At A Crossroads

"WHAT A GREAT picture!" is Nao Hardy's confident description of this week's "then." But of course, as one of Redmond's enthusiasts for community heritage, Hardy is well-stocked with articulate affection for her home town — especially this part of it.

"And I can date it accurately," she says. "It is 1910, and the photographer, Winfred Wallace, was a local fellow who never married and died young." The view looks east on Cleveland Street one half block to its intersection with Leary Way Northeast, historically "the community's main crossroads." In 1910 the two-story frame livery stables, far left and right in the historic scene, still have a few years of service in them before the dirt of Cleveland Street is marked with the wider ruts of motorcars and trucks.

At the center of Wallace's record is another two-story frame structure, on the southeast corner of Leary Way. It is half-hidden by the big tree. Two signs are attached: "Restaurant and Chop House" and "Olympia Beer." Historian Hardy explains that this is, or was, Bill Brown's place, and that Brown would soon "replace his popular wooden saloon with a two-story brick building that bears his name today, as much for the handsome public buildings he erected as for his having served as Redmond's mayor for an amazing 30 years."

Brown has a street named for him as well. It is one block long and intersects with Cleveland one-half block behind where contemporary photographer Jean Sherrard took his "repeat," obviously in a warmer month.

These days, Hardy observes, "Cleveland and Brown streets are witnessing a gentrification with mixed-use upscale buildings of condos and new businesses." The historically significant buildings that are still sound remain standing.

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