Paul Dorpat publishes first Now & Then column on January 17, 1982.

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On January 17, 1982, Seattle historian and photographer Paul Dorpat (b. 1938) publishes his first "Now & Then" column in The Seattle Times: Pacific Magazine. The column compares two photographs, "repeating" a view of downtown Seattle taken in 1919 at Pike Street and 4th Avenue with a view of the identically located but very different Pike Street and 4th Avenue taken in 1981. Dorpat's Now & Then column will become a Seattle institution as well known and loved as the Smith Tower or Ivar Haglund's Acres of Clams restaurants.

Each week for more than a thousand weeks (still running as of 2002) Dorpat compares Now with Then photographs of Seattle -- her streets, lakes, docks, buildings, bridges, hills, regrades, visitations, occasions. The photographs are accompanied by a genial and detailed reflection on their mutual but mutated subject.

On the occasion of his 1,000th column, Dorpat reflects on not two but three photographs: the first "Then" photo of Pike Street and 4th Avenue taken in 1919, his then "Now" photo taken in 1981, and a new "Now" photo taken in 2001. He writes:

"It is gratifying but not particularly draining to type out '1,000.' For a reporter with a daily beat, 1,000 articles may be delivered in a frantic four or five years. But for this weekly columnist my 1,000th article, and the 999 before it for that matter, have been approached at a more leisurely pace. It has taken about seven months short of two decades to creat a thousand 'Now and Thens.' Now thicker and grayer, I am moving at a more leisurely pace too. ...
"...[A] pleasure of this work has been my association with heritage groups and other historians. When I began my study of regional history in the early 1970s, the people who gave their full time to the subject could be counted on the right hand of a careless sawyer -- about 2. Now we are legion. ..." ("Batting a Thousand").

Paul Dorpat is the principal historian of this Website (www.historylink.org) and the author of several books and a video (Seattle Chronicle) on Seattle history.

Sources:
Paul Dorpat, "Batting a Thousand," The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine, June 3, 2001 (www.seattletimes.com); Paul Dorpat, Seattle: Now & Then Vols. 1, 2, and 3 (Seattle, Tartu Publications, 1984, 1989, 1997).

By Priscilla Long, June 04, 2001

Paul Dorpat (b. 1938), ca. 1982

Paul Dorpat (b. 1938) selling books at the University District Street Fair, May 2000
Photo by Priscilla Long