Capitol Hill Seafair parade float collection

Collection — binder: 1

Identifier: 1000-038

Scope and Contents

The collection documents the design, construction and exhibition of Seafair parade floats sponsored by the Capitol Hill Commercial Club circa 1959-1961. It includes scrapbook pages with newspaper clippings from the Capitol Hill Times and Seattle Times and photographs focusing on the 1959 “Going to the Fair” themed float and the women selected to be part of Capitol Hill’s Seafair royalty. The float took part in Capitol Hill’s Festival of Flags parade and other festivities throughout the city. Other photographs and slides in the collection show Capitol Hill floats from circa 1959 to 1961 in various locations including in a staging area at Memorial Stadium, on the street in downtown Seattle, and in the University District. The creator of the collection is unknown.

Dates

Creation: circa 1959-1961

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open and available for use.

Conditions Governing Use

Biographical / Historical

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The Seafair Festival began in 1950. Seattle’s previous summer festival, Potlatch, ran intermittently from 1911 to 1914 and from 1934 until 1941. Festival organizers were interested in reviving the tradition and hired Walter Van Camp, director of St. Paul’s Winter Carnival, to create a new maritime-themed summer festival for the city. Seafair featured many events including parades, music, waterskiing and hydroplane competitions, and other festivities. In addition to the main events, neighborhood activities and parades were also held throughout the city in areas such as Capitol Hill, Lake City, the Central District and the International District. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Aqua Theatre on Green Lake also hosted music and comedy events as well as swim and high dive performances by the Aqua Follies. In the festival’s first year, the downtown parade alone drew crowds of 150,000. In 2022, the festival celebrated its 73rd year with events reaching an estimated two million people.

The festival also featured a royal court including a king, queen and princesses whose responsibilities included acting as spokespeople for the fair, attending Seafair events, greeting dignitaries and promoting the spirit of the festival. The queen and princesses were selected from beauty pageant winners from local communities based on a range of criteria. In earlier years, they were judged based on poise, beauty, speaking ability and general conduct. In the 1960s and 1970s, additional criteria such as community service, academics, leadership and talent were added.

Full Extent

.1 Linear Feet (1 pamphlet binder)

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Additional Description

Abstract

The collection includes scrapbook pages and images documenting the design, construction and exhibition of Seafair parade floats sponsored by the Capitol Hill Commercial Club circa 1959-1961.

Arrangement

This collection was processed at the folder level. One folder contains photographs, and another contains scrapbook pages.

Processing Information

Acknowledgement of Harmful Content
The Seattle Public Library Special Collections Department is committed to creating an inclusive archive that documents the history of our diverse communities in a respectful manner. Our collections include historic materials that may contain images and outdated language which can be harmful due to issues such as racism, colonialism, sexism and homophobia. This content can provide important insight into the creator and context of the historic materials but can also reveal hurtful biases and prejudices.

We may decide to use or retain harmful language in our description when the terms have been used by the creator(s) of the materials to describe themselves or their community; when we have reused description created by the donor; when we have transcribed information directly from the materials; and when using national standards such as Library of Congress Subject Headings, which allow for standardized searching and retrieval of records. When including language from the original material in our finding aids or descriptions, we will indicate that this material comes directly from the original item by putting the language in quotes or prefacing it with a note that says the description is transcribed from the item or provided by the creator.

We will continually review our finding aids to identify harmful language and encourage you to contact us at specialcollections@spl.org if you find language that causes concern.