The Seattle Times: Pacific NW 06/12/2005: Pause for Commercial

Now And Then

By Paul Dorpat

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Pause for Commercial

THEN: Commercial Street is seen looking north on First Avenue South from near Jackson Street.

PAUL DORPAT

NOW: This view of the street, Seattle's first business strip, was taken 186 years later.

I HAVE KNOWN this photograph for decades, and it is unique — most likely the oldest surviving photograph taken down the center of Commercial Street, Seattle's first business strip. Until recently, I knew neither its date nor the name of the photographer.

Bob Monroe introduced the scene to me in 1972 at the University of Washington's Northwest Collection, which Bob then nurtured. The print was pasted with scores of others in the photographic albums prepared by the pioneer historian Thomas Prosch. Prosch's brief caption reads, "This View was taken from near Jackson Street and First Ave south, about 1863. The first Yesler saw mill is shown about the middle of the picture, extending up to the present Pioneer Place."

Prosch is "about" wrong — twice. The date is not "about 1863" but almost certainly 1869, and Yesler's Mill is hidden. It was moved a year earlier onto his wharf. Those are shops at the end of the street. How might I know this? By reading the trees.

The buildings in this photograph and the trees on the horizon are like fingerprints. In 1869 George Robinson, a photographer from Victoria, climbed to the second-floor window of Snoqualmie Hall, the tallest building on the left, and recorded a four-part panorama of Seattle that in every detail but one — a waving flag — agrees with this street scene.

Very likely, then, this is a George Robinson view. His panorama has clarity lacking in this view, suggesting that an equally sharp original for this copy may be sequestered somewhere north of the border.The Prosch albums can be examined on the University Library Archive's splendid Web page via the Digital Collections section. See is http://content.lib.washington.edu.

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