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Now & Then By Paul Dorpat
The report from Winslow
EVERY DAY for more than 20 years, Riley Hoskinson looked over his homestead from the family farmhouse to record the weather for the U.S. Weather Service. In the beginning, the Hoskinsons' farmhouse roof was, at least by local accounts, the only weather observatory west of the Mississippi. The family was not paid; they reported their measurements as amateur meteorologists. The Hoskinson son, Stuart, took up photography, and his now locally cherished work includes this ca. 1900 view that looks west in winter through fruit trees. The windmill was a Winslow landmark for visitors riding "Mosquito Fleet" steamers into Bainbridge Island's Eagle Harbor. Beyond the farm, at the future corner of Winslow Way and Madison Avenue, are the Eagle Harbor Congregational Church, built in 1896 (with the parsonage far left), and on the right the "second school." The Hoskinsons had a hand in both. As charter members of the congregation they donated the bell. The sturdy church survives in the "now," although in the 1960s it was turned 90 degrees and moved one lot south on Madison. The schoolhouse also performed like a town hall. Both the Good Templars and the Sons of Temperance met there. Box socials were given and lectures, too, as long as the lecturers were not "atheist." Later, Hoskinson donated land across the street for a new Good Templars hall so long as there would be no dancing, drinking or card-playing. Early in the 20th century Bainbridge Island began to show signs of what the WPA Washington Writers Guide described in 1941 as the "home and vacation-place of well-to-do business and professional people, university instructors, and artists. It might be called the aristocrat among the islands of Puget Sound." Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.
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