Postcard Post: The Kalakala

This postcard is near and dear to my heart.  There is a lot of history behind the Kalakala.  Living in the Pacific Northwest we are dependent on our ferries, this is one story I would love to share.

 

 

 

The Kalakala was a beauty in the height of her service. 

A little history, originally named Peralta, built in 1926 for the San Francisco Bay ferry fleet. In 1933 Peralta fell victim to arson, only the hull was left intact.  Later in 1933 the vessel was sold to PSNC also known as the Black Ball Line who rebuilt the ship. The new design was inspired by contemporary aircraft with the help of a Boeing engineer.  The new ferry named Kalakala, went into service in 1935!

 

In her heyday she had a full-service galley, a ladies lounge, and a men's taproom.  She was even used for "moonlight cruises" with a live dance orchestra.  During WWII she transported shipyard workers between Seattle and Bremerton. By the 1950's the ridership began to dwindle, postwar cars were not as wide as newer cars, which had a hard time fitting on the car deck. She was featured transportation for tours of the Bremerton shipyards during the Seattle World's Fair in 1962.  The Kalakala finally retired in 1967.  But that wasn't the last of service... later she was towed to Alaska and worked as a factory ship.  Finally, in 1970 the Kalakala was beached in Kodiak in 1970 and used to process shrimp.

 

That still isn't the end of the story.  In 1998 the Kalakala was towed back to Seattle.  There was huge effort to raise funds to refurbish the Kalakla as a museum and more, the dream was never realized.  The Kalakala was towed to several mooring sites before ending up in Tacoma. 

 

Dreams dashed and lawsuits filed during the next years. In 2011the Coast Guard declared she was a hazard to navigation.  Then in 2012 the Coast Guard claimed the Kalakala was too fragile to be moved to other moorage and might have to be scrapped.  Finally, in 2015 the once grand Kalakala now rusting and listing not fit for service in any manner was scrapped.    

 

Learn more about the Kalakala HERE!

 

 

 

The back of the postcard.

I am sharing this postcard with Postcard Friendship Friday!

Note - all postcards shared on Postcard Friendship Friday are from my private collection

Trip to Seattle-Photos From the Ferry-Seagulls .... Weekend Nature

When I first moved to Seattle I didn't realize it was so far from the ocean.  All pictures show water everywhere.  I was soon to learn the water was Puget Sound.

Puget Sound itself is a body of water lying east of Admiralty Inlet, through which ocean waters reach inland some 50 miles from the Pacific Coast to provide all-weather ports for ocean-going ships at Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia. The waterway is a complex and intricate system of channels, inlets, estuaries, embayments and islands. (Learn more about Puget Sound HERE.) 

The seagulls are all around the Sound.  Seagulls follow the ferries as they crisscross the waters.  You will find photographers trying to catch their best shots of the birds on the upper decks.  

The pictures don't seem real to me.

The seagull is perhaps best known as being a scavenger. It is most often seen in large, noisy flocks congregating wherever food is available. They can almost always be found around fishing boats, picnic grounds, parking lots and garbage dumps. More info on seagulls HERE!

To see more Weekend Nature visit Grey Scale Territory HERE.

Trip to Seattle-Photos From the Ferry-IT'S IN THE PI!

The P-I is known for the 18.5-ton, 30-ft neon globe atop its headquarters on the Elliott Bay waterfront, which features the words "It's in the P-I" rotating around the globe and an eagle perched atop with wings stretched upwards. The globe was conceived around 1949 in a readers contest to determine a new symbol for the paper. In the time since, the globe has become a city landmark that to locals is as iconic as the Space Needle. A stylized rendering of the globe appeared on the masthead of the newspaper in its latter years and continues to be featured on its website

On January 9, 2009, the Hearst Corporation announced that after losing money on it every year since 2000, Hearst was putting the P-I up for sale. The paper would be put on the market for 60 days, and if a buyer could not be found within that time, the paper would either be turned into an Internet-only publication with a drastically reduced staff, or closed outright. Today the paper is an Internet-only publication.

Wikepedia

Tomorrow the Space Needle!

Trip to Seattle - Photos From the Ferry - Ivars + Firehouse #5

Seattle’s historic full service seafood restaurant is on Seattle’s colorful waterfront at Pier 54. In 1938 Ivar Haglund rented the Northeast corner of the pier shed for a small aquarium, which included a small fish and chips stand. 

The Original Acres of Clams opened in 1946 a larger restaurant on the Southeast corner of the pier.  It has expanded and been redesigned over the years.  This attractive yet informal restaurant has a wharf-like feel which features stellar waterfront views of Washington State ferries, Fire Station #5’s waterside operations and Puget Sound.  At this site there is the more formal dining and a fish-bar with an outside eating area.  

Waiting for a hand out!

Pier 53, a very short pier just north of the ferry terminal near the foot of Madison Street, is the site of Seattle Fire Station No. 5, at 925 Alaskan Way. The present 1963 building is the third fire station at this address and the fourth to serve the Central Waterfront. The fire department used to play a particularly critical role on the waterfront, the piers all made of wood. The Great Seattle Fire of 1889 had consumed the piers as far north as Union Street along with the rest of the heart of the city.

Ater the Great Fire, a small one-story wood frame firehouse was erected near the foot of Madison Street, but not quite at the present site. It opened January 3, 1891 with a crew of nine, the new fireboat Snoqualmie and a small hose wagon. In 1902, a larger two-story wood frame building was constructed on the present site and in 1910, the new fireboat Duwamish replaced the Snoqualmie. The wood frame building was demolished in 1916 and replaced by an elegant brick building in 1917. An additional fireboat Alki came into service in 1928.

While the 1917 fire station was recognized as an aesthetically good building, by the early 1960s its supporting pier timbers were becoming unsafe. The building was demolished in early 1961. After extensive work on the pier supports, the new modern building was erected and opened in December 1963.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Waterfront,_Seattle

Trip to Seattle - Photos From the Ferry - Smith Tower

Today I took a trip to Seattle.  A trip usually involves a ferry ride.  I caught the Bainbridge to Seattle just after noon.  This was one of our first warm days of summer.  Many sailors had their boats out!

Below, through the haze, Seattle in the distance. If you look closely you will see the spit that is exposed at low tide off the point (in the middle of the picture).  The ferry must navigate around it.  Look even closer... there are two herons on the spit.  Click on the picture to get a better look.  The lone semi tall building on the far right is The Smith Tower.  Today it is dwarfed by the skyscrapers of downtown.  Note: Downtown is  built on higher ground giving the impression the Smith Tower is even smaller than it truly is!

The Seattle Waterfront is full of history, I plan to share a little of it through my photos from the ferry over the next few days.  The Smith Tower is a historic building in Seattle, for 50 years it was the tallest building in Seattle.  In 1962 the Space Needle dwarfed it (that is a post for another day.)

In 1909, Smith (Smith-Corona Typewriters) planned to build a 14-story building in Seattle. His son persuaded him to build instead a much taller skyscraper and to be known as the tallest west of the Mississippi, "THE SMITH TOWER". The fourth tallest in the world! The building was completed in 1914 to a height of 462 ft from curbside to the top of the pyramid.  Since it has change ownership three times.  In recent years the building was converted into condominiums.  The infamous Chinese Room is on the 35th floor of the tower, and the 35th floor also has a wraparound public observation deck.   The elevators have brass and copper cages; the doors are latticed, which allows riders to see into the hallways on each floor. The Smith Tower is one of the few buildings on the West Coast that have elevator operators.