Jean Sherrard | The Seattle Times

THEN: Behind the pergola, Henry Yesler’s hallmark Pioneer Building (left, 1890) and the stately flat-iron Seattle Hotel (1891) straddle Yesler Way. The stairway to the park’s luxurious lavatory is seen beneath the pergola at front, near First Avenue. Credit: Webster & Stevens / Paul Dorpat Collection

January 21, 2021 at 7:00 am

Underground convenience, sheltered from the storm

To meet a very specific demand for a rejuvenated Pioneer Square in the early 1900s, architect Julian Everett designed an elaborate underground lavatory that survived...

THEN: To accommodate fill dirt expected from the Jackson Street regrade, pre-existing structures like these hotels near the southeast corner of Sixth and Weller were lifted by their owners onto posts. After the regrade, the incline between Twelfth and Fifth avenues was reduced to less than 5% grade from the previous 15%. This photo was taken on May 20, 1908, halfway through the project. Credit: Lewis & Wiley / Courtesy Ron Edge

January 7, 2021 at 7:00 am

Sluicing away Jackson Street to unclog the city’s future arteries

Reginald Heber Thomson, Seattle's city engineer beginning in 1892, led an ambitious effort to literally dig the city out of a hole by attacking its...

THEN: The Ford Mine complex at Coal Creek churns at near peak production in 1922. The hand-colored photo was discovered near Green Lake in the Micheletti family home. Patriarch Joseph Micheletti, originally from Villa Carcina, Brescia in northern Italy, worked in the mines for years before his untimely death in 1937, possibly of mine-related lung disease. Courtesy Joe and Tami Micheletti

December 10, 2020 at 7:00 am

Danger, poverty and hope fuel ‘The Coals of Newcastle’ immigrant story

A revised edition of the 1987 monograph "The Coals of Newcastle: A Hundred Years of Hidden History" is a mother lode of history, with 200...

THEN: In ACT’s production of “A Christmas Carol” from 1998, the chained ghost of Jacob Marley, played by Jeff Steitzer, confronts Scrooge, played by Kurt Beattie, who says, “It’s a story told with enormous compassion, which everybody needs these days.” Credit: Courtesy ACT Theatre, Chris Bennion

November 26, 2020 at 7:00 am

Amid our COVID crisis, ACT’s ‘Carol’ strikes a compassionate chord VIEW

ACT Theatre's production of "A Christmas Carol" has been a Seattle tradition for 45 years. This year, it will adapt to an online audio show,...

THEN: From his perch in 1932 above the Yakima River Canyon Road, Asahel Curtis looks wistfully into the Yakima Valley, in the direction of his lost family retreat. Our auto informant Robert Carney identifies the solo car as a 1929 Buick sedan.

November 5, 2020 at 7:00 am

Light — and a legendary photographer — caroms through the canyon

Renowned photographer Asahel Curtis explored every corner of Washington, capturing "slice-of-life" photos, breathtaking vistas and this 1932 image from the south end of the Yakima...

October 22, 2020 at 7:00 am

This classic masonry building met a lot of peeps along ‘Flesh Avenue’

The fireproof masonry stonework of the Post Edwards (aka the Hotel Vendome), built one year after the 1889 Great Seattle Fire, offered a sense of...

THEN: Three years before the creation of the Pike Place Market in 1907, an unknown photographer captured savory treats. Just right of the tunnel entrance, a temporary assembly line supplied rivers of concrete to line the tunnel walls. Meanwhile, at upper left, an intrepid gent peers over the precipitous edge of the retaining wall at the laborers below.

October 8, 2020 at 7:00 am

The tunnel that reshaped the waterfront (no, not THAT one)

Before the Highway 99 tunnel replaced the Alaskan Way Viaduct, another Seattle tunnel, completed 115 years ago, attempted to solve a waterfront problem. At the...

THEN: Looking northeast, Harvey Bernard’s cloud-strewn portrait of the incomplete Ship Canal Bridge in October 1960 captures Seattle mid-transformation. The Interstate 5 freeway through Seattle opened in December 1962, and the entire Washington state portion was completed in 1969.
Courtesy Harvey and Leo Bernard

September 24, 2020 at 7:00 am

A soaring salute to post-World War II car culture

This week's "Then" photo captures the Ship Canal Bridge over Lake Union during construction in October 1960. Within a year, the bridge would span the...

THEN: The spire of Gethsemane Lutheran Church peeks out above the new Central Terminal’s tiled roof. On the far right of Asahel Curtis’s 1928 photo, a sliver of a Seattle-Everett Interurban train car can be seen.
Credit: Courtesy Paul Dorpat

September 10, 2020 at 7:00 am

Greetings, goodbyes and the growl of Greyhounds no more

Twenty years before Greyhound acquired it, Seattle's Central Terminal was erected in 1927 by the Stone and Webster Management Company, a nationwide utilities cartel with...

August 27, 2020 at 7:00 am

A hearse is a hearse, except when it was an ambulance

This week's "Then" photo is from a collection, dating between 1921 and 1923 and shot by an anonymous photographer, that features more than 60 images...