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Now & Then By Paul Dorpat

Landing In A Good Spot

AROUND 1903, there were no tracks on the extended part of Railroad Avenue, so it was relatively safe for the few suited men shown here to be heading in every direction. This new section for wagons and pedestrians was built after a tidelands replat reordered the waterfront in the late 1890s.

Dock owners like the pioneer engineer and millwright James Colman were given time to conform their property to the replat. Because of the prosperity that came in the late 1890s with the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, practically the entire waterfront between King and Pike streets was made over with new piers and a wider trestle by the time this photo was taken.

The first-floor businesses on Colman Dock begin on the left with what appears to be a produce stand. Next door is the Sunde and Erland Sail Makers and Ship Chandlers, one of the dock's long-lived residents. The "electric contractor" Frank Folsom is next. Besides dynamos, Folsom offers poles and piles, tugboat services and monthly sailing vessels to the California coast.

At the far end is the Loggers Supply Company, and next to it the furrier Charles Wernecke. In 1904 Ye Olde Curiosity Shop began its long hold on the Wernecke storefront.

In 1903 the roughness of Railroad Avenue itself inspired a muckraking campaign by the businessman's Commonwealth magazine. "Few know its dizzy danger," the magazine opined, adding that the peril had been "doubled at night by the lack of light." Strangers, it continued, "grope around in the darkness and splash into the pools of slimy water or slip through the muddy ditches" trying to get around the freight cars. Add the Commonwealth's exploration into the rotting rubbish beneath this wide trestle and it makes for some wrenching reading.

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