Keyword(s): smith tower
The words below are from a diary kept by Roswell K. Doughty, a U.S. Army reserve officer about to fight in the war in Korea. Doughty writes vividly about leaving his wife, El, and three children in Ne...
A look at Seattle area businesses in 1900 indicates that the economy was simpler, life less complicated, labor harder, travel slower, and that opportunities to enhance one's quality of life were rarer...
James W. Clise arrived in Seattle the day after the great fire of 1889 had burned down the business district. He promptly founded a real estate company, launching a career that made him one of the mos...
William Cumming, a leading artist in the Pacific Northwest School, called himself "The Willie Nelson of Northwest Painting." His brilliant career as a painter was interwined with politics and interrup...
Some may have been born into show business, but for Fredric Danz, it's more accurate to say that he was born into the business of shows. The son of pioneer Seattle film exhibitor John Danz (d. 1961),...
A common image of the Ku Klux Klan depicts robed and hooded white men in the post-Civil War South, nightriders on horseback, burning crosses and terrorizing freed black slaves and anyone who dared sup...
Multi-instrumentalist musician Zona Lillian McConnell was a music teacher in King and Snohomish counties for decades, nurturing the talents of generations of students. She and her husband Dennis moved...
The North Cascades Smokejumper Base, at its present location outside Winthrop in Okanogan County's Methow Valley, dates officially to 1945, when it became the fifth smokejumping base officially establ...
The Northern Clay Company in Auburn, later purchased and operated under the name Gladding McBean, was a major producer of architectural terra cotta for the Seattle and Pacific Northwest markets during...
First settled in 1852, Pioneer Square encompasses the birthplace of modern Seattle and its first downtown. Most of the Square's buildings were erected within a decade of the disastrous Great Fire of J...
When Seattle's pyramid-capped Smith Tower officially opened on July 4, 1914, its greatest claim to fame was its 462-foot height. It was originally one of the tallest buildings in the country outside o...
At the turn of the twentieth century Seattle's medical community was largely dominated by hospitals run by religious orders and small, infirmary-type hospitals. When Dr. Nils A. Johanson arrived from ...
Five years before June 15, 1916, when Boeing Airplane Model 1, also known as the Bluebill, flew for the first time, Takayuki Takasow (sometimes spelled Takasou) was the first person to build and ...
The Spokesman-Review is Spokane's major daily newspaper, with roots that stretch back to The Spokane Falls Review, established in 1883 and The Spokesman, established in 1890. These rival papers consol...
On October 20, 1910, the City of Seattle issues a permit to build a 36-story steel frame and concrete office building at the northeast corner of 2nd Avenue and Yesler Way. It will be completed in 1914...
On July 4, 1914, the 462-foot-high Smith Tower, located in downtown Seattle, is officially opened by its owner, Burns Lyman Smith (1880-1941). Located at 506 2nd Avenue, the building has taken three a...
On July 18, 1914, aviator Silas Christofferson (1890-1916) performs a variety of stunts during the summer Potlatch celebration. War had just broken out in Europe following the June 28 assassination of...
On July 31, 1922, a patent application drawn up by Seattle attorney Richard J. Cook (1881?-1946) is filed with the U.S. Patent Office in an effort to establish legal protection for an invention by Bre...
On November 6, 1926, Queen Marie of Romania (1875-1938) rededicates Samuel Hill's Peace Arch in Blaine on the border of the United States and Canada. (The arch had been dedicated twice before, in 1921...
On April 8, 1964, William Ivey (1919-1992) marks his debut as a painter working in the Abstract Expressionist style at his first one-man show at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). The exhibition features 3...
On the sunny Friday afternoon of July 21, 1972, the Mayor's Arts Festival '72 presents a performance by a zany local theatrical collective called the One Reel Vaudeville Show. The festival itself had ...
On May 19, 1976, Ivar Haglund (1905-1985), the restaurateur famed for his escapades, folk singing, storytelling, and waterfront restaurant, buys Seattle's Smith Tower for $1.8 million. He buys it beca...