Before the software, before the condos,

even before the airplanes

One of America’s youngest big cities, Seattle has already seen a lot of growth and change in a mere 160 years.

The city’s economic base moved from timber to airplanes, and again to software and high tech.

Stunning buildings came up (and sometimes down).

Handsome downtown office buildings were removed for smaller, taller towers with more corner spaces to rent.

In the neighborhoods beyond downtown, modest middle-class homes were upscaled with fancy new fixtures, or replaced my McMansions or rows of town homes.

Parks were built on shipping docks, oil terminals, and air space above a freeway.

And despite Seattle’s nature-loving reputation, its landscape was raised, lowered, and reshaped.

Explore more than 80 altered spaces throughout the Jet City with Clark Humphrey’s Then & Now Seattle (not to be confused with any other “then and now” or “now and then” book prepared by others).

It’s available now from Arcadia Publishing, the South Carolina-based publisher of our vastly successful Vanishing Seattle and Seattle’s Belltown.

Get it, and see where we’ve been.