User:Jmabel/Seattle street photography by Guy Scott circa 1917-1920

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University of Washington Library Special Collections has an enormous collection of old Seattle photographs, most of which have been digitized (some at high resolution, most only in the range of about 0.5 megapixels). Of these, User:BMacZero has uploaded thousands that are in the public domain, and I (Joe Mabel, on Commons as User:Jmabel) have been categorizing these and adding further descriptions; much of what I've worked out has fed back to the UW Library's own database and site. The prior level of curation of these photos on the UW Library site varies: in general, I've been able either to add significant information or correct outright errors (dates, locations, even subject matter) on about 20% of the thousands of images I've now studied.

https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/seattle/id/4495 We can date this image (taken, like so many others, on the west side of Second Avenue, looking north at the crosswalk at Union Street. There's an ad on the streetcar: "All-star vaudeville / 10 great acts / from all [illegible] / Friday evening May 11/ 50¢ to $1.50 / [illegible]" so if the estimated year is anything like correct this has to be 1917.

Among the items in the collection are about 150 photos taken by Guy Scott in Downtown Seattle and on the waterfront circa 1917-1920. This doesn't count his many images of parades, etc.: this is straight-out "street photography." Most of these had minimal metadata on the UW Library site: that they were taken by Guy Scott in that timeframe, and a description along the lines of "women crossing a street in Downtown Seattle." I've been going through these and for most I've been able to pin down the location (or, in some cases, correct an incorrect location). For a few, I could even narrow the date. I've also, in some cases, identified interesting subject matter beyond just people walking down a street, and for a handful I've been able to show that they are flopped left-right.

This page (currently work in progress) is an attempt to sum up what I've found. I will be passing all of this back to my contact at the UW Library, and I hope much of what I've worked out makes it on to their site as well.

Going through these I noticed a few things, some of which were helpful in working out locations of the photos. (1) Guy Scott had a good eye. There pictures here add up to a very interesting portrait of the people of a particular American city at a particular date. A few people obviously were not thrilled he was taking their picture but, hey, that's one of the characteristics of this sort of street photography. (2) Scott was not an early riser, or if he was then he had something else to do with his mornings. As a result, to keep the light at his back, his camera is typically aimed north or east. (3) He liked to pick a spot and do a lot of shooting from the one location, and he shot with a pretty wide aperture. These photos don't end up producing as much of a picture of the physical structure of the city as they do of the people. There are relatively large numbers of photos of a relatively few locations, because he clearly found those good places to shoot; his rather wide aperture meant that often signs behind the people are not in focus and cannot easily be read. Nonetheless, in the following, I'm classifying them in terms of location, because that's my expertise. Someone else could probably have a nice go at these in terms of the fashions of the era.

Known locations[edit]

Among the largest groups in those terms was shot on the west side of Second Avenue, looking north at the crosswalk at Union Street, toward what was then the block-long Bon Marché department store occupying several buildings on Second Avenue. Some of these were misidentified on the UW Library's site as being at Second and Pine (the other end of the store) but that would entail the camera pointing west. Enough of these show enough background (e.g. the New Washington Hotel, now Josephinum, at Second and Stewart) that we can absolutely say these are at Union looking north, and if you look at the tram tracks (and, in particular a few paving bricks that were at odd angles due to the tram tracks) it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that the others are all in the same spot.

Here and below, I'm providing the UW Libraries source URLs for the photos to help their librarian be able to use this information efficiently.

There are also a large number of images looking north on the east side of Second Avenue. I've done my best here to arrange these south to north, starting around Madison Street.

And a few taken on the west side of the Second, also all looking north. These are all taken just south of Piper & Taft Sporting Goods, 1117 Second Avenue; their sign is visible. Savoy Hotel visible at right.

There are a number of photos looking eastward on Pike from the crosswalk on the south side Third Avenue. I had to look at these quite a bit before I worked it out. Partly that was because the photo that best pins down the location was flopped left-right on the UW Library website:

  • https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/seattle/id/4547 showed this, which had me thinking first of the Prefontaine Building south of Yesler, but it didn't quite fit until I realized…
    https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/seattle/id/4547
    showed this, which had me thinking first of the Prefontaine Building south of Yesler, but it didn't quite fit until I realized…
  • … that the image is really like this, and that is the Northern Bank and Trust Building, still around as the Seaboard Building, on the east side of what was then the south terminus of Westlake Avenue and is now Westlake Park, at Fourth and Pike.
    … that the image is really like this, and that is the Northern Bank and Trust Building, still around as the Seaboard Building, on the east side of what was then the south terminus of Westlake Avenue and is now Westlake Park, at Fourth and Pike.
You can see the later Owl Drug Co. store on the north side of Pine Street in this circa 1922 photo of Frederick & Nelson.

Once I worked that out, I could make sense of these. There must have been an Owl Drug Co. store at the southeast corner of Third and Pike prior to the one that opened up at the end of 1918 or beginning of 1919 in the Silverstone Building, a flatiron building that was just west of Frederick and Nelson (now Nordstrom) in the triangle between Westlake Avenue and Fifth Avenue, just north of Pine Street. The two locations are so close together that it seems unlikely they were open at the same time, so these photos are probably all in the first half of the 1917-1920 window for the set.

Anyway, all of the following look eastward on Pike from the crosswalk on the south side Third Avenue:

Looking east on the south side of Pine Street; crosswalk in foreground crosses Third Avenue. That's Sherman Clay Co. (piano shop) on the southeast corner of Third and Pike; they would soon move to Fourth Avenue between Pine and Stewart, and remain there for almost a century. In most of these, the Frederick & Nelson store (now Nordstrom) at Fifth and Pine is visible at left.

A block west of that, at Second and Pine, also looking east, we have MacDougall and Southwick on the southeast corner:

Three images here of a toy store window pretty much have to be on the southeast corner of Third Avenue and Stewart Street. In all but File:Window shoppers outside a toy store, Seattle, ca 1917-ca 1920 (SEATTLE 4397).jpg, the 1916 Seattle Times Building (a flatiron building still extant 2020 as Times Square Building) is visible at left. It looks like that is seen through a second window, not in reflection, and given the way the light falls, especially in File:Soldier with pipe window shopping alongside a woman and child and little girl at a toy store, Seattle, ca 1917-ca 1920 (SEATTLE 4361).jpg it has to be the south side of the Times Building. So this is taken standing on the east side of Third Avenue just south of Stewart Street, what would later be the northeast corner of the 1929 Bon Marché flagship store, later Macy's.

The Lyon Building at Third and James, and other nearby buildings.

There are a number of examples of Scott's street photography along the waterfront south of Downtown:

There are a few for which we only seem to have one or two photos Scott took at a particular location.

Unknown locations[edit]

This batch are all one location, but I haven't been able to pin down where; presumably looking north on a Downtown avenue:

Some of these are probably hopeless (where all we can see in the background is a trolley and maybe a bit of a roofline), but in theory we could still work out the rest of these.

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