Family Portrait Gallery #5

Here's a portrait which has had a rough time, at least lately. I bought this one in a sandwich bag, which is why I still have the cracked corners and a few other tiny chips from the card. I'm not an artistically knowledgeable guy, really. But I think the cracked stucco wall behind the soft face of this young lady makes for a nice contrast.

The break makes it hard to parse the name of the photographer, but it is apparently "Saettele." According to this list here, there were quite a few different members of the Saettele family who worked as photographers, several of them on either 6th or Franklin Ave in Saint Louis, Missouri. In 1972, this portion of Franklin Avenue was renamed after Martin Luther King, but that didn't stop the decay of that part of town. Since 1995, the former location of this portrait studio is home to Edward Jones Dome, which is home to not only the St. Louis Rams, but also the 2011-2013 FIRST World Championship Competitions.

When I was working on my previous blog, a now-defunct MP3 blog, I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about the legend of Stagger Lee, based on a real 1895 murder in St. Louis. Because I am nothing if not curious, I plugged in the address of the murder into Google, and it's just four blocks from this portrait studio, and probably less than a decade away in time. (Billy Lyons, the murder victim, would have walked within spitting distance of the studio from his home to the bar where he met his end.)

Postcards from the Past #2: The Space Needle

Here's a dramatic view of Seattle's Space Needle.


The Space Needle was being constructed 50 years ago, and was opened to the public in April 1962, to celebrate the 1962 World's Fair. The space-age design of the Needle helped set the tone for the Exposition, and the building is, of course, still standing today. (I visited with my family about six years ago, though my memories of the ride and view are vague, mostly conflated with The CN Tower, which we visited the very next year.)

It's a pretty nighttime view, but since I'm no expert on Seattle history there's nothing here that will help me pinpoint the year. That TraveLodge is still there, amazingly enough. That gas torch on the top wasn't taken out until, probably, 1999, when a new enormous spotlight was installed.



I can't find much online about The Ellis Post Card Co., but here's an extensive biography/obituary of Ira Spring, one-half of the pair of twins credited with the photo.