Topic: Business
Roller-skating fun came to Bellevue's Crossroads area in 1962 at Howard and Ida Monta's Lake Hills Roller Rink. In 1963 they experimented with having teen dances at the rink, and thus began a rock 'n'...
When humans began creating laws for each other to follow, the legal profession was born. As the number of people increased and life became more complex, the number of both laws and lawyers multiplied....
In this People's History Dorothea (Pfister) Nordstrand (1916-2011) reflects on the lessons learned while working at Seattle's Green Lake State Bank, where she worked for 10 years from the time she was...
For more than 60 years -- from 1860 until the 1920s -- San Juan County was the principal lime-producing area in the state of Washington. The San Juan Islands were ideal for the manufacture and transpo...
The larger-than-life personal saga of Seattle businessman Adolph Frederik Linden (1889-1969) has long overshadowed the publicly known history of one of his numerous enterprises: the Pacific Northwest...
Stanley Long was a prominent Seattle home builder in the first half of the twentieth century, and was active in civic affairs almost until his death in 1959. Educated in the law in Chicago, Long seems...
Manuel Lopes arrived in Seattle in 1852, and operated a barbershop equipped with the first barber chair to be brought around Cape Horn. He was Seattle's first black resident, businessman, and property...
The Lynden Tribune was first published in 1908, but its real beginning dates to 1914, when Sol Lewis (1888-1953) published his first edition of the paper he had just purchased. Lewis, a down-home writ...
Toklas & Singerman, later called MacDougall & Southwick, was Seattle’s earliest department store. Tracing its history to a small operation in 1874, the business adopted many new technolo...
Mapleine is an imitation maple flavoring originally produced by Seattle's Crescent Manufacturing Company in 1905. Mapleine quickly became Crescent's signature product. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposit...
Seattle business leader and philanthropist Stanley Otto McNaughton held positions with Seattle University and Safeco Insurance before he was in 1961 recruited by Robert J. Handy (1901-1984) to help re...
Architect Edward L. Merritt, together with Stanley Long, Henry Broderick (1880-1975), the brothers Gardner and Wells Gwinn, and several others, was of a generation of young entrepreneurs who came to S...
In 1975, two young men from Seattle founded a company that would be to the Computer Age what the Ford Motor Company was to the Automobile Age. Like Henry Ford, William H. Gates III (b. 1953) and Paul ...
Peppermint and spearmint plants are commercially cultivated for their oils, which are primarily used to flavor candy and chewing gum, cough drops, and toothpaste. Originally cultivated and harvested b...
At the dawn of the Roaring Twenties, a Pacific Northwest couple -- Howell Oakdeane "Morrie" Morrison (1888-1984) and his wife, Alice Nadine Morrison (1892-1978) -- launched what became the region's fi...
Don Munro was born in Vermont and grew up in Yakima, but it was in Seattle that he would make a lasting mark as a public servant, business entrepreneur, and supporter of the arts. Munro graduated from...
The Pacific Northwest is renowned for being the geographical base of hard-rocking music scenes that have produced musicians ranging from the garage-punk pioneers the Sonics to acid-rock hero Jimi Hend...
Peggy Sturdivant talked with Harold Nilsen (b. 1917) on May 10, 2000. This interview is part of the Vanishing Generation Oral History Project of Seattle's Nordic Heritage Museum. Harold, of Norwegian ...
Ted Beck interviewed Johann Johnson (b. 1915) on June 22, 2000 for the Nordic Heritage Museum Vanishing Generation Oral History Project. Johann, of Icelandic heritage, describes the various jobs he's ...
Margaret Long (b. ca. 1914), of Finnish/Swedish heritage, was born in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard and has lived there her entire life. June Smith interviewed her on August 11, 2000 for the Nor...
This is a Nordic Heritage Museum Vanishing Generation Oral History Project Interview of Robert Campbell (b. 1922), interviewed by Curtis Jacobson on October 11, 2000. Robert speaks of the businesses a...
John Nordstrom (1871-1963) was a Swedish immigrant who arrived in America with $5 in his pocket. He worked his way across the country, ended up in Alaska, and staked a claim in the gold fields. The cl...
The Northern Pacific Railroad played a pivotal role in the development of railroads in Seattle and in the Puget Sound region. The company's decision to locate its Western terminus in Tacoma rather tha...
In this People's History, Jim Douglas (1909-2005), president of Northgate Centers Inc. from 1949 to 1976, remembers the opening of Northgate Shopping Center on April 21, 1950, the new development's fi...