At our September meeting, Lorn Fant left quite an impression after introducing his atlantean effort to build an historical and explorable 3-D map of Seattle using ArcGIS technology. His project is still in its early stages, but it has the potential to significantly alter the way we view and experience history. Wishing to explore the possibilities, Lorn and I got together to discuss them. To start, we decided to create a short virtual tour of the area around Broadway and Denny in 1893. He built the map and I did the research.
As you can see in the preview image below, the visuals are pretty basic and pixelated. For now.
An early 3-D Model of Broadway and Denny in 1893, Courtesy Lorn Fant. (click image to start the tour)
That’s because the currently available topographical map was never meant to be viewed this close. Once we get a higher resolution copy of the basemap and better yet, access to more sophisticated tools, we can start recreating the area in much greater detail. That’s the pipe dream. For now though this our first crack at it.
A brief primer on Seattle’s early street naming and numbering system
In a word, it was chaos. You can read all about it in the 1890 article from the Seattle PI pictured below. For our purposes though, Harvard Street was Villard Street and Denny Way was Depot Street back in 1893. Also, what is now the 100 block of Broadway East was the 1700 block back in 1893. Otherwise, some structures didn’t even have a number.
And if you made it this far, here’s the link to the 3-D Story map again in case you missed it above: https://arcg.is/01amm8