Photo by Flickr user ScottSchrantz

Photo by Flickr user ScottSchrantz

"Princess Angeline" was the daughter of Chief Sealth, for whom Seattle was named. The princess lived in this shack by the Seattle waterfront until her death in 1896. This photo is from 1890.

From: pauldorpat.com/?p=3545

From the Seattle P-I

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, HistoryLink has published a book on the fair, which is coming out next week. The Seattle Times gives it a positive review.

Benjamin Lukoff, of Seattle History Examiner, brings the story that another old building might be lost. This time it’s the Bon Marche stables in Belltown, the last old horse stables left in downtown. It’s an old wooden building, and kind of a miracle that it hasn’t burnt down sometime in the last hundred years. It was declared a historic landmark recently, but that doesn’t afford any kind of protection again demolition, and the owners of the building have made the case that it would cost too much to renovate and reuse it.

More from Seattle Post-Globe and belltownpeople, who calls it a ripe box of kindling and wants it gone sooner than later.

The first stretch of the Seattle light rail system is almost open. Last week a special run was made for the press, going all the way from downtown to the end of the line and back. The Stranger’s Dominic Holden was on board, and provided probably the only news report from the event to include cussing.

The Analysis: Light rail has arrived. And it is fucking great.

One thing I didn’t know until I read that article is that when the light rail opens next month, it won’t go all the way to the airport. The end of the line will be at the Tukwila station, about two miles from the main SeaTac terminal. That last stretch of track is still being worked on and won’t be ready until December, leaving you to take a shuttle bus the rest of the way. Seems like they should have made it a priority to open the whole line at once, but maybe they tried and it just didn’t happen.

I can’t wait to ride it, and I wish they could build this stuff faster so that all the other branches could be open before the end of next decade.

Today is the 120th anniversary of Seattle’s Great Fire. On June 6, 1889, a pot of glue burst into flame, and managed to burn through the building, the block, and half the town. It was kind of a big moment for Seattle, because although it was a terrible event it did lead to the citizens of the town coming together. Many of the brick buildings that were built to replace the wooden ones that burned, especially in Pioneer Square, are still standing today.

It’s good to know Seattle isn’t solely in the business of tearing down old buildings. Some of them get saved, and remodeled for new uses even. My Ballard brings details of the Kolstrand Building, which is about to undergo such a change. And just recently Vintage Seattle took a close look at an old firehouse in Ballard that is now a restaurant. Kudos to the developers that are willing to do the right thing.

Photo by Josh Trujillo

It was a great idea to tie a bunch of balloons to Edith Macefield’s house as a promotion for the Pixar movie “Up“. Edith’s house is the perfect real-life representation of the decades-old image that inspired Up, the tiny little house surround by huge skyscrapers. So why not tie up the balloons and try to bring the movie to life?

Two reasons, apparently. First, you’re never going to get enough balloons to match the cartoonishly exaggerated amount from the movie. So it’s going to look weak by comparison no matter what. And second, real life has wind, and real balloons pop when they hit things, leading to half the balloons being popped, which only brought more attention to the first reason.

So, good idea, bad execution. Like so many things in life.

photo by Flickr user manthropologist

The globe on top of the Seattle P-I offices was a hot topic earlier this year. When it was announced that the newspaper would be shutting down, it seemed like more people were concerned about the future of the globe than of the newspaper itself. In the end the P-I decided to live on as a web-only publication and keep its headquarters, so the globe was granted a reprieve. But that’s not necessarily the end of the story. The new P-I could still end up failing at its new mission, or decide to move into offices with lower overhead, and the globe’s fate would suddenly be right back where it was in February.

That’s why the globe has been added to the 2009 list of the state’s Most Endangered Historic Properties, put out by the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation. Being on a list like this doesn’t really mean much. I can think of a few structures on Nevada’s list that are gone regardless. But it raises awareness and keeps the conversation going, and at the very least it lets the parent company of the P-I know that we the people like having the globe around, and would appreciate if they put some effort into making it stay around.

So who knows. The globe could be on top of that building for 20 more years, or it could be scrapped next week, or it could be donated to MOHAI sometime in the next 2-5 years. It’s all possible, but hopefully they get the message that Option #2 is the one we don’t want.