Pacific Northwest Historians Guild 2010 Conference

We seem to have missed the call for papers, but the program for this year’s Pacific Northwest Historians Guild conference has been announced.  The theme of the conference, “A Time for Reconsideration,” which will take place on March 5, 2010 at the Museum of History & Industry, is on trails and treaties in the Pacific Northwest.  Full program description is available here.

Name Those Men!

James E. Bradford with two unidentified men

With our own Flickr Commons site still in the offing, what better way to while away a Friday afternoon than to try to identify who is in this photograph and what are they doing?

Since another election day is just around the corner (remember to vote!), here is one of the eight loose photographs we discovered while cataloging the James E. Bradford scrapbooks last fall.  If you compare the image from his election flier, you will see that one of these men is an older version of Bradford (sorry for the low resolution scans).  The rest is up to you!

Mystics among us

A few months ago, Nicolette Bromberg (Visual Materials Curator @ UW Special Collections) brought in a collection of photographs from Richard M. Kovak of the Nile Shrine Center in Mountlake Terrace, Washington. The collection documents the membership and activities of Seattle Shriners (members of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Nile Temple).

According to the history on the Nile Shrine website, the AAONMS (an offshoot of Freemasonry) was “originally established [in 1872] to provide fun and fellowship for its members.” The Nile Temple of Seattle was formed by splitting off from the Afifi Temple of Tacoma in 1908; the following photograph was probably taken around that time.

Officers of Seattle

In elaborate costumes, these Shriners certainly appear to be enjoying fun and fellowship!

A major portion of the collection consists of member portraits, many of them identified. In most portraits, the member wears a fez hat which is decorated with the title of that member’s role or office, such as “Recorder” and “Potentate.” There is also a series of panoramic group photographs which show how membership and customs changed over the first half of the twentieth century.

Later snapshots collected in photo albums show the Shriners’ social and community activities, such as their participation in the children’s hospitals they fund, visits to schools, and their appearances in local parades, often dressed in homemade costumes of “Disnay” characters like Pinocchio and Mickey Mouse.

The collection is unprocessed and unsorted, but a preliminary finding aid is available.

Whitman Sampler

Ah, the approaching end of the old year and the beginning of a new one naturally can lead one to be reflective.

One of the very last items to be cataloged during 2009 (statistically speaking, that is) definitely provoked a few moments of introspection on my part.  In reviewing a spreadsheet listing several hundred (!) Special Collections items that needed cataloging attention, I was bemused upon coming across the title, “Whitman in Fiction,” that my immediate thought was “Marcus?” rather than “Walt!”  Very embarrassing for an English major.  Or maybe I just need a vacation.

With that title now handily (re)cataloged (thanks to a massive assist from Jessie), I began to ponder over whether or not I could come up with any suitably esoteric connection between Walt Whitman and the Pacific Northwest for this blog. Taking up that (unsolicited) challenge, I suddenly was reminded of a certain Levi’s commercial that has been shown incessantly in movie theaters over the past several months.  I think you know the one I mean.  It features a quick series of shots of a succession of attractive, but unkempt, youths cavorting in what, even to this infrequent visitor to the Rose City, appear to be some recognizable Portland area locations, while an actor (Will Geer) reads parts of the famous Whitman poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers!, on the soundtrack.

Further investigation reveals that the commercial is indeed the work of Portland-based advertising agency, Weiden + Kennedy, as part of new ad campaign for the denim giant that has sparked considerable online chatter (for a representative example, you could go here).

If you haven’t come across this commercial yet, I”ll leave it up to you to decide for yourselves whether you find it riveting or annoying:

Or perhaps you may prefer to read a book.  Whether it’s on your Kindle, or if you choose to venture into the Special Collections Division (where regular hours resume on Monday, January 4, 2010), a wealth of material (even the work of Walt Whitman) awaits your reading pleasure.  To paraphrase Walt, may those particular “sources and rills of the Northwest” indeed prove to be inexhaustible in 2010.

Happy new year!

Last Minute Gift Ideas, Circa 1908?

Lowman & Hanford Company booksellers store interior, circa 1908

Hour 2 on the Service Desk and only a few creatures are stirring.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Image credit: Order no. SEA1809, Seattle Photograph Collection.

Surfacing detritus in the archives

Back in March, I reported on our “Shifty Business” of moving offsite holdings to a new warehouse. Naturally, such a move caused many mysteries and forgotten projects to surface, one of which is the set of discards from the Luke S. May Papers. The papers of this prominent Seattle detective have been accessible only by permission of May’s heirs since their donation in 1969; read more about “America’s Sherlock Holmes” in this HistoryLink article.

In 2004, a volunteer removed “evidence objects” and deteriorating photographic negatives from May’s case files and segregated these into six boxes of discards, but no further action was taken to remove the items from the collection. After our warehouse move, rather than simply assign new space to the discards, Special Collections’ staffer Nan Cohen has taken on the project of reviewing and attempting to deal with this “detritus” appropriately. I first learned of Nan’s task when she stopped by my desk one day to casually complain about the smelly negatives and crumbling “evidence” she was handling, including “a murder weapon.” Sure enough, among the files of discards she had found a rusty pocketknife wrapped in a crumpled sheet of paper.  But is the “rust” actually something more sinister? We leave that to your imagination.

Evidence object weeded from the Luke S. May Papers, Accession No. 1299-001

All in a day’s work at UW Special Collections Division!

Bridges and Bradford

Birds-eye view of Harbor Island and the East Waterway, Seattle, circa 1915

Robert Bridges and James E. Bradford were Seattle activists and politicians in the first decades of the twentieth century. Bradford was a Progressive; Bridges was a Democrat and later a Populist.  Both were strong advocates of government ownership of public utilities.

Bradford was a lawyer who became the city’s Corporation Counsel in 1911. In addition to being a proponent of the municipal ownership of utilities, he tried to enforce the minimum wage, which seems to have made him rather unpopular with the Seattle business interests. He fought and lost a hard election with Hugh Caldwell, who later became the mayor of Seattle, for the position in 1916. The same year he ran for governor on the Progressive party ticket, and two years later he ran for mayor of Seattle. Bradford later returned to his legal practice, and, among other things, acted as counsel for the Port of Seattle. During the Great Depression, he held state directorships for several New Deal programs.

The UW Special Collections Division has collections of Bradford’s letters and scrapbooks. Most of these materials are from his time as Corporation Counsel. They include newspaper clippings, election ephemera, as well as drafts of speeches, articles, and letters about women’s suffrage, minimum wage, the Municipal League of Washington, and public utilities.

Bob Bridges was a Scottish miner, turned shop-keeper, turned farmer, turned politician. A union organizer during his stint in the coal mines of Black Diamond, Bridges remained adamantly pro-labor and highly controversial.  He was a stout proponent of the public ownership of rail and harbor facilities throughout his political career.  Bridges was elected the state’s Land Commissioner in 1896 after turning down a free ticket from the railroads and walking to Ellensburg for the convention. He became a Port Commissioner when the Commission was formed in 1911.  Like Bradford, he was unpopular in many quarters.  He earned a great deal of enmity for his unwavering opposition to the Harbor Island scheme.  This plan involved the construction of a large harbor terminal to be operated at a profit by a private company using a mix of public and private funds.  Bridges opposed the project so vehemently that he refused to certify Port decisions in the matter, and had to be removed from his office as the Port Commission’s Secretary, according to then Port President Hiram Chittenden (of Ballard Locks fame).  The Seattle Times and the P-I vociferously criticized the Commission and called for Bridges’ resignation. Unfortunately for the plan’s backers, the plan fell apart, since the man claiming to represent the company that was to build and manage the terminal had only just managed to quit before he could be fired.  After Bridges resigned from the Commission in 1919,  he unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1920, as part of the newly formed (and seemingly short-lived) Farmer-Labor party.  Bridges died a year later.

We have four scrapbooks from Robert Bridges. The Bridges scrapbooks include newspaper clippings from his time in politics, which refer to him, public utilities, and harbor facilities. One of his scrapbooks was made out of an old business ledger, sections of which are still visible.

Submitted by Jessie

Image credits:

Bird’s eye view of Harbor Island, Seattle postcard collection (PH Coll 798); Digital Collections order number SEA2156

Election ephemera, circa 1912, James E. Bradford scrapbooks (F899.S453 B73 1899), Box [3], Folder 2

Letter of recommendation from Bradford in support of Robert Bridges as Collector of Customs, 1914, Seattle Port Commission records (Acc. 4230-001), Box 4, folder30

Election Day

Robert Bridges scrapbooks volume three

Just a brief reminder to get your ballot in and a preview of sorts of coming attractions.

By coincidence (or is it?) some recently cataloged scrapbooks from the Pacific Northwest Collection have provided a window into the frequently rough and tumble world of early twentieth century Seattle politics.

Stay tuned for some of these stories, the possible appearance of yet another new blogger, as well as the return of a familiar voice.

Seattle Archives Fair: Part Two

Seattle Archives Fair 2009

PNW Blog paid a flying visit last Friday to the Archives Fair, which was held for the first time in the dramatic setting provided by SPL’s Central Library.  By all accounts, the event was even better attended than usual this year and deemed a real success.  Kudos to the organizers and all participants!  And come back soon, Hannah!

Seattle Archives Fair

As previously mentioned, the annual Seattle Archives Fair, sponsored by the Seattle Area Archivists, will take place this Friday, October 30th, 2009, on level 10 of the Seattle Public Library’s Central Branch.  Archivists from a wide range of local repositories will available to answer your questions and share information about the holdings of their institutions.

Representing the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections Division at this year’s event will be Hannah Palin, who will focus on our archival moving image collections.   The fair runs from 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM.  Directions and additional information is available on the SPL Web site.