Unique and unusual Almanac 2014

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Unique and Unusual

Almanac 2014

Contents

Unique and unusual: Daily Record Almanac 2014

28

42

28

4

A building built more than 100 years ago for a governor is now an apartment building like no other.

8

Signs of the past Ellensburg’s downtown is filled with advertisements for businesses past and present.

14 22

Weird numbers A Central Washington University professor puts math to work where you’d least expect it.

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There’s a labyrinth of underground streams beneath Ellensburg, and a few tunnels, too.

Most haunted Kittitas County has its fair share of ghost stories and “haunted� houses.

201

and

Underneath Ellensburg

Page 3

On the cover

Bits and pieces from Kittitas County’s past can be found all over, if you look close enough.

40 Craig’s Hill castle

Central Washington oddities

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42

Dick and Jane’s The story behind one of Kittitas County’s quirkiest homes and the artwork that surrounds it.

Brian Myrick/Daily Record

Reflectors brighten the outside of Dick and Jane’s Spot in Ellensburg. Read more about the famous house on Page 42.

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Craig’s Hill castle

A governor’s mansion with no governor The castle-turnedapartments on Craig’s Hill turns 125 years old

By NICOLE KLAUSS staff writer

O

n any given day, Ellensburg resident Debbie Gregory can look out her kitchen window and take in the view of a castle.

Gregory and her husband live in the carriage house, an extension of the castle on Craig’s Hill. The couple moved into the building about eight months ago because it fit their personality. The historical significance of the building was also an appeal, Gregory said.

“We like quirky places,” she said. “I like old. I like if it has a story.”

The castle is turning 125 years old this year. Also known as the governor’s mansion, it has been one of Ellensburg’s most recognizable and historical buildings since it was built in 1889.

History

Brothers Brittain and Samuel Craig built the castle,

located on the corner of Third Avenue and Chestnut Street, with the intention of making it the governor’s mansion.

Ellensburg was being considered for the state capital because of its central location in the state and because of the infrastructure it already had in place. After much of Ellensburg was destroyed in an 1889 fire, the state capital was awarded to Olympia in 1890.

The castle was sold in 1894 for $4,300 to Nathan Cushing, who died in 1903, and left it to his heirs. It was then sold to Julius Hubbell and two months later to Ovando Hoyt, according to a historical record compiled by the Ellensburg Public Library.

The Victorian mansard-style mansion was three stories high, 36 by 32 feet, and had a hexagonal sitting room on each floor. An April 1889 issue of Northwest Magazine estimated the home cost $6,000 to build.

See Castle, Page 6 Brian Myrick / Daily Record

The former governor’s mansion to-be sits atop Craig’s Hill in Ellensburg and has since been converted to apartments.

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Brian Myrick / Daily Record Ellensburg Public Library

Craig’s Castle on the southwest corner of Chestnut Street and Third Avenue was originally planned and built as a prospective governor’s mansion by Brittain E. Craig and his brother Samuel Craig in 1889.

ABOVE: The spiral staircase inside the castle along Third Avenue. BELOW: A hand-painted mural adorns the wall behind the spiral staircase inside the building.

Page 6 | Almanac 2014

Craig’s Hill castle

Unique and Unusual

Ellensburg Public Library

The view of the castle on Craig’s Hill from Chestnut Street. Once a potential governor’s mansion, the castle is now an apartment building.

Castle

went through a series of ownership changes.

Continued from Page 4

Present day

It was abandoned for years until Ralph and Jessie Wiseman purchased the home and remodeled it in 1930.

New heating, wiring and plumbing were installed, and each floor was converted into a two-bedroom apartment.

Wiseman changed the style of the mansion to have more of a medieval facade. He added features like a new staircase and narrow windows, and covered the entire building in stucco.

The Wisemans lived in the home until 1951, and the house then

Current owner Kelly Gerrits purchased the home in 1990, after learning from her mother it was on the market.

“My mother was interested in buying it, and my dad thought it would be a lot of work, so I bought it,” she said. “My mom loves old buildings and she loves a challenge. Both my parents and friends have helped me out a lot with projects.”

Gerrits lived on the third floor for several years, but now rents out all five apartments.

“We have a good mix of profes-

sionals and students,” she said. “A lot of times it’s been just students.”

Gerrits said with the exception of the couple in the carriage house, everyone has lived on the property for several years.

Inside the castle, a spiral staircase leads residents to the different floors of the three-story building. The three main apartments are similar in structure, while the basement and carriage house are unique in their layouts.

The carriage house, built to store vehicles, still has several notable historical features, including the original carriage doors and the ice box. Another original feature is the dumbwaiter in the main castle, which goes from the basement to the

third floor though it is no longer in working condition.

If living in the castle comes with an air of mystery, it translates to some of the residents, who declined to give their names for this story. One tenant said she wanted to live in the castle ever since she first saw it as a child.

“I remember always driving around and thinking, ‘One day I’ll be a grown up and I’ll live there,’” she said. She’s now lived there for about three years and has no plans of moving, unless it’s to a bigger castle.

“Even just the title of it, I love being able to say I live in the castle,” she said. “There’s something so whimsical about it.”

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Renovations and upkeep

During her ownership, Gerrits has made many improvements and upgrades to the building. She’s replaced the roof and windows, repaired the stucco and hardwood floor and added landscaping.

Her mother, Marian Gerrits, Marge Corman and Edythe Crowe painted a wall mural stretching from the basement to the first floor.

“There’s always projects to do,” Gerrits said. “Nothing’s even, square or normal, and you would not be if you were 125 years old.”

The castle has been a part of Gerrits’ life for more than 20 years, and she’s even played the part of a queen in it. On occasion she dresses up and hosts prince and princess ceremonies at the castle for family or friends. She’s auctioned off ceremonies to help raise money for local schools.

Gerrits said she has no plans Ellensburg Public Library to sell the building in the foreseeable future.

Several cars of yesteryear parked in the front driveway of the castle’s carriage house adjacent to the main building.

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Unique and Unusual

Ellensburg’s historic and visible past on display

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Historic signs sprinkled around downtown The past and present share Ellensburg as restored and faded ads decorate the city

By MICHAEL GALLAGHER assistant editor

T

here are signs of the past lingering throughout downtown Ellensburg. Some are faint. Others are literally as big as a building.

Business names and advertisements dating back to the early days of the city remain on many downtown Ellensburg buildings, at times side-by-side with signage for the contemporary tenants.

"It's a combination of the past and the present at the same time," said Ellensburg historian and former

downtown association director David Wheeler.

The buildings tell a story of Ellensburg's past, one that people do not have to turn to a textbook to find.

All they have to do is read the side of the building as they pass.

Not everyone has taken Mike McCloskey's history of Ellensburg class at Morgan Middle School, but everyone who has been at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Main Street knows that at one time the building on the corner housed Butterfield Chevrolet.

See Signs, Page 12

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

LEFT: A sign advertises Heinrick Auto Electric and Auto Parts in the alley behind the Daily Record off Fourth Avenue in downtown Ellensburg. RIGHT: A sign in an alley behind Mountain High Sports off Fourth Avenue in downtown Ellensburg advertises a popular soft drink.

Unique and Unusual

Page 12 | Almanac 2014

Signs Continued from Page 11 The Branding Iron Motel and Trailer Court made way for a row of businesses many years ago but people driving down Main know when they are within seven blocks of a business that ended its days as a home for migrant and transient workers.

The back alleys of Ellensburg also tell a story. Brick walls still bear the names of businesses such as B.L. Findley Land Co. and Heinrich Auto and Electric.

Ways to reach customers

Today a business invests in advertisements in multiple media venues and tries to get the word out with a Facebook page.

At the turn of the 20th century, buildings were the main form of reaching customers.

"Early on, putting your name on the building was the way you let people know where you were," Wheeler said.

Over the years, some of the signs and murals have aged better than

others and gotten to the point where they are considered a form of community art.

"Ellensburg has a balance," Wheeler said. "Some murals are really nice and some are kind of faded. There's a free speech element in it, too."

A couple of decades ago, Wheeler said there was some state money available to restore and maintain the old building signs and murals.

A few projects were undertaken in Ellensburg.

"That sort of thing seems to be more regulated now," Wheeler said.

"In terms of competing, (grants) are harder to get."

In terms of murals, Wheeler said some communities have invested much more heavily than Ellensburg in covering building walls with paintings, but the city's mix of historic signs and murals is one not found in many other small towns.

"If it is done well, it adds to the level of art within the downtown community," Wheeler said.

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Brian Myrick / Daily Record

LEFT: A sign, nearly completely faded away, can still be seen on the south side of the Hub Antique building along Pine Street in downtown Ellensburg. ABOVE:A sign advertising for Star Tailors in the alley next to the Pita Pit off Third Ave. in downtown Ellensburg.

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Brian Myrick / Daily Record

The familiar red bricks of Central Washington University’s century-old Kamola Hall shine in the afternoon sun in March.

Kittitas County has its share of creepy ghost stories and ‘haunted’ houses

By LAUREN TAKORES staff writer Kittitas County has its share of ghost stories and tales of paranormal phenomena. From a long dead pioneer family still hanging around the old homestead to the loneliest ghost in Liberty, stories of the supernatural are part of local lore. Here are a few:

Lola of Kamola

Ghost stories at Central Washington University usually reference Lola, the resident ghost of Kamola Hall. CWU celebrated the residence hall’s centennial in 2011.

As the story goes, Lola appears only to men and reveals herself through a sweetsmelling perfume suddenly filling a room, according to “Ghost Stories of Washington”

by Barbara Smith and “Ghosts and Strange Critters of Washington and Oregon” by Jefferson Davis.

These books also tell an unsubstantiated story of how Lola was a Central student during World War II who, upon hearing her fiancé was killed in action, hanged herself from Kamola’s attic rafters, only to have it be revealed the message was in error and her fiancé alive.

It’s possible some of the stories were amplified or embellished when Kamola

What are ghosts?

Hauntings occur when several, similar paranormal events are observed in one place, according to the book “Ghosts and Strange Critters.” Ghosts are thought to be the disembodied spirits of the dead who haven’t quite made it beyond, caught between two worlds.

Hall hosted a haunted house in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Everyone’s heard about that, it’s kind of a campus legend,” said Kelsea Payne, a Central junior. She’s been living in

Some ghosts are self-aware, and seem to want to communicate with living people, the book states. Others ghosts have no sense of their surroundings.

These spirits may be more like imprinted energy, a rerun of paths tread in life.

— Lauren Takores Kamola Hall since the fall.

“I’ve heard about it, but I don’t believe in that stuff, and I’ve never seen anything,” she said.

There’s no record of a woman named

Unique and Unusual Lola who lived in Kamola during the 1940s. In fact, Kamola Hall housed men during World War II. Kenneth Munsell, senior lecturer in Central’s history department, said by 1944, only 240 people remained on campus after all but three men left for the battlefield or war work.

School president Robert McConnell contacted the federal government to work out a way to keep the college open.

Out of this effort came the air base, now Bowers Field, and 1,000 Army Air Corps soldiers streamed onto campus. They were housed in Kamola Hall, leaving the female students to live in Munson Hall.

Almanac 2014

Munsell said he has “no idea how (the Lola story) got started. It’s exciting, it’s fun … but it doesn’t fit with the facts.”

Perhaps “Lola” rhymes with “Kamola” so well the name stuck to the sweetsmelling phenomenon.

Haunted house

Maria Broadsword, interpretive specialist at Olmstead Place State Park near Ellensburg, said paranormal activity reportedly has been documented by several ghost hunting groups and psychics in the park’s main house.

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See Haunted, Page 18

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Page 18 | Almanac 2014

Haunted Continued from Page 17 “You can hear footsteps upstairs,” she said. “You can hear a door slam when nobody’s there.”

The park was once home to the Olmstead family, who moved onto the property in 1875. Samuel Olmstead finished the cabin in 1876 and in 1908, the family built the farmhouse.

Ghost hunters once spent the night, along with Broadsword, in the house. She said they recorded a little girl’s voice saying “the cat’s in” followed by a cat’s meow in the kitchen.

Other occurrences, she said, include a mirror in the kitchen that repeatedly flew off the wall, voices speaking unclear words, the feeling of being watched and instant temperature drops in warm rooms.

When Broadsword visits the house, she brings her dogs along “because it’s creepy,” she said. “Sometimes they won’t go in.”

See Haunted, Page 20

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

The main house at Olmstead Place State Park. Paranormal activity reportedly has been “documented” by several ghost hunting groups and psychics in the park’s main house.

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Haunted

A rusty pump outide the Olmstead cabin at Olmstead Place State Park.

Paranormal activity reportedly has been documented by several ghost hunting groups and psychics in the park's main house.

Continued from Page 18

Sighting in Liberty

Another reportedly haunted homestead is in Liberty. Cle Elum resident Wes Engstrom is writing a book about early settlers on Swauk prairie and mining district. He said there is only one ghost sighting in the area.

The grave of gold miner John Hamilton Price lies on a mountainside three miles north of Liberty, the only lone grave of the old time Swauk miners. Price and his wife, Anna, filed their first gold mining claim in Swauk in 1892 and by 1902, they filed 11 more mining claims in the Liberty area.

According to Engstrom, Price supposedly was a doctor. When he believed he had cancer in the winter of 1909, he instructed Anna on an operation to remove the growth. It didn’t go well. Price died on Feb. 5, 1910. Anna buried him nearby in a wooded knoll.

The current homestead owners reportedly have seen a ghostly figure walking by their place, Engstrom wrote. He speculated that Price’s ghost is going to meet up with his old friends buried in the cemetery.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

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Another tale tells Price was buried with a gold watch, which can be heard ticking by putting your ear to the ground on his grave.

Stories come and go

Many ghost stories wax and wane over time. A dark energy in the loft area of the Lynch building at 421 Pearl St. in Ellensburg, when it housed the Mane Attraction salon, was reportedly dispersed by a shaman decades ago, according to another story in “Ghosts and Strange Critters.”

Employees today say there are no signs of mischievous spirits.

Roslyn is another hotspot for ghost stories. A group of volunteers from the Paranormal Investigations of Historic America investigated the 2R Bar and Bistro Restaurant in 2010. They tracked what they said was paranormal activity — voices, tapping and “electromagnetic waves said to surround disembodied spirits,” according to a Daily Record story at the time.

The Brick Tavern in Roslyn allegedly has attracted its share of paranormal events: phantom cowboys, mysterious piano music, objects moved around, employees said. A Brick patron recently told a story about a friend who reported feeling choked around the neck while alone on the dance floor late one night.

Old jail cells in the basement of The Brick in Roslyn are now used as storage for firewood.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

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Weird numbers guru CWU professor’s research finds math everywhere

T Klyve’s award

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Central Washington University math professor Dominic Klyve recently won the Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Mathematics Association of America.

He is the first winner from Washington state in the 18-year history of the award. The Alder Award goes to individuals whose teaching has been extraordinarily successful and who have had influence beyond their own classrooms.

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By ANDY MATARRESE staff writer

he biggest weird number of them all, all 455 digits’ worth, came from right here in Kittitas County.

Jeremy Klarich, a Central Washington University sophomore, said his math honors class had a “show and tell” session of interesting integer sequences.

A classmate found one on weird numbers. They’re actually called abundant non-pseudoperfect integers, but the term “weird” stuck within the math community a bit better.

Whatever you call them, no combination or subset of its divisors add up to exactly that number.

For example, the smallest weird number is 70; its divisors are 1, 2, 7, 10, 14, and 35. No combination of any or all of its factors equal 70.

Sidney Kravitz held the weird number record since 1976, after finding a 53-digit number. Kravitz is the author of a formula written specifically for identifying the numbers.

CWU math professor Dominic Klyve went quiet for a bit after the class discussed the sequence and

the record, then said, “I think we can beat that.”

Klarich said the class spent the rest of the quarter working to design a code that would calculate larger numbers and plugged it into a computer to run for a couple of days.

They found several record breaking numbers. Then they found a final, 455-digit whopper.

“It was really cool, especially with how large the numbers we were getting were,” Klarich said. “Really, nobody had any idea what the class was going to be.”

Different math

Weird numbers are part of the study of factoring which is, in a very roundabout way — “I’m all for math in the news any way you can get it,” Klyve said — helpful in cryptography.

Right now, Klyve said he’s working on two other “stereotypical” math papers, as he called them. Other avenues of his research, however, might seem “weird’ as well, but only because they venture from what others might think of as traditional math research.

See Math, Page 24

Unique and Unusual

Page 24 | Almanac 2014

Math Continued from Page 23 “In general, my belief is there is no field at all one can’t apply math to,” he said.

Within math, or when he branches out, Klyve said he simply pursues subjects that interest him. He’s an avid juggler, and formulated an equation to determine how juggled balls fall, published as “A Zeta Function for Juggling Sequences.”

Other times, people come to him, and he’ll do freelance work helping with data analysis.

He has six publications in gastroenterology research, something he said even he never expected.

“Actually, it’s very gross when you look at exactly what they’re doing, he said.

Part of that research had him working with a group of doctors to analyze the outcomes of their procedures and another to develop a better colonoscopy. Another, ongoing, project might have found a previously unseen mathematical pattern in the human genome.

Lear banishes Cordelia after she angers him.

“Not at all obvious if you’re just reading the play, but math can piece this out,” Klyve said.

For his research partner, the difference in personal pronouns may make or break his argument.

Was Cordelia being noble when she spurned her father’s request for forced, insincere proclamations of love and adoration — which her sisters faked — or was she just being a teenager wrapped up in herself?

“For him, this is a really big deal,” Klyve said. “It’d be hard to notice that if you’re reading it, but it would be really easy if you could quantify everything. … My suspicion is it might be really nice and useful.”

Math on the heath

Klyve’s also working with a Shakespeare scholar on a project analyzing the number of scholarly articles published about different plays.

So far, he said they’ve found “Julius Caesar” has dropped in popularity among scholars the most since 1960, while “The Tempest” has gained the most interest.

Another Shakespeare project he’s working on examines “King Lear” and Cordelia’s state of mind. Another researcher needed help tracking Cordelia’s use of first-person singular pronouns.

Klyve said they’ve found the proportion of first-person pronouns in her dialogue versus other words — such as “I” or “me” — compared to other characters and in other parts of the play, is greater in Act 1, Scene 1, Contributed where

Dominic Klyve juggles pins outside Boullion Hall. Klyve formulated an equation to determine how juggled balls fall, published as “A Zeta Function for Juggling Sequences.”

Teaching asset

CWU math department chairman Tim Englund laughed when told Klyve and his diverse work were going into a collection of stories on the unique and unusual in Kittitas County.

“I guess I’d attribute that mainly to Dominic’s natural curiosity,” Englund said. “He seems always to be asking the, ‘Well, I wonder why that is.’ Or, ‘Can I verify that? Or what can I do with that information?’”

It’s rare to find a professor at a dedicated research school, such as the University of Washington, who

can bring his work down to a level a college freshman can understand, he said.

But Klyve, Englund said, drawing on multiple disciplines within and outside of math, finds a way.

Like with the weird numbers project, computer-assisted math work can help make more advanced math accessible to students, giving them opportunities to do research.

“He’s kind of an island here in the department. There’s no one else really doing exactly what he does,” Englund said.

Math as a history guide

By ANDY MATARRESE staff writer

F

or Central Washington University math professor Dominic Klyve, knowing the history of math can be just as important as knowing the math itself.

Right now, he’s translating — from the French — an early popular science book

by Leonhard Euler, an 18th century Swiss mathematician and physicist, what he called the Enlightenment-Era equivalent of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos.”

“I often tell people, he’s the most important figure from the history of math that they haven’t heard about,” he said.

He hopes to publish an annotated version of it.

Learning math’s history while learning the math itself helped him “hugely,” he said, and he tries to bring math history into his teaching as well.

Currently, he’s working on a grant to teach math using original historical sources and is recruiting mathematicians across the country to develop projects that combine math instruction with history.

“I really think if you want to learn a field well then you

have to learn its history,” he said.

In Western philosophy, students start with the Greek philosophers and move along in time, he said, because the knowledge builds on itself.

“We don’t really do this well in the sciences and math,” he said.

Math itself can help reveal history, too. With the help of the school’s music department, he put together a math for music majors class to help students meet math requirements.

“Partly because the music majors were putting off math class,” he said.

They worked on the math of the musical scale — how and why an octave is split into eight sounds in — and found the ratios of the length of the first and second movements of Mozart sonatas.

Mozart’s ratios were highly consistent, while other composers — Mozart’s contemporaries and successors — would follow his lead or change the ratio in their work.

“By the time we were done, we were really able to retell the history of sonata allegro form,” he said. “We can actually reconstruct a whole plot of music history.”

Unique and Unusual

Almanac 2014

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Page 25

Photo Illustration by Brian Myrick / Daily Record

CWU math professor Dominic Klyve in his campus office, and the record-breaking 455-digit weird number his students discovered earlier this year.

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Unique and Unusual

Wa l a r t n e s e C i t i d d O

Unique and Unusual

Almanac 2014

|

Page 29

ashington Small, unnoticed things have small stories behind them

By MIKE JOHNSTON senior writer

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A steel ring, once used to tie up horses, remains attached to the curb in front of the Palace Cafe on Main Street in downtown Ellensburg.

Page 30 | Almanac 2014

Unique and Unusual

Looking out for the little things

I

f you want to learn the history of a place, pay attention to the details.

David Wheeler is a community preservationist who has likely done more research than anyone else into the building-bybuilding, street-by-street history of downtown Ellensburg, along with other areas of the county.

Small things have a story to tell, he said.

“If we, as a community, don’t notice the small things, they may, like in many places, just disappear,” he said.

“We start, then, losing connection with our roots.”

The following are some of the interesting, somewhat hidden, small things that Wheeler noted recently around town.

See Oddities, Page 34

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A rusty fire system water shutoff valve reportedly dating back to before 1900 stands along Third Avenue across the street from a modern fire hydrant near the train depot.

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Unique and Unusual

Page 34 | Almanac 2014

Carriage steps for buggies Horse drawn carriages, buggies and wagons at one time were in wide use in Ellensburg. It was considered a luxury to have permanent steps near homes or businesses that helped the ladies and children, and men, too, get up into the four-wheeled, horse-

powered contraptions. Such steps were all over the city but only two remain intact today. They are made of cement and hail from shortly after 1900. They’re along Ninth Avenue in the historic Railroad Addition between B and C streets.

Not the center of the state A small square of bricks, perhaps 2 feet by 1 1/2 feet, with a sandstone block on top, sits on the ground near the southwest corner of ShawSmyser Hall on the campus of Central Washington University. In the middle of the block is a prominently displayed U.S. Geological Survey marker.

Lightly etched into the sandstone around the brass marker are the letters “CTR� followed by other letters hard to make out, and then “U.S.G.S.�

For years some believed the CTR letters somehow indicated the marker was designating the exact geographic center of the state, knowing many see Ellensburg as centrally located in Washington.

Not so.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, exact center for Washington state is in Chelan County, 10 miles west by southwest of Wenatchee. The closest town to the brass, center-state USGS marker is Cashmere. The marker was installed in 1989.

Others have claimed the state’s center is closer to Rock Island and say there’s a marker on a rock in the middle of the Columbia River indicating the center.

The marker by Shaw-Smyser is one of many put in by the USGS indicating elevations above sea level. At that site it’s Brian Myrick / Daily Record 1,571.506 feet. It may have been put in before 1889 or after 1901.

Concrete steps stand along the curb in front of 115 Ninth Ave. in Ellensburg.

By the way, there’s a $250 fine for The steps were once used so that residents could more easily board carriages. disturbing the marker in any way.

YAKIMA

FEDERAL

SAVINGS

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LOAN

Central Washington’s Preferred Financial Center Yakima Federal’s very first mortgage loan of $1,500 was to Mr. Frank H. Foote of Yakima for this 2-story house on 8th St. in Yakima.

In 1959 Yakima Federal Savings & Loan merged with Ellensburg Federal Savings and Loan Association to become a new Yakima Federal branch. Here is the Ellensburg branch today.

‡ ZZZ \DNLPDIHG FRP

SINCE 1905 For the past 109 years, families in the Yakima Valley have relied on Yakima Federal Savings and Loan to provide home loans and safe savings. Yakima Federal was then, and still is today, Central Washington’s Preferred Financial Center.

Unique and Unusual

Graceful columns After the disastrous downtown Ellensburg fire on July 4, 1889, those reconstructing buildings ordered a variety of cast iron, fire-proof support columns from the Dearborn Co. of Chicago.

Most of the columns have ornate designs that can be seen from the sidewalk. Over the years some have been painted over or covered with

Almanac 2014

|

Page 35

various sidings, including stucco.

A good example of the graceful columns can be seen on the Elmira block near Fourth Avenue and Pine Street on the north side of Fourth.

It’s been painted black and has a company nameplate.

Preservationist David Wheeler is working on a catalog and pattern book of the columns, showing details of their design and overall placement in the historic buildings in Ellensburg.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Intricate structural iron work can be found in many of the historic buildings along Fourth Avenue in downtown Ellensburg.

Brian Myrick

Water flows along a trough-like spitoon along the length of the well worn bar at The Brick in Roslyn.

Running-water spittoon The Brick Saloon of Roslyn, circa 1889, is not only a historic structure in its own right but also is the showcase of vintage interior fixtures, including a 100-year-old back bar made in England and the still-operating, highly unique, 23-foot-long running-water spittoon.

John Buffo and Peter Giovanni, the original business owners, installed a gutter-like metal trough along

the bottom of the bar that swishes away spit with running water. This, they believed, was much better than accumulating saliva and phlegm in an upright metal spittoon.

The running-water spittoon is used

by The Brick for its annual Indoor Running Water Spittoon Boat Races and Regatta in early March when small model boats are raced along the length of the swishing spittoon.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

The name of the original builder/owner of a historic home at 115 Ninth Ave. in Ellensburg is printed in the sidewalk at the base of the steps leading to the front door. Many older area homes have these printings.

Sidewalks that tell a story Sidewalks in front of many older homes in Ellensburg bear the indented names of the homes’ first owners. The names also are found on the first step next to the sidewalks from the private walkways. Many of these were put in between 1900 and 1910 or so.

In addition, the names of businesses were stamped into the sidewalks

opposite businesses. A few of these can be seen on the north side of West Third Avenue between Water Street and the Northern Pacific Depot.

Some sidewalks at street intersections have the names of the adjacent streets or avenues pressed into them, along with initials of the contractor and when they were constructed.

Unique and Unusual

Page 36 | Almanac 2014

Ellensburg wind gauge

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Ellensburg wind gauge in the Safeway parking lot lets the locals know if there is a “normal wind” or just a “slight breeze.”

Hitching post controversy

A wind gauge of sorts located at the Ellensburg Safeway for many years that reflects the challenge of living with the Kittitas Valley’s strong winds.

It’s a wooden sign at the top of a post painted brown. There’s a heavy chain hanging from the sign’s top. How much the chain moves in the wind and where its end points in distances left or right of center jokingly indicates the strength of the wind.

Longtime Ellensburg Safeway employee John Bentz, who retired after 40 years with the store in 1996, said former store Manager Max Faris put in the gag wind meter after Faris became head of the store. It went in after employees heard continual comments about the stiff

winds of the Kittitas Valley from customers.

Bentz related a story about the wind gauge. He said he was on vacation with his wife, Donna, and were on their way to Iowa. They halted at a truck-stop restaurant in South Dakota.

A fellow traveler in a nearby parked vehicle saw the Bentz’s Washington plates and got their attention as they walked to the restaurant.

“He said he’d just left Washington on his way home and asked us where we lived,” Bentz said. “We said ‘Ellensburg’ and he said “Is that where the Safeway store has the funny wind gauge?’”

Bentz said yes, and on top of that, Safeway was where he worked.

Small world.

Brick streets

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A steel ring, once used to tie up horses, remains attached to the curbing in front of The Palace Cafe on Main Street in downtown Ellensburg.

A large portion of the original brick road is still in use along Third Avenue near the Ellensburg depot.

Large metal rings, fastened to eye-bolts imbedded into cement curbs, once were numerous in downtown Ellensburg. They likely were put in around 1910 by the city to accommodate the need to tie down horses and carriages.

An outcry back then by merchants and others about unsightly hitching posts and horse watering troughs caused those to be taken out, and the

A few places around Ellensburg still reveal brick streets. The largest example are the bricks on the east side of the Northern Pacific Depot at the end of West Third Avenue.

The depot was completed in 1910.

Hardened bricks for weathersurfacing of streets were considered a new element in the 1910 to 1912 period. They allowed drainage of rain and snowmelt into

tie-up rings to be installed.

It seems the only remaining horsetie-up rings can be found in the curb in front of The Palace restaurant on Main Street, on the east side of Pine Street between Second and Third avenues and in front of the main entrance doors to Fitterer’s furniture near off Fourth Avenue and Main Street.

They’re ready, just in case.

the ground between the bricks.

Concrete was expensive back then and asphalt hadn’t been developed.

There are a few locations around town where the old bricks can be seen between curbs and the new asphalt surface. Some entrances to alleys have the old bricks, including one along East Second Avenue on the north side.

Unique and Unusual

Almanac 2014

Survey markers

“Ellensburg City Code 5.38.040 Speed limit — riding into houses.

“A. It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to ride or drive any horse, mare or mule or saddle or work animal of any description in or upon any of the streets, alleys, public highways or any lot or lots within the city of Ellensburg faster than an ordinary traveling gait, or ride or drive any of said animals across or into any sidewalk, or into any saloon or drinking house, store house or dwelling house within said city limits.

“B. Penalty. Any person or persons violating any of the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction therefor shall be punished by

A U.S.G.S. survey marker at the southwest corner of Central Washington University’s Shaw Smyser Hall. below the present street level that were put in the intersections about 1900. Over the years the street levels have risen as new layers of surfacing have been put down.

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a fine of not less than $5.00 nor more than $300.00 together with costs of prosecution, and stand committed until such fine and costs are paid, and any party so convicted shall be worked upon the streets or other public works of the city of Ellensburg under the direction of the street commissioner of the said city and shall be allowed for each day’s work so performed the sum of $3.00 to be applied on the judgment of said fine and costs, and shall, unless said fine and costs are otherwise paid, so continue to work as aforesaid until such fine and costs are fully paid.”

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It’s the law

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

In the center of most street intersections in downtown Ellensburg there are round, metal covers with the letters KCSM on it. They’re the location of survey markers located

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Page 40 | Almanac 2014

Unique and Unusual

Underground tunnels lead to the past

By MIKE GALLAGHER assistant editor

Unique and Unusual

Almanac 2014

|

Page 41

What lies beneath

A

s the tale goes, a tunnel runs from Morgan Middle School to the old Washington Elementary School (now City Hall).

The tunnel was built for the pipes which ran from the heating plant on the Morgan property to the grade school.

Local historian David Wheeler said he has heard stories from a long-time resident about kids walking around in tunnels back in the day.

“Basically, I’ve heard rumors about it,” Wheeler said.

It’s a good story, just maybe not entirely true.

City of Ellensburg Public Works Director John Akers (currently serving as interim city manager as well) said it is true that there are “tunnels” running the length of the old Washington School.

“They are for the pipes,” Akers said.

“They are probably 8-feet wide and 4-feet tall.”

But as far as Akers knows that’s where the story and the tunnels end.

“I have never seen any indication that led me to believe they leave the footprint of the building,” Akers said.

Akers said when his children attended Morgan Middle School he checked out that end of the story.

“I had heard the story (of the tunnels) myself,” Akers said. “I spent some time underneath that stage. I never found anything.”

That does not mean Ellensburg is not laced with “tunnels.” It’s practically honeycombed.

A river runs through it

Ellensburg is not just surrounded by an irrigated valley, it is part of the irrigation system. Canals and creeks run under the city, often in locations that do not become evident until flooding events send water running down Main Street.

Those waterways, in essence, tunnel

under the city. There are waterways under residential areas as well as in the commercial core.

“It’s hidden,” Wheeler said of the stream system.

There are places where the streams emerge and are visible at street level.

A prime example is Wilson Creek, which runs through town and can be seen coming out from its culvert off the alley between Fourth and Third Avenue after passing under downtown buildings, including the Daily Record office.

“There is a labyrinth of underground streams below Ellensburg,” Akers said.

It is possible to walk along the underground culverts. Akers said city crew members have, at times, gone into the underground system to clear blockages and do structural studies.

False leads

Wheeler said there are buildings in town where it may appear that there were tunnels or something of that nature.

“There are hidden cellars,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler said some downtown businesses had delivery areas below the sidewalk level, so there are areas that appear to jut out from the basement of the building.

LEFT: A view of the service tunnels under Ellensburg City Hall. Running the entire length of the building, the tunnels where left over from when the building was a school house.

RIGHT: Maintenance tunnels underneath Morgan Middle School in Ellensburg.

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Unique and Unusual

Page 42 | Almanac 2014

Dick and Jane’s Spot Local artists turned their home into art project

By NICOLE KLAUSS staff writer Drive past the corner of First Avenue and Pearl Street in Ellensburg, and you might do a double take if you aren’t familiar with Dick and Jane’s Spot.

Posts decorated with colored glass bottles, nails and bicycle wheels line the yard. A giant hand, metal sculptures and statues of “Big Red” and “The Tourist” beckon visitors and passers-by to come up for a closer look. The yard contains more than 10,000 bottle caps and thousands of highway reflectors.

Dick and Jane’s Spot has been an art site for more than 35 years, featuring work by the homeowners and dozens of other artists.

The inside of the home, not open to the public, is just as unique as the outside. More than half of the house is studio space, but there is original art in each room.

Early beginnings

Jane Orleman and her late husband, Richard (Dick) Elliott, moved into the Pearl Street home in 1978.

They met as students

at Central Washington University in the art department, and married in 1971. When they moved in, they had their work cut out for them. The front and back doors were barely hanging and there was no grass in the yard.

“It was the second worst house in Ellensburg,” Orleman said. “It was completely trashed. The only door that was left hanging was right here on the stairway. ... It was better than the worst one and we could afford it.”

Orleman and Elliott were both experts at making beautiful things, and soon fixed up their home.

The idea for decorating the outside with artwork came in 1980.

“We had done a little bit, but there was sort of a defining moment,” Orleman said.

She, Elliott and four other artists were having a party one night, and they made a junk fence for the front.

Earlier that day, Elliott had gone to a yard sale and picked up items like an old tricycle, wheels, and Mickey Mouse figures to put on the fence.

See House, Page 44

Unique and Unusual

Almanac 2014

|

Page 43

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Fish swim along a fence at Dick and Jane’s Spot in Ellensburg.

Page 44 | Almanac 2014

Unique and Unusual

House Continued from Page 42 “We worked until dark and then got lights out and worked until 2 a.m.,” Orleman said. “We were all just totally into it. It wasn’t horrid.”

New additions

The couple continued adding to their yard for the next three decades.

“If we run across something out in the world that we want to buy and put in the yard, we do,” Orleman said.

Friends and family added to the yard with collaborative pieces. Over the years, the couple also hired Central art students to take part in projects in exchange for studio space.

Sometimes art pieces appeared on their porch in the night, which Orleman suspected were from CWU students leaving school.

“We always keep them,” she said.

“It kind of grows like top seed.”

“Many years ago I counted, and back then over 35 different artists were in the yard,” she said. “We’ve added a lot since then.”

In 1990, the couple built a large off-site storage facility to house the collection that was not on display.

It had to be expanded in 1998, and again in 2004.

Orleman continues to rotate artwork from storage into the home regularly, and estimates that at least 50 percent of the artwork is hers.

The artists

Elliott was famous for his work with reflector art and neon. He took industrial grade reflectors and combined them with two-dimensional geometric patterns. He did a number of installations around the state, including the Circle of Light on the Yakima Sun Dome, which is composed of 48,480 three-inch reflectors.

Orleman’s preferred medium is painting. She creates large-scale wall murals in bright colors, typically ranging from 23 to 30 feet.

“Typically a 30-foot painting will take 12 to 14 months,” she said.

Her artistic efforts have been slower than normal, as she is currently putting together a book about her husband’s art.

See House, Page 47

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

A collection of hubcaps, reflectors, and a license plate adorn one of the walls of a home known as Dick and Jane’s Spot along Pearl Street in Ellensburg.

“Many years ago I counted, and back then over 35 different artists were in the yard.

We’ve added a lot since then.”

Jane Orleman Brian Myrick / Daily Record

Traffic passes along Pearl Street in front of Dick and Jane’s Spot.

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Unique and Unusual

Page 46 | Almanac 2014

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

LEFT: Ellensburg artist Jane Orleman poses with a piece of her work from the 1970s and a mural from her current collection in her studio. RIGHT: Light shines through industrial reflectors that form a fence around a home known as Dick and Jane’s Spot along Pearl Street in Ellensburg.

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Unique and Unusual

Almanac 2014

|

Page 47

House Continued from Page 44 “It’ll be mostly about his work, but they’re including chapters on the house,” she said. “Even though that was collaborative between us and collecting, it’s a big part of who he was too.”

The book’s release date is planned for May 31 to coincide with a summer exhibit “Primal Op: The Art and Life of Richard C. Elliott” that will be on display at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, Ore. The exhibition will feature Elliott’s reflector paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints.

Restoration

Two years ago, Orleman applied and received a one-time grant from the Ellensburg Arts Commission for $800 to hire an assistant to help restore pieces at Dick

and Jane’s Spot that had weathered over time.

Together, the two repainted many pieces, and also took worn-out pieces and turned them into new ones.

“What’s left is the bones of the piece, and then taking those bones and putting in a new piece,” she said.

In general, the community has been accepting of the home and the artwork. A display outside gives more information to passers-by.

“People really embrace it,” she said.

Dick and Jane’s spot was done just “for the fun of it.”

“I like the fact that the kids in this town know you can be an artist,” Orleman said. “An artist is something you can aspire to.”

To learn more about Dick and Jane’s Spot, visit www. reflectorart.com

Brian Myrick / Daily Record

The house along Pearl Street in Ellensburg covered with art is known as Dick and Jane’s Spot.

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Page 48 | Almanac 2014

Unique and Unusual

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