Centennial celebration to mark 1909 world's fair

It was a time of peace. A time of awe for new inventions and different cultures. A time when Seattle enjoyed the fruits of fortune planted during the Gold Rush.

The fledgling city, launchpad for the Yukon expeditions a decade or so earlier, was determined to be regarded as more than an uncivilized outpost in the West. So in 1909 it hosted its first world's fair -- the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (A-Y-P-E) -- an event that would give the city international recognition and leave an impact on the community that would last to this day.

Next year Seattle will celebrate the 100th anniversary of A-Y-P-E with community festivals, a coast-to-coast vintage auto rally, and art and historic exhibits to celebrate both the region's history and its future.

Just what the yearlong celebration will include is being planned, said Michael Killoren, director of the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.

"Every time we get out and tell the story, the excitement broadens," he said.

The city has provided $200,000 in seed money, and former Northwest Folklife director Michael Herschensohn was hired to take charge of the event.

Herschensohn's job will be to encourage communities throughout the region to join in the A-Y-P-E centennial by fundraising and planning their own events.

A-Y-P-E was broad in scope and involved not only all of Washington but also Alaska, Oregon, the Pacific Rim and Western Canada. And at the time, the fair was an audacious undertaking for the small city, Killoren said. "I think that says something about Seattle's can-do spirit."

It was also the first to "look to the West and incorporate Pacific Rim countries and their culture," although not always in a flattering light. Racial insensitivity was common to the times. "And we have to deal with that," Killoren said.

A-Y-P-E was kicked off June 1, 1909, when President William Howard Taft sent a signal across the continent using a telegraph key made from Klondike gold nuggets. That in turn triggered a gong at the fairgrounds -- now the University of Washington campus -- which set off whistles and horns from Seattle businesses and ships. The exposition lasted 138 days.

"Defining moment"

The 2009 event will begin less ostentatiously, the organizers say. Early in 2009 there are expected to be a number of events. The centennial celebration will officially open at the Northwest Folklife Festival over Memorial Day weekend.

The A-Y-P-E "was a defining moment in Seattle's history," said Seattle City CouncilmemberJan Drago. Some of the UW landscape architecture was designed for it, including what is now Frosh Pond and Drumheller Fountain, which was a fair centerpiece called Geyser Basin.

Native American art gathered for the fair is a vital part of the Burke Museum's collections. Seattle got electric streetlights -- reproductions of those original gas lamps are in Pioneer Square.

The fair turned a profit -- the first world's fair to do so, organizers say -- and the proceeds made it possible to build Firland Sanitorium in Shoreline for treatment of tuberculosis.

The fair attracted dignitaries from Taft to foreign heads of state, and 3.7 million visitors made local pride soar, said Alan Stein, staff historian for HistoryLink.org, one of the organizers of the Centennial. Seattleites bought commemorative 2-cent stamps and postcards featuring scenes from the fair with its Mount Rainier backdrop and sent mail to out-of-town friends as if to say, "Look where I'm living," Stein said. "There was a sense of boosterism."

A dirigible operated from the fairgrounds and flew over the city. A helium balloon with a basket was to be the site of a wedding between streetcar conductor C.A. Bebee and Margaret Anna Hall, but the minister had to disembark because the basket was too heavy to float.

(Centennial organizers would like to find the descendants of Bebee and Hall, who did marry at the fair).

There were special days to honor states, organizations or those with a particular last name. On Smith Day there were prizes for the tallest, shortest, prettiest or ugliest Smith.

There was a day set aside for the Swedish-Finnish Temperance Association, coal miners and railway men, the Baptist Young People's Union, the Seattle Real Estate Association and a day to celebrate if you once lived in Kansas.

A growing city

Seattle's population nearly doubled during those early years of the new century as immigrants poured into the city -- the majority of them from Norway. A number of businesses, which would later be giants, were fledgling enterprises at the time, among them the companies now known as Nordstrom, United Parcel Service, Bartell Drugs and Filson Outdoor Gear.

According to Stein, who with Paula Becker is writing a book on the A-Y-P-E, two fair attendees who would later make history in their own way were feminist Gloria Steinem's grandmother, Pauline Steinem, who came to campaign for the suffrage movement, and Boeing founder Bill Boeing.

Norwegians -- at the time the largest group of immigrants in Seattle -- had their fair day in 1909, and will again next year with the A-Y-P-E centennial celebration of Norway Day. Just what form the centennial celebration will take for the Scandinavians is being planned, said Luci Baker Johnson, one of the organizers for the groups.

"There are a lot of people in the Northwest who have Scandinavian roots," Johnson said. "We still have a strong presence in Seattle."

The centennial, she said, "will be a way for Scandinavians to acknowledge their role in Seattle's rich history and look to the future."

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com