Seattle Now and Then: The Historical Hundred

For almost forty decades, and over 1,800 installments, Paul Dorpat's Seattle Now and Then series, pairing a historical city photo with a current one and a short essay, has been one of the most beloved features in the Seattle Times's Sunday magazine, and now Dorpat and photographer Jean Sherrard have chosen 100 of their favorite pairs for what will certainly be one of the definitive Seattle history books on local coffee tables. Think our city's been transformed entirely in the last five or ten years? How about the last fifty or a hundred? You'll find remarkable changes in our urban landscape, and some surprising continuities: I was drawn to a 1953 photo of pedestrians celebrating the opening of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a celebration set to be repeated at its closing next month.