Colman Dock, Pier 52, now the Washington State Ferries terminal at the base of today's Columbia Street, was originally built by Scottish engineer James Colman in 1882 to service the growing regional s...
Piers 54, 55, and 56 are home to today's Ivar's Acres of Clams restaurant and the renowned Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. The Northern Pacific Railroad built the piers during the golden age of Seattle's mari...
Following the Great Fire of 1889, which consumed the harbor from Yesler's Wharf below Pioneer Square to as far north as University Street, the Northern Pacific Railroad rebuilt and extended over-water...
Pier 58, now Waterfront Park, was once the renowned Schwabacher's Wharf. It was built in 1902 and taken over in 1909 by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad ("Milwaukee Road"), the last of f...
The present site of the Seattle Aquarium was once a giant coal pier and the city's first commercial swimming beach (brrrr!). Both had disappeared by the late 1870s. A furniture mill and a succession o...
Piers 64, 65, and 66, including the Bell Street Pier and the Bell Harbor complex, are located south of Virginia Street and east of Belltown. The area was once a shantytown, home to mostly Native Ameri...
Seattle's oldest charity, the Seattle Children's Home originated as the Ladies' Relief Society in April 1884. The founding members intended "general benevolence and charity ... with special emphasis o...
Seattle Children's Theatre dates its birth to 1975, but it actually got its start in 1971 when the City of Seattle and the fundraising organization PONCHO together built Poncho Theatre at Seattle's Wo...
Since the City of Seattle was incorporated in 1869, city government has occupied various spaces, beginning with rented facilities all over town. Seattle's first City Hall, built in 1882, was located a...
This file contains an undated, unsigned letter describing what it was like working at Seattle City Light in the early years, around 1910. The letter is held in the Seattle Municipal Archives. It descr...
The Seattle General Strike began at 10 a.m. on February 6, 1919, and paralyzed the city for five days. Never before had the nation seen a labor action of this kind. Many in Seattle were expecting revo...
This is a history of Seattle Goodwill, a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1923. The organization provides employment training and basic education to individuals experiencing significant barr...
Early in the morning of May 7, 1906, Oregon mill worker George Mitchell spotted the man he had been looking for in Seattle since he had arrived from Portland on May 2. Franz Edmund Creffield was walki...
The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) was established in 1939 during the waning days of the Great Depression. It was inspired by New Deal legislation and brought to life largely through the tireless eff...
The 1960s brought a renaissance of sorts for the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), which had been established in 1939 and endured bleak years during the 1950s. In the Sixties different forms of federal...
The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) was founded in 1939 as part of a federal program to clear slums and create jobs by building housing for the poor. After the United States entered World War II, the ...
This is an interview with Al Levine, former deputy executive director of the Seattle Housing Authority, on lessons learned from the redevelopment of the authority's Holly Park project into the NewHoll...
In this interview, former Seattle mayor Charles Royer (b. 1939) discusses the housing crisis that faced older residents of Seattle in the early 1980s, and how the City of Seattle and the Seattle Housi...
In this interview Doris Koo, who oversaw Phase 1 redevelopment of the Holly Park project in South Seattle for the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), describes how changes in federal funding for public h...
In this interview, conducted by Dominic Black, Kristin O'Donnell, a Yesler Terrace resident -- and enthusiastic community activist -- since the early 1970s, recalls some of her Yesler Terrace neighbor...
In this interview, former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice (b. 1943) describes how one person's comments at a hearing on low-income housing helped him find his "true north" in relation to housing the homeless ...
In mid-1920 the Seattle Giants baseball club (previously also known as the Rainiers and the Purple Sox) became the Seattle Indians. After winning a pennant in 1924 the Indians began a slide that carri...
In 1939 and 1940, local ski clubs hosted indoor ski tournaments at Seattle's Civic Ice Arena (later Mercer Arena) that were sanctioned by the Pacific Northwestern Ski Association, making them a formal...
Seattle JazzED is a privately funded non-profit organization founded in 2010 and dedicated to providing an excellent music education to Seattle-area students regardless of their ability to pay. The st...