Special Collections
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How the Library Preserves and Promotes Seattle’s History
There are more than 100,000 items in The Seattle Public Library’s Special Collections. The Hugh and Jane Ferguson Seattle Room, on Level 10 of the Central Library, houses extensive collections of photographs, postcards, city documents, news articles, and maps. There are oral histories from Seattle residents, menus from notable restaurants, yearbooks from Seattle schools, works by… Continue reading
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Explore Pacific Northwest History with Newly Digitized Photographs
More than 500 new historic photographs from our Northwest Photograph Collection are now available through our digital collections. These photographs feature images of Washington, Oregon and Alaska spanning from the late 1800s to the 1970s and include shots from prominent local photographers such as Asahel Curtis, Webster & Stevens and Frank Jacobs. We’ve rounded up… Continue reading
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Covid-19 Community Collection
Are you interested in helping the Library’s Special Collections Department document history? Please consider contributing to our new Covid-19 Community Collection! We are asking you to tell us (and show us) how the events of the past few months have impacted you. We are looking for stories, photographs, signs, artwork, short videos and other materials… Continue reading
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Arthur C. Pillsbury Photograph Collection
Interested in seeing panoramic photos of Seattle and Alaska at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush? We recently digitized 197 photographs taken by Arthur C. Pillsbury between approximately 1896 and 1900, documenting the Gold Rush and scenes from California, Oregon and Washington. The collection includes a mixture of photograph sizes, many of them panoramic… Continue reading
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Donald Schmechel Oral History Collection
October is American Archives Month and we are celebrating with the completion of a new digital collection: the Donald Schmechel Oral History Collection. Donald Schmechel was a Seattle Public Library board member who, in the 1980s, created a project to interview prominent figures in Pacific Northwest History. Schmechel raised funding for the project, volunteered his… Continue reading
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New Digital Collection Highlights Lives of Seattle Pioneers
This month we’ve launched a new digital collection which reveals a glimpse into the personal lives of some of Seattle’s early pioneers. The Lu Jacobson Collection of Latimer and Denny Family Material includes materials focusing on Alexander Latimer, his wife Sarah Chesney Latimer and their five daughters: Narcissa Latimer Denny, Eliza Alice Latimer Fowler, Harriet… Continue reading
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New to our digital collections: Seattle’s Town Crier Newspaper
We’ve just added over 1,200 issues from Seattle’s local arts periodical, The Town Crier, to our digital collections. The Town Crier was a weekly magazine focusing on Seattle’s news, arts and culture between 1910 and 1938. Over its lifetime, the paper included coverage of the work of individuals such as Frank Kunishige, Edward S. Curtis, Ella… Continue reading
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New to our Digital Collections: Seattle Mail and Herald
Want to explore Seattle headlines from over 100 years ago? Take a look at our new Seattle Mail and Herald digital collection. The Mail and Herald was a weekly paper discussing the city’s news, politics, society events, entertainment and more. The paper included articles on topics such as Seattle’s regrades, the Alaskan Gold Rush, the… Continue reading
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Home for the Holidays
Have you ever wanted to explore the history behind some of Seattle’s unique bungalow homes? This month we launched a new digital collection featuring the iconic Bungalow Magazine that lets you do just that. Bungalow Magazine was published in Seattle between 1912 and 1918 and features homes constructed in the Puget Sound region and other… Continue reading
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New Ways to Research Neighborhood History
Curious to learn more about your neighborhood’s past? This month, we’ve added a great new resource to our Neighborhood History Project – The Northwest Subject Index Collection. This collection contains selected cards from the Seattle Room Northwest Subject Index and Post-Intelligencer Index. These cards contain citations which point to books, newspaper articles and archival collections… Continue reading
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Lady Librarians of Seattle
2016 marks the 125th anniversary of The Seattle Public Library. After it was adopted as a department of the city in 1890, the Library opened its first reading room in Pioneer Square on April 8, 1891. To honor this milestone, we will be posting a series of articles here about the Library’s history and life in… Continue reading
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Yuletide Cheer from the Archives
~posted by Jade D. In the library’s digital collections, we have a wealth of materials (from photographs and postcards to artwork and newspapers) which give a glimpse into Christmas celebrations of the past. Continue reading
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Frank A. Kunishige and the Seattle Camera Club
This month at the Central Library, we are opening an exciting new exhibit dedicated to Frank A. Kunishige, a noted Pictorialist photographer and one of the first members of the internationally recognized Seattle Camera Club. The exhibit features a selection of 33 textura tissue photographs, donated in 1961 by Kunishige’s wife, Gin. The prints represent the… Continue reading
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To the Polls! The Municipal News and Historic Seattle Elections
~posted by Jade Just in time for election season, we’ve launched our Municipal News Digital Collection featuring nearly 100 years of issues from 1911 to 2010. Produced by the Municipal League of Seattle, the news provides insight on hot button civic issues of the day such as prohibition, dance halls, desegregation, the Alaskan Way Viaduct and… Continue reading
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Let’s get digital
The Special Collections Department has added three new digital collections to our resources in the past year. Going digital takes a great deal of effort but makes these collections available to a much larger audience and also makes them more accessible because of their searching capabilities. The easiest way to get to them is to go from the home page to… Continue reading