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Now & Then By Paul Dorpat
An Elephant For The Elks
FOR 13 DAYS, beginning Monday, Aug. 18, 1902, the Elks Lodge managed to fence off a sizable section of downtown Seattle and produce the city's first multiday summer festival, the Elks Carnival. We may compare this to Bumbershoot, which cordons off Seattle Center for a long weekend of ticketing and celebrating. The Elks furnished its "center" with booths, circus tents and rides on the then-still-open green acres of the old University of Washington campus on Denny's Knoll. From the northern border of the old campus, the carnival grounds extended west on Union Street from Fifth Avenue to a grand entrance arch that spanned Union halfway between Second and Third avenues. A shorter arm of this enclosure ran a block south on Third Avenue to University Street. This section was lined with booths offering, The Seattle Times reported, "the best products of the best city on earth." With his back to Third Avenue, the photographer of this scene looks east on Union Street to the old Armory, which has been freshly painted "royal purple and purity white" for the carnival. The camera has also captured the rump of Regina, the carnival's "Queen Elephant," heading for her own corner of the campus, where, a Times reporter said, she attracted "an ever increasing crowd of men and boys content . . . to worship humbly at the shrine of one of Africa's greatest children." Meanwhile, Seattle's greatest babies were being judged in a "pretty booth" in the Armory. There were prizes for the prettiest girl and the handsomest boy, but also for the "largest and fattest baby 16 months old." After making the awards, the judge, a Dr. Newlands, confided to a reporter, "I have about concluded that it will be wise for me to disappear for a while." Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.
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