Parking meter, 1951,
originally uploaded by Seattle Municipal Archives.
I stumbled onto this fascinating essay about life on Capitol Hill in the 1950s inspired by the writer’s discovery of the “I grew up on Capitol Hill’ Facebook group. The names and the stories have so much color — it’s a good lesson to go find out the names of those people in the world around you so you can write quality history later. The essay is also a lesson in how quickly the Hill’s culture has changed while providing prologue for the family-friendliness of today’s northern Capitol Hill with its mommy and daddies and daddies and daddies and mommies and mommies. There is also a taste of the clubbiness that still can pervade some Capitol Hill streets.
We did a lot of the things our classmates did: bought penny candy at the same mom-and-pop stores, took 25 cents to the Roycroft Theater every Saturday afternoon for a program that included a serial, a newsreel, a cartoon and a feature film; built wooden hydroplanes and tied them to the back of our bikes for our own versions of the Gold Cup Races run on Lake Washington. We sometimes went to the original Red Mill on Friday night with our aunt and uncle so we could have fish and chips and not have to go home to a kitchen that smelled like fried fish.
We went to the Friday night social dancing classes when we were in seventh and eight grades, and stood on one side of the hall while the St. Joe’s boys were on the other. I can still remember a couple of Jack Reilly’s sequence of steps and calls from that 7th-grade square dance class where they partnered us up with the boys by marching us in intersecting lines.
Now tihs is “traditional” Capitol Hill. Not what most people claim is traditional Capitol Hill on this blog when they think the neighborhood is turning into Bellevue.
There are lots of traditional Capitol Hills.
Mine is Cal Anderson Park, sucking WiFi at Oddfellows and a waffle from VPC. Instant yuppie nostalgia.
I especially like how in these short history stories, they refer to 18th and Aloha as the epicenter of Capitol Hill. So few would agree nowadays, but back then high density meant you had a house with a big family in it (as opposed to a building like Joule), and the density followed topography, as mansions did. Also an interesting peek into how much more important the local churches seem to have been to those larger families. No one within 5 miles of Capitol Hill would dare have ten kids now. The lost theatre on 19th is especially intriguing.
When were 520, I-90 and I-5 completed…? And how much did it shift the epicenter, I wonder…
My traditional Capitol Hill spans from Piecora’s (2 decades back) to the PinkZone to my friend’s house on Prospect to the QFC on 15th. So, 12th & John might have been the epicenter in my youth?