Expo Info or Bust

As noted a few weeks past in these pages, we are entering a time of exploration into a lavish event that happened now 97 years ago — the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition or A-Y-P for short. In the contemporary photo Dan Kerlee holds a typical memento pennant from 1909 exposition: "Seattle's First World's Fair." These were sold at least by the hundreds along what was then called the Pay Streak, the carnival strip of amusements and concessions along what is now Stevens Way and beyond to Portage Bay.

Consulting an A-Y-P map that Kerlee has superimposed with a contemporary map of the UW campus, he stands beside Stevens Way and within a few feet of where in the historical photograph the man in the straw hat looks south toward the Pay Streak. With its own caption, the historical photo by Otto Frasch reveals what this impressive crowd awaits the unveiling of the James Hill monument. (Hill, the Empire Builder behind the Great Northern Railroad, also visited the A-Y-P in the flesh.)

The Frasch photo shows the Battle of Gettysburg, a cyclorama where inside one could watch the "re-enactment" of the turning point in the Civil War — for a fee. As its exterior sign promises, "War! War! War! Replete With the Rush, Roar and Rumble of Battle."

For more A-Y-P insights from Dan Kerlee, readers are advised to visit his Web site www.aype.com. As he puts it, "The complexity of the A-Y-P is stunning, and we get just glimpses of it."

And now as we approach the fair's centennial, Kerlee and other Expo enthusiasts will be revealing old glimpses and certainly finding many new ones.

Meanwhile the James Hill bust is still on campus, although it has been moved. The reader is also invited to go look for it.

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