Between 1922 and 1937, the number of motor vehicles on Seattle streets increased by 211 percent. Fatal accidents became almost commonplace.
A POSSIBLE DATE for this Webster and Stevens Studio photo is July 20, 1925, a Monday. The Seattle Times had announced on the preceding day:
Traffic Ruler to Mount Tower
New System in Use Tomorrow
“Stop” and “Go” Signals for Blocks Downtown
Most Read Stories
Will be Regulated From Fourth and Pike —
Pedestrians Must Obey, Too.
By 1925 cars had been on Seattle streets for a quarter-century, but except for frightening horses, their disruption was tolerable through the first decade of the 1900s.
But then the horseless carriers got faster and heavier, and multiplied at a rate that even famously booming Seattle could not match. Especially following World War I, having a car became a matter of considerable urgency for both modern mobility and personal status. Quoting from “Traffic and Related Problems,” a chapter in the 1978 book “Public Works in Seattle, between 1922 and 1937,” “the number of motor vehicles increased by 211 percent, as against a 22 percent increase in population.” Fatal accidents became almost commonplace.
Consequently, on this Monday, the nearly desperate hopes of Seattle’s traffic engineers climbed high up the city’s one and only traffic tower with the officer (unnamed in any clippings I consulted), seen standing in the open window of his comely crow’s nest. Reading deeper into the Sunday Times, we learn that this ruler would have powers that reached well beyond this intersection. From high above Fourth and Pike he was assigned to operate all the traffic signals on Fourth Avenue between University and Pine streets, and on Pike between First and Fifth avenues, while watching out for disobedient pedestrians.
And no left turns were allowed. Were you heading north on Fourth here and wanting to take a left on Pike to reach the Public Market? Forget it. You were obliged to continue on Fourth then take three rights, around the block bordered by Pine, Fifth and Pike.