| WRITTEN BY PAUL DORPAT |
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Putting Up a Good Front
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| COURTESY MUSEUM OF HISTORY & INDUSTRY |
| For most of the 106 years that separate these views, an entirely different chain of structures filled the west side of First Avenue between Cherry and Columbia streets. They were razed for the tree-shrouded parking garage shown here. |
ALTHOUGH PARADES of many sorts were commonplace in the pioneer city, this one — with all the bunting and flags — is surely an Independence Day Parade. Just to this side of the only open sidewalk awning is the Lace House, a woman's apparel shop with fancy work that opened in February of 1888. So this can only be July 4, 1888, for in another 11 months and two days everything here was consumed by the "Great Fire" of June 6, 1889.
The photographer looks north from the southeast corner of Cherry Street and Front Street (First Avenue). Front Street was named for a setting that is now long lost. When platted in 1853, First Avenue was the most westerly of the avenues, and on a windy day at high tide a pedestrian on its west side might be splattered. Now the waterfront has moved far to the west.
The fancy structures on the left are part of Seattle's two unbroken blocks of pioneer splendor between Yesler Way and Columbia Street — its touch of San Francisco elegance. The corner structure at Columbia Street, right of center, with the grandest decorations was the Toklas and Singerman Department Store, built in 1887. Some hoped that the Great Fire might be stopped by its sturdy brick façade. But the flames were barely stalled before they burst the windows, chewed the mortar and razed all but the sturdiest of walls beyond it — like the bank façade on the far left, which was left standing although the building was gutted like all the others.
Paul Dorpat's and Genevieve McCoy's award-winning illustrated Washington state history, "Building Washington," is available for $50 from Tartu Publications, P.O. Box 85208, Seattle, WA.
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