flourish but with the advent of automobile travel a full-use traffic bridge needed to be built as demand continued to grow; a bridge better than the rickety wooden bridge built in 1892, better than the Stone Way Bridge was the was built in 1911. The Fremont Bridge needed to be built.

It wasn’t that long ago when there were no cars in Seattle at all. It was on July 23, 1900, just 17 years previous, when Seattle saw it’s first car, a three-horsepower Wood Electric, owned by Ralph Hopkins. It had been only a decade since the world’s first gas service station opened on Holgate and Western in Seattle. Yes, a bridge needed to be built and so the building began. The bridge engineer was F.A. Rapp. The pier designer was D.R. Huntington. The counterweight pits and workings were (and are) housed in two concrete towered piers. It cost $410,000 to build. In 1982 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 1985 it was painted blue and orange, chosen by vote at a street fair and it’s opening again as I finish this essay.

Jonathan Shipley
12/20/2009

This scanned image is part of a box of about 60 slides that are owned by the Queen Anne Historical Society. No one on the Board seemed to know where in Seattle the photo was taken–it appears to be about 1905 (all conjecture) and it seems to be Queen Anne, but is it? When it couldn’t be identified I asked a Board member if it would be ok to pass it your blog, and he said ok.

There is a small church at the back left that appears to be unique, and because the streets do not match at the corners, this is probably along a plat edge, but I can’t get it to match any early Sanborn maps of Queen Anne.

Perhaps your readers can help.

Regards,
Bruce Jones