Board Walk

FOR THOSE AMONG you who imagine that the bending bricklayer is the intended subject in this look north on First Avenue from Wall Street, bravo. The chronically deteriorating condition of the special paving that bordered the trolley tracks at the center of Seattle's arterials was an enduring sore point between the city and the Seattle Electric Co. For their franchise, the trolley company was obliged to maintain both the tracks and the paving. So a photographer from Seattle Public Works took this picture, probably as damning evidence.

A second civic sore point is also exposed here: the billboards. Protests against street advertising were part of the same early 20th-century liberal temper that pushed for parks, clean water and beautiful streets. A 1906 campaign against the many billboards in Belltown described them as "glaring and unsightly structures" that "lift their flaming fronts and tell their own story of aggressive insolence."

Here, on the right behind an example of City Light director James Delmage Ross' nearly new light standard is a two-tier board. There is coffee "upstairs" and Fatima Cigarettes at the sidewalk. At this time — about 1913 — Fatima smokers found wrapped in their packs sports cards of popular players and teams.

Among the products using the line of boards on the west side of First are Sunny Monday "Washday Soap," Budweiser Beer and Adams Black Jack Chewing Gum.

Selz Chicago Shoes and Seattle's own Burnside hats are promoted with oversize murals on the first building north of Vince Street on First.

Finally, on the right at Vine Street and First are the New Pacific Apartments. Built in 1903, this neighborhood survivor is curiously marked in the 1912 real-estate map as the Pacific Hospital.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.