The Seattle Times: Pacific NW 07/09/2006: A Boom Drawn By Horses

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Now & Then By Paul Dorpat

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A Boom Drawn By Horses

COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF HISTORY & INDUSTRY

THEN: Langston's Livery Stable was a busy waterfront enterprise through most of the 1880s, Seattle's first booming decade. It was destroyed during the city's "Great Fire of 1889."

PAUL DORPAT / THE SEATTLE TIMES

NOW: The St. Charles Hotel was quickly erected in the stable's place, facing Washington Street. The hotel was one of the first "fireproof" brick buildings to go up after the "Great Fire."

HELEN AND JOHN Langston moved to Seattle from Kent in 1882 and soon opened their namesake livery stables on the waterfront at Washington Street. Like all else in the neighborhood, it was, of course, destroyed in the city's Great Fire of 1889.

Sometime in the few years it served those who wished to park or rent a horse or buggy downtown a photographer recorded this portrait of a busy Langston's Livery. The photo was taken from the back of the roof of the Dexter Horton Bank at the northwest corner of Washington and Commercial Street (First Avenue South).

In Helen's 1937 obituary we learn from her daughter, Nellie, that Helen was "known for her pen-and-ink sketches of horses and other animals and scenic views." Perhaps the livery stable sign, far right, showing the dashing horse with buggy and rider, is also her work. It was Helen who saved the family's business records from the fire and was severely burned in the process. After the fire the couple quickly put up the St. Charles Hotel, seen in the "now."

Helen married the 38-year-old John in 1870, the same year he began providing ferry service across the White River at Kent and three years after he is credited with opening "the first store in King County outside Seattle." During these pre-livery years in the valley, the Langstons also managed to carve a model dairy farm out of the forest.

After the fire, the Langstons soon opened another livery stable uptown beside their home at Eighth Avenue and Union Street. In the 1903 collection of biographies titled "Representative Citizens of Seattle and King County," John Langston is noted for operating "his magnificent (horse-drawn) funeral coach, which is one of the finest in the Northwest." Three undertakers kept him busy.

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