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Now & Then By Paul Dorpat

Madrona's Mini-Metropolis

THIS IS THE hub of the Madrona neighborhood, the intersection of Division and Carroll Street looking south on Carroll — if I have counted the blocks correctly in the 1893 street-name index by my desk. If I have not bumbled, then Division is now Union Street and Carroll is 34th Avenue. With city ordinances in 1895 and 1901, many of the historical street names were discarded for the efficiency of numbers.

The original names were probably given by George and Emma Randell, who developed Madrona Ridge in 1890 and built their home on Drexel Avenue, or 35th now — I think. They did well, especially after the Union Trunk Line trolley to Madrona Park reached this intersection by 1893. The park and then the neighborhood got their names from the trees there. The Randell barn became Randell School and stayed so until 1904, when Madrona Elementary opened at 33rd Avenue (aka Alvan) and Union.

According to tax records, the frame structure on the right of both views was built in 1907. The historical photo dates from ca. 1940 when the trolleys, like this car on the No.11 Cherry Street Line, were traded for buses and, here also, trackless trolleys. The 1938 Polk Directory lists the same businesses that show in the photograph: the pharmacy on the corner, followed by a barber, a shoe renewer, a luncheonette and a fish market — all of them named Madrona, except the café. Vernon and Anna Herrett, who run the luncheonette, live upstairs, and Walter Cort, the cobbler, lives behind his store on 33rd.

Perhaps some reader will share the Carroll or Drexel or Alvan stories. One likely storyteller would be Junius Rochester, who wrote "The Last Electric Trolley," in part a history of Madrona.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle. He can be reached at paul@dorpat.com.