The Montlake Community Club's old clubhouse, the Tudor Building, now faces Calhoun Street through a shroud of cypress and cherry trees. It was built in 1934 through the cooperation of the club, which donated the land for the recreation field, and the state, which allocated Depression-era funds to build the field house and prepare the site for recreation.

PAUL DORPAT

The scene printed here was taken from a thick Depression-era report on the Washington Emergency Relief Administration. WERA was quickly formed in the spring of 1934 after the Civil Works Administration was closed. Raising a community center and playfield was just one of the Seattle-based Depression-relief projects. Beginning in the Depression, Montlake Community Club members taxed themselves to purchase the old dahlia farm that once thrived on the bog that is now their playfield. With WERA help, the city raised this Tudor-style field house in 1934 and graded the farm for recreation. The Montlake club's second campaign to build a gymnasium on the site did not go so smoothly. The club sent a request for the gym to the Seattle City Council on Jan. 1, 1950. Doris Baxter Burns, past club president, recounts that "25 years later we had our wish fulfilled with the help of Forward Thrust money, but we had to fight to get it."

The landscape that now shrouds the Tudor Building also hides its sad condition. After 66 years the building itself needs relief — and it seems to be getting some. The east wall (not visible here) is covered with scaffolding. A hand-painted message on a door there says: "Montlake Pottery is conserving energy this summer. Classes will resume Oct. 1, 2001." Baxter Burns recalls how, in the days when pottery was the rage (the '60s), "that room was stuffed with pots from wall to wall year 'round."

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