Bellingham Old Town Waterfront

by James Williamson

Original - Sold

Price

$3,500

Dimensions

32.000 x 24.000 inches

Title

Bellingham Old Town Waterfront

Artist

James Williamson

Medium

Painting - Pen And Ink Watercolor

Description

Bellingham Old Town, Whatcom Creek Waterway pen and ink, watercolor painting by artist James Williamson.

Artist James Williamson, ASMA
Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists

The Historic Maritime City of Bellingham located in Whatcom County in Washington State.
Bellingham City Hall: (formerly New Whatcom City Hall), 1892-93, restored 1965-74. One of the state's finest late nineteenth century institutional structures built in an austere Second Empire Style with overtones of Romanesque Revival. The massive brick structure which builds up from four corner towers to a high central cupola is still our city's major landmark and symbol of authority dispite its use since 1940 as the Museum of History and Art. When the structure was damaged in a 1962 fire that destroyed the roof and central tower, a masterful campaign by the Whatcom Museum Society raised funds to restore the building and refurbish the interior. Now a major, multipurpose cultural center, the museum has received national recognition for its community-sponsored restoration.
The Daily Reveille, January 16,1892 described the new structure: a beacon to all vessels coming into our harbor, and a sure index to all comers, tourists, and travelers, of our taste, thrift, enterprise and intelligence.
An account of the City of New Whatcom given in Polk's 1892 Gazetteer of Oregon, Washington and Idaho: The city is admirably situated on Bellingham Bay. It is claimed that a sailing vessel can make New Whatcom wharves from the Ocean by only three courses of the wind. Here is one of the finest harbors on the Sound, capable of accommodating ships of the largest tonnage. These facts coupled with the railroad facilities, developed and in prospect, will make this city a formidable rival of the great cities farther up the sound...the city has street electric railway connecting with Fairhaven, gas works, an admirable volunteer fire department, six prosperous banks, and two daily newspapers: the Reveille (Rep) and Exponent (Dem).
Steamers: From the early 1850s until the early 1890s Whatcom County was connected to other centers of population almost exclusively by sea lanes that were plied by occasional and unscheduled sailing vessels and small steamers. And from time to time, by somewhat more regular ferries. Overland travel was next to impossible much of the year. Along the coast, settlements maintained contact by rowboat and ferry rather than by rail and road.
Until the development of steamer engines fueled by coal, and later oil, steam was generated by burning cordwood, consuming forests of timber and providing supplemental employment for cutters and those loading at wooding up stops. Woodchoppers were paid $2.50 and $3.00 a cord.
Sternwheelers were the biggest consumers, often burning up to five cords an hour. The rigors of loading wood are illustrated in this painting of Bellingham 1892. I have recreated the feeling of the Bellingham waterfront in the 1890s bringing together two historic elements. The city as the backdrop with the newly constructed City Hall and a steamship wooding up in the foreground. Symbols of our heritage portraying the lives invested, the youth, strength and talents spent by people to build this great Northwest city.
The steamer Fairhaven was owned by The Puget Sound Navigation Company, built in 1889 at Capt. John J. Holland's yard in Tacoma, single cylinder engine of 196 hp, 130 X 26.5, 319 gross tons, wood hull, sternwheel. Fairhaven was one of Puget Sound's many mosquito fleet steamers that made development of the region feasible in the early days. Ferry designs and routes were pioneered by steamboat men and business investors eager to develop this rich frontier. Ferry and steamboat routes linked the Sound communities.
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Uploaded

September 30th, 2011

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