WRITTEN BY PAUL DORPAT

COURTESY OF SEATTLE MUNICIPAL ARCHIVE

Eighty-seven Februaries separate these two views of First Avenue looking south from Virginia Street. On the right side of both scenes the Hotel Preston building, it seems, is the only survivor — at least in the foreground blocks.

	DON SELLERS

This view — made by James Lee, the official photographer for the city's Department of Public Works — looks south on First Avenue from Virginia Street. In 1916 the street was lined mostly by one- to three-story structures — a mix of frame and brick — that would typically have "rooms" upstairs and businesses at the street level. Between Pine and Bell streets the structures on the west side of First Avenue (like those on the left side of this scene) were generally a few years older than those on the east side of First. The reason was regrades.

Between 1900 and 1903 the east side of First, north of Pine Street, was effectively a cliff until the Second Avenue Regrade of 1903-06 was complete. The buildings, such as the Hotel Preston on the right of this scene, could be quickly built to prosper, it was hoped, in a new and nearly level Belltown. Instead, the commonplace urban legend that many small, old hotels at some point also operated as "harlot hotels" may be true here. Belltown never really recovered from the depression of 1907 until the 1970s, when it began its transformation into a mini-version of Vancouver's West End — a neighborhood of high-rises.