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Now & Then Paul Dorpat

See Shore

For the first time in a quarter-century of writing this little weekly feature I am, I admit, tempted to not include a "now" photograph to repeat the historical scene.

In the original Lowman family photo album from which it is lifted, the roughly 3-by-4-inch print is clearly titled, "East side Lake Union, 1887." We may have a general confidence in the caption, for there are many other photographs in the album that are accurately described. With this caption, however, we are left asking, "But where on the east side?"

The earliest photographs of Lake Union are a few panoramas taken from the since-razed Denny Hill in the mid-1880s. None of those, however, helps identify this extremely rare detail of the lakeshore from such an early date as 1887. We can see that there has been some clearing of the forest back from the far shoreline, and in the immediate foreground a sawed-off stump nestles near a still-standing cedar.

It was 1887 when the Seattle Lakeshore and Eastern Railroad was laid along the north shore of Lake Union through the future neighborhoods of Fremont, Edgewater (near Stone Way) Wallingford/Latona and the University District. Perhaps the photographer hitched a ride on the railroad and took this snapshot looking southeast from near the little park that is now at the foot of Fourth Avenue Northeast, just west of Ivar's Salmon House.

This conjecture may also help account for how, in the 1887 scene, the shoreline draws closer to the photographer on the left side of the cedar. Historical maps of the undeveloped east shoreline of Lake Union show such an irregularity near where the Interstate 5 freeway bridge sinks its piers on the east shore of the lake.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and is co-author with Jean Sherrard of "Washington: Then and Now."

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