The Curator's Eye: Washington State History Museum

Last year’s Then & Now, a hit show at Tacoma’s Washington State History Museum, is now a semipermanent exhibit at its sister institution, Olympia’s Capital Museum. The show is an addictive compendium of old-time photos from all over the state that were unearthed by revered historian Paul Dorpat and paired with photos of the same sites photographed in modern times by his colleague Jean Sherrard, who risked his fool neck on rickety ladders and risky rooftops from Tacoma to Chuckanut Drive.

“Paul had done the Google Earth work to find the locations of the old photos,” says Sherrard. It wasn’t always easy: the old, experimental roads of Maryhill are overgrown, visible only from space via satellite. “Jean had his camera on a big extension pole,” says Dorpat. “We call it his big ten-footer.” Since Sherrard is six-foot-seven, few obstacles were insurmountable. And when he needed more height, he’d borrow a helicopter, repaying the owners by trading them an aerial photo of their airfield.

Then & Now is not a show you gaze at in silence. It is a conversation. “Paul and Jean’s work creates a space where people can share experiences about place,” says Maria Pascualy, who crafted the big, reader-friendly wall texts. “I designed the panels so Paul and Jean ‘talked’ to the viewer.” She observed visitors and arranged the panels for maximum conversation starting.

Some of the most talked-about images are from Tacoma. Dorpat thinks the biggest panorama he found was of the tide flats, taken from the top of the Washington Building. To get another shot, says Sherrard, “I stood in the center of the bridge Murray Morgan tended, right below where he perched and wrote. I took the picture at 4:30 a.m., when there was no traffic.”

Marie McCaffrey, who helped Dorpat start the popular Web site HistoryLink.org, is not surprised that his Then & Now show is now more or less immortal. “Paul Dorpat is immune to time,” she says. •

FOCAL POINTS

Miles Sherrard drove for photos: 22,000

Most terrifying moment: Standing on a cliff several hundred feet above Grand Coulee Dam

Second most terrifying moment: Straddling a narrow ledge atop the Northern Pacific Building in Tacoma to shoot Pacific Avenue

Cost of printing entire show at Costco: Under $1,000

Time of day painted on Bellingham’s 1893 City Hall clock because they couldn’t afford a real clock: 7:00

Oldest photo: Henry Yesler’s Pioneer Square Seattle home (1859)

Estimated height of Mt. Rainier in Asahel Curtis’s phony retouched photo: 35,000 ft. (5,000 ft. higher than Mt. Everest)

Most ironic find: McDonald’s Drive-In, on the site of a romantic 1906 canoe excursion on Renton’s picturesque Black River