Saved, In The Main
When compared to most city scenes, relatively little has changed in this view on Main Street from First Avenue South in the century-plus between them.		COURTESY OF LAWTON GOWEY

	PAUL DORPAT

But this week's scene is quite the opposite. From 1853, the year it was platted, to now, very few photographers have been attracted to Main Street, especially to record a scene like this one that attends to the street as much as to the buildings beside it.

This comparison looks east on Main from First Avenue South. Except for their ornamented cornices that were pruned for safety after the earthquake of 1949, the Grand Central block on the left and the Marshall Building on the right have not changed much. Fortunately, they have been faithfully restored and/or maintained by Pioneer Square Historic District stewards such as Ralph Anderson, Richard White and the landscape firm of Jones and Jones.

Farther east on Main, a few more of the many brick structures rushed to completion after the Great Fire of 1889 survive. And a few did not. For instance, on the left, the two-story New Squire Block and the six-story Lebanon Building were lost in the late 1950s in a rash of razing the historic neighborhood for parking lots. Since 1972 the west half of this parking lot has been refurnished as Occidental Park.

Seven years ago the producers of Rose Red, a made-for-TV horror film, chose this block on Main Street to re-create a bustling Seattle street scene from 1900. The scene did us the great pre-service of digitally eliminating the Alaskan Way Viaduct for an exhilaratingly open view to Elliott Bay.

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