Unseen and overlooked Anacortes

by Richard Arlin Walker, Salish Current

This is a story about unseen Anacortes … and before we get under way, please, save the crude jokes about those A.S.S. manhole covers. We’ll get to those later. 

Anacortes has gone through several iterations since railroad surveyor Amos Bowman moved his family here in 1877 and began promoting the area as a terminus for the Northern Pacific Railway. It’s been a fishing town, cannery town, farming town, lumber town and mill town. Maritime is still the monarch of local industry, with two shipyards, a cannery and numerous marinas, fishing fleets and maritime support businesses. But Anacortes is now largely a residential city. 

An Anacortes Museum walking tour brochure lists 30 buildings and sites dating as early as 1890, although one is recently gone (a blacksmith shop-turned-junk shop built circa 1900) and another will soon be torn down to make way for commercial and office spaces (Marine Supply and Hardware, also circa 1900). Ah, but look closely … other clues to early city life were left behind by those in whose footsteps we tread.

Olson Building graffiti

They lived more than a century ago, their histories now contained in newspaper archives and museum files. But Zack Benn and J. D. Wallen separately left other evidence of their existence: their signatures, etched into bricks in the Olson Building at 3rd and Commercial. 

Beneath this metal plate in the sidewalk in front of the Olson Building is a system of pulleys used to load product to the basement. In 1903, diners entered this doorway to Delmonico Oyster House. (Richard Walker / Salish Current © 2024)

The building is owned by the Anacortes Housing Authority and is scheduled to be remodeled into affordable apartments, like the housing authority’s Wilson Hotel up the street. The Olson Building’s façade and those inscribed bricks will remain, housing authority officials have reported.

There are other scrawls; one resembles a beehive. But Benn and Wallen’s signatures help tell the building’s story. 

A succession of businesses called the Olson Building home in the early 1900s: Delmonico Oyster House, the Skagit Saloon and Café, the Mount Baker Café, Crouder’s Pool Hall, Skipper’s Tavern. The Bellingham Herald had an office here to serve its Anacortes readers. 

Zachariah T. Benn (1858–1923) was a native of Ontario, Canada. According to the Anacortes Museum, he opened Delmonico Oyster House in the Olson Building in January 1903 but sold it the following year. That likely puts his brick scrawl in 1903 or ’04. Benn opened the Golden West Café on 5th Street between Commercial and O avenues in 1905. 

The late artist Bill Mitchell created a mural depicting Benn in 1912 with his Model T lunch wagon, “Setrocana” (Anacortes spelled backward) on 6th Street. The mural is on the side of the Shannon Building, 602 Commercial Avenue.

Information about Wallen, however, is more elusive. His presence seems to predate the appearance of other Wallens in town at the time. “I see and Ed and Julia in the 1920 census, but not any Wallens in directories in 1912 or 1917,” Anacortes Museumexecutive director Bret Lunsford reported. “Could be a seafarer leaving his mark in port.”

J. D. Wallen scribed his signature and date 110 years ago into a brick on the Olson Building at 3rd and Commercial in Old Town Anacortes. (Richard Walker / Salish Current © 2024)

J. D. Wallen signed his brick and dated it Jan. 27, 1915, a Wednesday. It was a happening time in Anacortes. On Sunday, the Elks Lodge dedicated the cornerstone for its new lodge at 6th Street and Q Avenue, according to the Anacortes American on Jan. 28, 1915 (the building is now City Hall). Nick Marinakos took over ownership of Delmonico’s from his brother George. The Masonic Lodge was moving into its new building at 8th and O. Anacortes Machine Works was repairing the hull of the Guemes Island ferry Elk, damaged when the vessel ran aground. The film “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was being shown that Saturday night at the Rose Theater.

It was a chilly day; the morning low was 30 degrees F, the daytime high was 45. It’s easy to picture Wallen escaping the chill with lunch in Delmonico’s, or wetting his whistle in the Skagit Saloon. Taking stock of his surroundings, he decided he liked Anacortes and wanted to leave his mark. 

We don’t know — at least, not yet. But it is known that on Jan. 27, 1915, at 3rd and Commercial in Anacortes, J. D. Wallen was here.

Sidewalk prisms and freight pulleys

The large metal-plate and glass prisms on the sidewalk outside the Olson Building are easily overlooked but tell a story about natural lighting and movement of freight in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Glass prisms, like these at 3rd Street and Commercial Avenue, allowed natural light into basements. (Richard Walker / Salish Current © 2024) 

The glass prisms allowed natural light into the large basement, which was used for storage by the building’s commercial occupants. Beneath that metal plate is a system of pulleys that were used to lower freight from delivery vehicles to the basement.

Historically, the Olson Building basement was used for storage by the aforementioned businesses, as well as Marine Hardware next door. Glass prisms can still be found embedded in sidewalks in some older cities. But as for Anacortes, “I’m not aware of any other basement skylights in sidewalks,” Lunsford said.

Brick manholes and hand-dug sewers

The city wastewater treatment plant uses a robotic camera to cruise the sewers and find obstructions. Film footage shown on a computer screen during a treatment plant tour revealed an important part of Anacortes history: a brick archway supporting a brick-lined manhole, as masterfully done as any brickwork above ground. 

Yes, it’s a sewer, but there’s a certain beauty to this work. Brick-and-mortar masonry is an ancient construction technique that creates durable structures like walls and arches, known for their strength and aesthetic appeal.

That these aesthetically appealing entrances to the city’s sewers are older than many of the buildings above them is a testament to the masons who built them. 

“They definitely took their job seriously,” said Steve Doebler, wastewater treatment plant supervisor. “They were extremely skilled. It’s not to say that individuals aren’t skilled anymore, but I guess I equate it to an old tall ship, how you had to be able to repair that ship out at sea and everybody knew something about carpentry and whatnot. How many people today could just go out and sail a tall ship? It’s a lost art, really.”

Chinese immigrants are believed to have dug Anacortes’s earliest sewers. This tunnel was discovered during a sewer improvement project in July 2012. City GIS manager Rob Hoxie said the workers made brick and mortar manholes, some extending 10 feet deep. (City of Anacortes)

Building the sewer was hard work. Today, a sewer line consists of precast concrete pipe laid in an open trench and then buried. City GIS manager Rob Hoxie said Anacortes’s earliest sewer lines were hand-dug by Chinese immigrant laborers. That’s based on workman’s tools that had been left behind; in addition, the soil above one section of sewer line was undisturbed native ground, not fill. Their work would provide access to the sewer for more than 100 years. Some manholes extend 10 feet below street level, Hoxie said.

The oldest city sewers are in Old Town. Homes outside of downtown had no need of sewers then — a house would have been connected by clay pipe to a brick cesspool — but a sewer system was needed to accommodate all of downtown’s visitors.

This feat of early 20th-century craftsmanship doesn’t escape the appreciation of those who’ve seen it. 

“I think the workmanship is very beautiful,” Doebler said. “And you know, as we were talking about earlier, there’s a craftsman’s touch to it.”

Freight room graffiti

A worker or workers had some time on their hands in the freight room of the Great Northern Railroad train station — now the Depot Arts and Community Center. 

They also had talent.

One wall of the room features graffiti drawn there in the 1920s and ’30s. A tell-tale sign of the time period: figures resembling popular comic strip characters of that era. Some of the graffiti is believed to predate that.

The Depot was built in 1911 to serve passenger travel and the canneries and lumber mills on Fidalgo Island. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987 and now hosts art exhibits, the Anacortes Farmers Market and public and private events. It is owned by the City of Anacortes.

The Depot has undergone considerable restoration but the graffiti wall remains. Mitchell, the muralist, wrote in the April 29, 1981, Anacortes American about an upcoming art auction: “You may want to come early to give the 70-year-old landmark the eye before going into the freight room auction and reading the 1913 graffiti (it contains no obscenities and the old cartoons will ‘knock ya out’).”

Jonn Lunsford, Anacortes Parks and Recreation director, said of the graffiti, “I think it’s just kind of an interesting side note on the regular lives of people from our past and how they chose to express themselves.”

Neighborhood grocers

In 1900, before supermarkets and family cars, you would have walked to the corner neighborhood store to buy your milk, bread and eggs.

This home at 10th and K in Anacortes was formerly Winge’s Market and, before that, Sackett’s Community Grocery. It is one of 14 such structures still remaining, according to Bret Lunsford of the Anacortes Museum. (Google Maps)

Several of those former neighborhood stores still exist, although they have been converted into homes. 

“Anacortes had over 20 grocers listed in the 1948 Polk business directory. At least 14 were in structures still standing; more than half of those are on Commercial Avenue,” Lunsford reported. “Most notably, The Store Grocery has operated as a neighborhood grocery for almost 100 years, beginning as Brunson’s, then operating for decades as Jorgenson’s.”

These buildings are distinguished by their false fronts (a facade extending beyond and above the true dimensions of the building to give it a more imposing appearance and often used for signage); recessed or covered entries; and large display windows. 

One former neighborhood grocery remodeled into a home is located at K Avenue and 10th Street; it’s for sale for $825,000. An exterior wall features a Bill Mitchell mural of its proprietors. The store-turned-home was built in 1900, according to a real estate brochure for the property.

Neighborhood grocers were important members of the community. According to Adam Farnsworth, education and media curator at the Anacortes Museum, neighborhood grocers supplied local fishing vessels and drew customers in with midnight sales. They were a community hub where residents chatted and socialized while shopping for essentials.

A.S.S. manhole covers

The City of Anacortes contracted for the installation of 84,190 linear feet of sewer line in 1954, according to legal notices published in the May 13 Anacortes American that year, and the project included the casting of 259 new manhole covers. 

The Anacortes Sewer System manhole covers stirred up a lot of, um, laughs over the decades since they were installed.

The foundry apparently couldn’t fit the identifier “Anacortes Sewer System” on the manhole cover, and so went with the abbreviation ASS. 

A.S.S. became the, um, butt of jokes for years to come. 

The Anacortes American’s Town Talk column on July 27, 1967, noted that the manhole covers “get many a startled double-take from tourists.” You’ll find photos of the manhole covers on social media. And the manhole cover is depicted on a line of clothing — infant onesies, adult T-shirts and hoodies – by graphic artist Tara Almond of Mount Vernon.

In 2008, she met Matt French — an artist for Volcom, a maker of clothing for skaters, snowboarders and surfers — at an art show in Blaine. He had designed a poster for the Amsterdam Slalom Series and noted, “Some people don’t realize how acronyms will translate in other countries.” 

“I think seeing that poster is what reminded me of the Anacortes Sewer System manhole covers,” Almond said. “Then when I moved back to Mount Vernon, I ran into my friend Rob Olmsted, and he was selling a bunch of ridiculous stuff through his brand, Mount Vernon Coat Factory.”

And so, in 2020, she launched her clothing line. 

Almond, who’s worked as a legislative aide and served as chair of the 40th District Democrats, said the A.S.S. manhole covers are evidence, perhaps, that some decision-maker had a sense of humor — something she said is needed in government. 

“Humor brings people together,” she said, “and we really need that today.”

— By Richard Arlin Walker