In 1988, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop moved from its Pier 52 longhouse, which the state would soon raze for an expansion of loading facilities to Colman Dock, into the northeast corner of Ivar's Pier 54, and the original site of Ivar Haglund's aquarium, which in 1938 was his first enterprise on the central waterfront. Curiously, the curiosity shop's stuffed environment includes stuff hanging from the ceiling—much as Ivar's nautical Ivarnalia was suspended above his fish tanks.

WHEN IVAR HAGLUND opened his aquarium in 1938 he joined a central waterfront that was still a working one — when there was work to do. During the Great Depression there was not much of it. Neither were the old railroad wharves — many of them by then long since converted for processing fish — very playful, as they are now, almost without exception. Then — besides the taverns — there was Joe Williamson's Marine Salon at the Black Ball Line's Colman Dock, Ray and Lydia Robison's Pilot House, which was stuffed with nautical curios, and Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, then already the old-timer on the waterfront.

Ivar figured correctly that with a lot of help from his friends, creating an aquarium was not much work. "It was so simple," he told me before his death in 1985. "All you had to do was get whatever was in the Sound up into a tank. People came to look at the octopus. We had a seal (Pat and/or Patsy) that was with us for years. And dogfish. We called them sharks, but they were really dogfish. Ten cents for adults and five for children. It went slowly at first, but in those days if you took in 10 or 20 dollars you were living." Often for your pennies you'd also get to hear Ivar singing one of his fish songs when his lyric tenor voice was still in shape.
 
When it opened, Ivar also had his first fish-and-chips bar at the entrance. He added the Acres of Clams at the other side of Pier 54 in 1946, and nine years later closed the aquarium. The seal retired to the Woodland Park Zoo.

This is one of the very few interior shots of Ivar's aquarium. Although it was around for nearly 20 years, I have never seen a satisfying exterior photograph of it. And I have looked. So this is a plea: If you have or know of the same, get in touch.