Pioneer Square

Pioneer Square PDF Author: Mildred Tanner Andrews
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This fascinating history weaves together first-person accounts, photographs, and varied cultural perspectives to shed light on the birthplace of modern Seattle. It reveals that Pioneer Square has always been a barometer of Seattle’s health and an incubator for trends that characterize the city today. In 1852, a group of settlers who had spent the winter on Alki Beach relocated to the east side of Elliott Bay and chose the only flat area along the shoreline for the first settlement in downtown Seattle, Pioneer Square. Called Djicjila'letc, "little crossing over place," by friendly Duwamish Indians, it was near the heart of their ancient homeland. By 1853, Henry Yesler’s steam-powered sawmill was processing and exporting timber from the densely forested hillsides. Other businesses sprang up near the mill, making Seattle the region's major commercial center and a magnet for workers and entrepreneurs. The assimilation of people of diverse ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds continues today, as one of Pioneer Square’s defining characteristics. After the Great Fire of 1889, Seattle rallied to build a modern city of brick and stone. Pioneer Square rose quickly from the ashes with elegant brick buildings that still give the area an architecturally harmonious feeling. The district formed the heart of the city upon the arrival of the Great Northern Railroad and during the Klondike Gold Rush. As the population exploded, city engineers scrambled to regrade steep hills and fill in tide flats to make them suitable for development. In the early twentieth century, overcrowded Pioneer Square burst at its seams: the downtown business district moved north, industries surged south onto reclaimed tide flats, and Chinatown and Japantown spread east into what is now the International District. As Pioneer Square deteriorated, a local minister dubbed it Skid Road, applying the name of the mill logslide (now Yesler Way) to people on the skids. The term later entered the national vernacular as a synonym for urban slum. From the late 1950s the neighborhood became a battleground between advocates of urban renewal and those who envisioned a restored district of handsome buildings, outdoor cafes, and an easy mingling of artists, merchants, and the down-and-out. Architects, gallery owners, activists, and many others recognized that Pioneer Square was not only a place of beautiful buildings, but a place of spirit as well. In 1971, the City of Seattle created the thirty-block Pioneer Square Historic District, the first designated landmark district in the city. In the ensuing decades the neighborhood, which never lost its Skid Road identity, became a vibrant center for the arts and a hub of regional transit, urban living, and professional sports.

Pioneer Square

Pioneer Square PDF Author: Mildred Tanner Andrews
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
This fascinating history weaves together first-person accounts, photographs, and varied cultural perspectives to shed light on the birthplace of modern Seattle. It reveals that Pioneer Square has always been a barometer of Seattle’s health and an incubator for trends that characterize the city today. In 1852, a group of settlers who had spent the winter on Alki Beach relocated to the east side of Elliott Bay and chose the only flat area along the shoreline for the first settlement in downtown Seattle, Pioneer Square. Called Djicjila'letc, "little crossing over place," by friendly Duwamish Indians, it was near the heart of their ancient homeland. By 1853, Henry Yesler’s steam-powered sawmill was processing and exporting timber from the densely forested hillsides. Other businesses sprang up near the mill, making Seattle the region's major commercial center and a magnet for workers and entrepreneurs. The assimilation of people of diverse ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds continues today, as one of Pioneer Square’s defining characteristics. After the Great Fire of 1889, Seattle rallied to build a modern city of brick and stone. Pioneer Square rose quickly from the ashes with elegant brick buildings that still give the area an architecturally harmonious feeling. The district formed the heart of the city upon the arrival of the Great Northern Railroad and during the Klondike Gold Rush. As the population exploded, city engineers scrambled to regrade steep hills and fill in tide flats to make them suitable for development. In the early twentieth century, overcrowded Pioneer Square burst at its seams: the downtown business district moved north, industries surged south onto reclaimed tide flats, and Chinatown and Japantown spread east into what is now the International District. As Pioneer Square deteriorated, a local minister dubbed it Skid Road, applying the name of the mill logslide (now Yesler Way) to people on the skids. The term later entered the national vernacular as a synonym for urban slum. From the late 1950s the neighborhood became a battleground between advocates of urban renewal and those who envisioned a restored district of handsome buildings, outdoor cafes, and an easy mingling of artists, merchants, and the down-and-out. Architects, gallery owners, activists, and many others recognized that Pioneer Square was not only a place of beautiful buildings, but a place of spirit as well. In 1971, the City of Seattle created the thirty-block Pioneer Square Historic District, the first designated landmark district in the city. In the ensuing decades the neighborhood, which never lost its Skid Road identity, became a vibrant center for the arts and a hub of regional transit, urban living, and professional sports.

Seeing Seattle

Seeing Seattle PDF Author: Roger Sale
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295973593
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
From the time that Roger Sale's interpretive historySeattle Past to Presentwas published in 1976 he has often served as an unofficial guide for friends and visitors to Seattle, and has also been asked by those who run professional tours for advice on how to view Seattle with fresh eyes. InSeeking Seattlehe invites the reader to join him in walking tours of the city in a collaborative process of looking, asking, and forming opinions and judgments. The book starts near where Seattle itself started and works out to the city limits in layers. In the first walk, the Pioneer Square area reveals through its buildings--many of them handsomely rehabilitated--how the city reestablished itself after the great fire of 1889. we are asked to observe and evaluate how new buildings and new uses have been combined with old ones, and how architects, builders, and planners have served this historical area. The same points are considered for the downtown business district, Pike Place Market, and other areas near the historic core of the city. We face the breathtaking downtown skyline form view points on Seattle's many hills, from points across the bay at Duwamish Head, and from Seward Park, which ash Seattle's largest stand of old-growth forest. What makes Seattle distinctively Seattle? Sale muses over this question as he walks through the older residential sections of Queen Anne Hill and Capitol Hill, with their mansions and near mansions. he traces the routes along Lake Washington Boulevard and the influence of the Olmsted brothers in shaping the social as well as the visual landscape of the city. He tours upscale neighborhoods with lake and sound views as well as working-class neighborhoods that owe their history and early growth to nearby mills and streetcar transportation. He visits the Chinatown/International District and the University of Washington, and learns to identify trees in Washington Park Arboretum and to recognize those trees elsewhere. He find the "enchanted house" where Mary McCarthy lived as a girl and the garden in which Theodore Roethke sought solitude among trees that "came closer with a denser shade." Sale and photographer Mary Randlett have worked together to integrate photographs closely with text and promote a view of Seattle in a context of new and old, landscapes and skyscrapers, neighborhood streets and remarkable vistas. Estimated times for each walk (or drive, in outlying areas) and bus route information are provided.

Seattle's Belltown

Seattle's Belltown PDF Author: Clark Humphrey
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738548166
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
When most of Seattles original founders settled at todays Pioneer Square, William Bell set up his own neighborhood a couple of miles up the waterfront. Bells Town grew in the early 20th century, when Seattle leveled the adjacent Denny Hill, and the newly flat regrade became a low-rent district of bars, hotels, and industry. In recent decades, Belltown has become one of the nations fastest growing urban neighborhoods with upscale condominium towers and fashionable restaurants. This new volume chroniclesin more than 200 imagesthe colorful history of this diverse and constantly changing area. Readers will enjoy early glimpses of such landmarks as the Seafair Torchlight Parade, the Seattle Center Monorail, the legendary Dog House, and the Edgewater Inn.

Distant Corner

Distant Corner PDF Author: Jeffrey Karl Ochsner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780295982380
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
It closes with the sudden collapse of Seattle's economy in the Panic of 1893 and the ensuing depression that halted the city's building boom, saw the closing of a number of architects' offices, and forever ended the dominance of Romanesque Revival in American architecture.".

Angry Housewives

Angry Housewives PDF Author: Chad Henry
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573681448
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
"Bored with their everyday lives and kept in insignificance by their boyfriends/husbands, these are four angry women. They try a number of outlets, but nothing suits until one of them strikes a chord on her guitar and suggests that they form a punk rock group to enter the upcoming talent show at the neighborhood punk club? Their group "The Angry Housewives," enter and win. This genial satire of contemporary feminism ran for ages in Seattle and has had numerous successful productions across the country."--Publisher.

Secret Seattle (Seattle Walk Report)

Secret Seattle (Seattle Walk Report) PDF Author: Susanna Ryan
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
ISBN: 1632173751
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Capturing the same charm and whimsy she brought to Seattle Walk Report, Instagram darling Susanna Ryan takes things a step further, revealing the forgotten history behind the people, places, and things that shaped Seattle. Cartoonist and creator of Seattle Walk Report, Susanna Ryan strolls on with a quirky new illustrated guide celebrating Seattle's historical treasures and outdoor wonders. In Secret Seattle, Ryan explores the weird and wonderful hidden history behind some of the city's most overlooked places, architecture, and infrastructure, from coal chutes in Capitol Hill, to the last remainder of Seattle's original Chinatown in Pioneer Square, to the best places in town to find century-old sidewalks. Discover pocket parks, beautiful boulevards, and great public gardens while learning offbeat facts that will make you see the Emerald City in a whole new way. Perfect for both the local history buff who never leaves a favorite armchair to a walking enthusiast looking for offbeat and off-the-beaten-path scavenger hunts.

Chief Seattle and the Town that Took His Name

Chief Seattle and the Town that Took His Name PDF Author: David M. Buerge
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
ISBN: 163217135X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This is the first thorough historical account of Chief Seattle and his times--the story of a half-century of tremendous flux, turmoil, and violence, during which a native American war leader became an advocate for peace and strove to create a successful hybrid racial community. When the British, Spanish, and then Americans arrived in the Pacific Northwest, it may have appeared to them as an untamed wilderness. In fact, it was a fully settled and populated land. Chief Seattle was a powerful representative from this very ancient world. Historian David Buerge has been researching and writing this book about the world of Chief Seattle for the past 20 years. Buerge has threaded together disparate accounts of the time from the 1780s to the 1860s--including native oral histories, Hudson Bay Company records, pioneer diaries, French Catholic church records, and historic newspaper reporting. Chief Seattle had gained power and prominence on Puget Sound as a war leader, but the arrival of American settlers caused him to reconsider his actions. He came to embrace white settlement and, following traditional native practice, encouraged intermarriage between native people and the settlers, offering his own daughter and granddaughters as brides, in the hopes that both peoples would prosper. Included in this account are the treaty signings that would remove the natives from their historic lands, the roles of such figures as Governor Isaac Stevens, Chiefs Leschi and Patkanim, the Battle at Seattle that threatened the existence of the settlement, and the controversial Chief Seattle speech that haunts to this day the city that bears his name.

Seattle, Past to Present

Seattle, Past to Present PDF Author: Roger Sale
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295746386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Roger Sale’s Seattle, Past to Present has become a beloved reflection of Seattle’s history and its possible futures as imagined in 1976, when the book was first published. Drawing on demographic analysis, residential surveys, portraiture, and personal observation and reflection, Sale provides his take on what was most important in each of Seattle’s main periods, from the city’s founding, when settlers built a city great enough that the railroads eventually had to come; down to the post-Boeing Seattle of the 1970s, when the city was coming to terms with itself based on lessons from its past. Along the way, Sale touches on the economic diversity of late nineteenth-century Seattle that allowed it to grow; describes the major achievements of the first boom years in parks, boulevards, and neighborhoods of quiet elegance; and draws portraits of people like Vernon Parrington, Nellie Cornish, and Mark Tobey, who came to Seattle and flourished. The result is a powerful assessment of Seattle’s vitality, the result of old-timers and newcomers mixing both in harmony and in antagonism. With a new introduction by Seattle journalist Knute Berger, this edition invites today's readers to revisit Sale’s time capsule of Seattle—and perhaps learn something unexpected about this ever-changing city.

Seattle's Streetcar Era

Seattle's Streetcar Era PDF Author: Michael Bergman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780874224078
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Seattle's first street railway opened in 1884, with two horses per streetcar. By 1899 ten companies operated trolleys and cable in the city--and hillside properties became prized building lots. A decade later, all but one were run by Seattle Electric Company, and their 103 million passenger ridership was equivalent to every Seattleite boarding a streetcar 435 times a year. Seattle voters approved municipal ownership in 1918, and the mayor issued bonds to fund the $15 million purchase. Bus routes and several line extensions followed, but the debt load and the Great Depression forced the system into disrepair, and the Seattle Municipal Railway converted to trolley and motor buses. Author Michael Bergman worked as a transit planner for Sound Transit and King County Metro Transit for more than 35 years. Through narrative, maps, and previously unpublished photographs, he delivers a detailed jaunt through Seattle's fascinating streetcar era.

Memory's Last Breath

Memory's Last Breath PDF Author: Gerda Saunders
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 9780316502603
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY NPR "For anyone facing dementia, [Saunders'] words are truly enlightening.... Inspiring lessons about living and thriving with dementia."---Maria Shriver, NBC's Today Show A "courageous and singular book" (Andrew Solomon), Memory's Last Breath is an unsparing, beautifully written memoir--"an intimate, revealing account of living with dementia" (Shelf Awareness). Based on the "field notes" she keeps in her journal, Memory's Last Breath is Gerda Saunders' astonishing window into a life distorted by dementia. She writes about shopping trips cut short by unintentional shoplifting, car journeys derailed when she loses her bearings, and the embarrassment of forgetting what she has just said to a room of colleagues. Coping with the complications of losing short-term memory, Saunders, a former university professor, nonetheless embarks on a personal investigation of the brain and its mysteries, examining science and literature, and immersing herself in vivid memories of her childhood in South Africa.