Work — At Work on Lake Union

Work — At Work on Lake Union. . Side 1 , Logging and Sawmills , Henry Yesler’s sawmill on Elliott Bay was Seattle’s first industry, and much Lake Union timber was harvested for Yesler’s mill. In 1854, John Ross built a short-lived sawmill on Lake Union’s far northwest shore. The Western Mill opened in 1882, here on the lake’s southwestern shore. For nearly a century afterward, rafts of logs were towed across Lake Washington and through the Montlake Cut to mills on Lake Union., Captions , (Photo #1) In 1909, Seattle’s Brace and Herbert Mill dominated the industrial shore of south Lake Union. , (Photo #2) Here, a tug pulled a raft of logs through Lake Union in 1955. , Side 2 , “In the 1920s, when I was a boy, I used to ride the streetcar down the west side of Lake Union. We passed the ovens of the Seattle Brick Company, where the bricks were being made for paving and building. When the furnace doors swung open, you could see men shoving pallets of new clay bricks in the glowing red furnaces., And then at South Lake Union, we passed a screaming sawmill. The logs came up out of the water, slowly, towed up a ramp by a steam-powered endless belt, and they’d come into the headsaw. We’d see the first cut, and then they went inside to the bandsaws, and we couldn’t see them any more. It was sure noisy, I want to tell you.” , Tom Sandry, Side 3 , Building Planes and Trucks , The Boeing Airplane Company had its innovative start on Lake Union, where William Boeing tested experimental biplanes, housing them in a boathouse at the foot Roanoke Street. In the decades that followed, Ford automobiles and Kenworth trucks were built in factories on Lake Union., Captions , (Photo #1) On June 15, 1916, the little Boeing seaplane made its first successful flight over Lake Union. Here, workers hauled the plane into its lakeshore hangar, adapted from a boathouse. , (Photo #2) Mechanics at south Lake Union’s Kenworth Motor Truck Company worked on a bus in 1934, during the Great Depression. , Side 4 , Inventing the Future , From 1860 to the present, the opportunities afforded by Lake Union have fostered innovative industries: brickyards and sawmills, tanneries and cooperages, asphalt plants, the Ford Assembly Plant, the PACCAR/Kenworth Plant, canneries and ship chandleries. Today, Lake Union is a biotechnology, research and technology hub, including ZymoGenetics, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute., Captions , (Photo #1) Housed in the former Seattle City Light steam plant, ZymoGenetics has become one of the largest biotechnology companies in Washington State. , (Photo #2) The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center opened the first building of its Lake Union campus in 1993 and supports a roster of internationally acclaimed scientists including Nobel Prize winners.