RedFin just posted a blog entry about archival photos of Seattle. Cool! I’ve previously posted about the Washington State Archive photos (see here and here), but hadn’t heard of the Seattle Municipal Archives before. Just checked it out.
There’s nothing showing our house directly, but as we have the West Queen Anne Playfield just across the street, they have a bunch of photos that show our house (albeit small). Here’s a sample - for all of them, see the Seattle Municipal Archives Photograph Collection
| 1965 http://tinyurl.com/3q2kva |
Jan 26, 1968 http://tinyurl.com/6hwhxk |
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If you notice on the top of these pictures, there’s a community center across the street. There are some awesome pictures from the late 1930s during the Works Progress Administration construction of said community center (or shelter, as they called it then)
| Dec 21, 1936 http://tinyurl.com/3pvdpr |
Mar 24, 1937 http://tinyurl.com/4kx2t5 |
Mar 24, 1937 http://tinyurl.com/3stwdj |
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Also, I found the Sherwood Park History Files, which has a pretty cool pdf of the old plans for the playfield - see http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/QueenAnnePF.pdf for it in all of the full glory.
And for final good measure, here’s a 1938 view of Queen Anne Ave (the main street by us) just a block or two from our house (i.e. right in front of Blaine):
| 1938 http://tinyurl.com/6elhdl |
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I love this old stuff - can you notice I am not working yet? Spending 15-20 minutes at a time surfing the web, and this is what I end up with :)
Related posts
In a previous post, I mentioned ordering an historic photo of our house. (along with, of course, my posts on sketch drawings of the place.)
We finally got in the photograph of our house, from back in 1938 (and yes, it’s got for-sale signs in the window - it sold for 800 bucks that year. Quite a bargain!)
It’s amazing how similar they look (click for larger views)
And yes, that tree got much much taller, so for the angular view, it’s pretty dominating right now. In addition, notice the deck that wraps around the house that was put in during the 1980s.
Related posts
I love when people having historic photos of their houses up as artwork, so I decided to search for the information on they got these (so we can have one too…)
http://www.raincityguide.com/2007/04/14/historic-photos-of-your-seattle-home/
has all of the info. Sending an email to them now.
Update, February 18, 2008: Pictures are now in (actually they came a while ago, but just posting today).
Related posts
Zillow.com recently started posting neighborhood demographic reviews (based off of US Census data). Interesting reading through them for all of the places I’ve lived to see how they compare to the type of person I was at the time. Pretty close, for the most part; I guess it’s true that people live by people like them.
In order:
- Oak Park, MI (very, very young) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/MI-Oak-Park-neighbors
- Southfield, MI (lived until high school) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/MI-Southfield-neighbors
- West Bloomfield, MI (high school) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/MI-West-Bloomfield-neighbors
- St. Louis, MO (”the college”) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/MO-Clayton-neighbors
- Redmond, WA (”the apartment”) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Redmond-neighbors
- Downtown Seattle (”the steps”) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Seattle/Downtown-neighbors
- Eastlake, Seattle (”the condo”) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Seattle/Eastlake-neighbors
- Queen Anne, Seattle (”the house”) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Seattle/West-Queen-Anne-neighbors
I’ll use this to read through these more and come up with some uber-analysis in the future, but for now, seemed like it was a good way to save away the full links.
