The Seattle Times: Pacific NW 05/07/2006: It's A Long Day

Buy a NW ad

Now And Then

By Paul Dorpat

E-mail article

Print view

It's A Long Day

Information in this article, originally published May 5, 2006, was corrected May 8, 2006. A previous version of this story about the history of Colman School incorrectly named a museum planned for the site. The Seattle Urban League will open the Northwest African-American Museum in November, 2007.

COURTESY OF RUSS LANGSTAFF

There is perhaps as much change between this "then" and "now" as between Denny Hill and the Denny Regrade. Colman School is on the far left at rear.

PAUL DORPAT

This is where the Mercer Island Bridge tunnels go under the Mount Baker Ridge.

EITHER CLARENCE or his brother, Otto Langstaff, photographed this unique view of a neighborhood otherwise rarely recorded. I confess to considerable confusion when first I studied this photograph — until I found the familiar Jacobean façade of Colman School. Can you find it?

Perhaps a friend of the Langstaffs lived in one of the 60 or so generally small homes on small lots I counted this side of 25th Avenue South — not in the photograph but in a 1912 real-estate map. That map includes the footprints of all the structures north and south of Day Street.

Day runs away from the photographer nearly up the center of the scene, and to either side of it the north and south limits of this slice of the Rainier Valley are easily marked. A glimpse of Irving Street is on the far right, and another and even smaller piece of Atlantic Street is at the far left. This last bit of public street is just below the only brick building in the scene.

Yes: Colman School. The school may be the only thing that survives in the 90-plus years that have passed between the "then" and "now." What gives? Or rather what was taken?

Langstaff is standing near the future center line of the Interstate 90 lid, and the soldiery line of ventilators for the Mount Baker Ridge tunnels hold their row left-of-center in the "now" photo. They and most of the lid's parkland are obscured behind the lid landscape in the foreground. Langstaff stood (I think) a little west of 30th Avenue South. So did I.

First opened in 1910, Colman welcomed students until 1985. Next it was occupied by community activists whose youthful initiative will mature next year as Seattle's own Northwest African-American Museum.

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