Towers of talent
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 PAUL DORPAT Newsboy statues hawk their wares from niches between the first and second floors of the Puget Sound News Co. building in the early part of the 20th century.
PAUL DORPAT While the news building has kept in good repair in the 90 years since it was completed, there are three notable losses: The ornately lettered name of the original owner has been erased from just below the largest window on the front terra-cotta façade, and the newsboys are gone. |
IN "CARL F. GOULD: A Life in Architecture and the Arts," authors T. William Booth and William Wilson tell us that when the aesthete Gould took his eclectic talent into company with Charles Herbert Bebb, it was a splendid marriage.
The architect-engineer Bebb brought to the new partnership a portfolio stuffed with influential political and commercial contacts. Bebb also carried a number of projects from his former prosperous partnership with Lois Leonard Mendel. Among these was the "ensemble" of buildings at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, the splendid Beaux Arts Times Square Building (a former home of this newspaper), and the less ambitious but still tasty Puget Sound News Co. building seen here on the west side of Second Avenue, second lot south of Virginia Street.
Gould and Bebb joined their complementing talents in 1914, the year Gould also founded the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington. The following year the university named Gould head of the department, and awarded Bebb and Gould the commission to plan the UW campus into the field of mostly Gothic landmarks we cherish today. With its Gothic ornaments, the terra cotta-faced Puget Sound News Co. building can be easily imagined on that campus.
Booth and Wilson put the construction date in 1915, though the tax records have it one year later. A tax assessor's photo of 1937 includes the north façade, where we learn the nature of this "news" company. The company sign reads (without benefit of commas) "The Puget Sound News Co. Wholesale Booksellers Newsdealers Stationers School Supplies Holiday Goods." They might have added "Postcards," for a quick internet search of the company name brings forth many examples of regional postcards for sale that were published early in the 20th century by the PSN Co.
Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.
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