WRITTEN BY PAUL DORPAT

COURTESY OF WATERFRONT AWARENESS

Both views look down on the parking lot for waiting motorists at the north side of Colman Dock near the waterfront foot of Marion Street. Dedicated in 1965, the contemporary ferry terminal is wider than the 1908 structure shown in the "then" view. The parking lot was also pushed north and is considerably wider than the eight lanes available in the 1930s.

	PAUL DORPAT

When built in 1908 with a landmark Romanesque tower at the water end, the Colman Dock was more than 700 feet long and fitted with 14 slips that could be raised and lowered with the tides. It was by far the busiest "Mosquito Fleet" landing on Puget Sound. Six of the dock's births snuggled against its north side, directly where the cars are parked in the early or mid-1930s.

This extended stage for parking was constructed in the mid-'20s when many of the sleek "Mosquito Fleet" passenger steamers were being humbled with conversion to ferries. Their pointed bows were cut open and their slim decks fattened over sponsons for cars. By 1923 the dock's tenant, the Puget Sound Navigation Co. — aka the "Black Ball" line — figured that it had already handled 28,000 "machines" on the Navy Yard Route between Seattle and Bremerton.

In 1935, the streamlined ferry Kalakala began landing here. Built on the burned-out hull of a California ferry, the Black Ball flagship was soon followed by 17 more Golden Gate ferries, moved to Puget Sound after the opening of the suspension bridges on San Francisco Bay made them obsolete there and cheap here as salvaged goods. (The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened in late 1936; the Golden Gate Bridge came the following summer.)