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Now & Then By Paul Dorpat
On First Base
SOMEHOW, THE historical photographer managed to carry his or her camera to a temporary perch and look north on First Avenue from above the Kenneth Hotel sign at the foot of Cherry Street. With a bustling sidewalk and street scene — including seven trolleys — his elevated portrait of First was favored with its own colorized postcard. In the 1850s this was still the site of a knoll on which the locals built the North Block House that protected them during the one-day "Battle of Seattle," Jan. 26, 1856. The Indians' small-arms fire from the woods beyond Third Avenue barely penetrated the logs of the fort, although one local was hit and killed while peeking out the temporarily open door. That casualty stood close to our photographer's mysterious prospect. James Clemmer, a young theater man from Spokane, first managed the Kenneth Hotel in 1907, and lived there, too. Within a year he converted the hotel lobby into the Dream Theatre, the first Seattle theater to treat films "seriously" by regularly mixing "one-reelers" with Vaudeville acts. The theater was deep but narrow, for although seven stories high the Kenneth was built on one lot. As such it was Seattle's best reminder of Amsterdam. From this prospect we cannot tell if the theater is as yet below the hotel sign. I raised my camera with a pole. Directly behind me is Pioneer Square and its official historic district, most of which was built soon after the city's Great Fire of 1889. Of course, most of the buildings showing north of Cherry Street in the older view were also built in the first decade after the fire, but with few exceptions they have been razed and replaced — in a few instances (like across First at its southeast corner with Columbia Street) with stock parking lots. Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.
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