A New Station In Life
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 COURTESY OF LAWTON GOWEY THEN: The Columbia Street Depot was used by most of the railroads on the waterfront and often together as our first "Union Depot." It extended south from Columbia Street nearly as far as Yesler Way.
PAUL DORPAT NOW: Used little after the 1906 opening of the King Street Station, the Columbia Street Depot was razed in 1910 and replaced by the still-standing Polson Building. In 2000, one of the building's tenants, Mahlum Architects, won an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects for its "incredibly intelligent and skillful reclamation of a fire-damaged building." |
For readers who recall last week's "Now and Then," this Sunday's scene is a little more than one block west and about 13 years later. Last week's photo looked north on Post Avenue (or street or alley) from Yesler Way through the grander ruins of the city's Great Fire of 1889. Here we look north again, this time from where, since 1953, Yesler Way has ducked below the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
Between 1887 and 1906, the long shed at the center of this ca. 1903 scene is what counted as Seattle's principal railroad station — the Columbia Street station. About a year after the 1905 completion of the railroad tunnel beneath the central business district, Seattle was exalted with a new union depot, the King Street Station. Compared to this sprawling contraption, it was a palace, and with its present restoration, is again.
In 1903 nine sets of tracks crowded Railroad Avenue between the slanted awning seen here and Elliott Bay. The tracks and at least part of the station were supported on a timber quay above the tides. The seawalls came later. Rows upon rows of railroad stock, either parked or rolling, made it often impossible to reach the waterfront and always dangerous to try.
During World War I, Railroad Avenue started building a new life as a way for motorcars and trucks to get around the business district. This, of course, led to our now weakened viaduct. It may also lead to another tunnel, but not the one defeated in the recent election. Rather the new tunnel, like the railroad tunnel, would extend Highway 99 under the city. In the six years since our Nisqually earthquake, the machinery for this "deep-bore tunnel" option has been both engineered and used with success in Europe.
Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.
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