Kirklanders have always had a special relationship with the water. That may seem obvious given we are a lakeside community, but Kirkland’s fondness of the water has always exceeded that of neighboring Lake Washington communities, like Bellevue, Renton and Mercer Island, who lacked the various summer festivals and waterfront park acquisition and development priorities. As summer ebbs and we prepare to enter fall, here is a short photo retrospective of what Kirkland women wore while enjoying the lake and Peter Kirk Pool in the pre-bikini era. (Men’s have been much less interesting—prior to 1940, swim trunks and tank tops; post-1940, just swim trunks).
The first photo is hand colored and from the 1910s. It came from the personal photo album (now in the Kirkland Heritage Society’s French Collection) of Olivia French, later Davis, daughter of Houghton-area pioneer Harry French, who came from Maine as an adult with his parents in 1872. The lake level was about nine and a half feet higher back then, so the trestle over the swampy shoreline would be about where Lake Washington Boulevard is today. The French home is visible in the background, it was located about a half block east of Lake Washington Boulevard on today’s NE 63rd Street, so where the four young women are standing is dry land today, where the Washington Shores II Condominium now stands. The girls are wearing what were called wash dresses, in those days the preferred attire for Lake Washington fun. Note, too, how swampy the area was, no real beach, but given the happy looks on their faces they did not let a little mud up to their shins ruin a good time.
The second photo was taken at Juanita Beach in the mid-1920s. These girls attended the old Union ‘A’ High School, as it was known officially, which stood at today’s Heritage Park. The girl at the left of the photo is Alice Patty, whose photo album this image was scanned from, granddaughter of the pioneer Clark family and daughter of Ollis Patty, the Town of Kirkland’s first treasurer back in 1905. The girl in the center’s name is unknown, but on the right was Alice Peck. Because the high school was unofficially called Kirkland High, she has the large “K” on her letter sweater. Wool swimsuits were then the order of the day and so few people owned their own that renting them was a revenue source for the then privately operated Juanita Beach. At the right edge of the photo a row of small vacation cabins are seen, those were the Juanita Beach Cabins, called by many simply the “red and white cabins”, given their paint scheme. The cabins stood for nearly 50 years, demolished in the early 1970s to make way for the building currently on the site.
The third image also comes from Alice Patty’s album. Here the girls are seen at Madison Park, the Kirkland ferry’s western terminus. Cigarette smoking was thought to make one look older and more sophisticated, but had they done it at a Kirkland beach word would have doubtless gotten back to their parents, so they would ride the ferry to Madison Park where they were less likely to get caught.
The fourth image of the young woman holding the “Wafford” sign was captured on August 17, 1946 at Kirkland’s first Summer Festival. For a town weary of WWII, the festival created a fun-filled weekend which included lots of activities and competitions on the lake. One, a pig swimming derby that in those pre-television days was filmed by a newsreel crew and brought Kirkland into movie theaters across the nation. A handful of female UW students were enlisted to pose holding signs for each pig, Wafford being the pig she promoted. Sadly, Wafford lost, and the honor went to a pig called the Rose of Normandie.
The fifth photo takes us up to 1968 and Kirkland’s famous Dorothy “Didi” Anstett. Didi was from a large Kirkland family and made her way up through several smaller beauty pageants in her teens to ultimately earn first runner up in the 1967 Miss Washington Pageant. While a UW student in 1968, she brought national focus to Kirkland by winning Miss Washington USA and then going on to become Miss USA of 1968. She then went on to represent the US in July of that year in Miami at the Miss Universe Pageant, hosted by game show host Bob Barker, where she placed 4th out of 65 contestants.
The sixth image takes us to swimming lessons at the Peter Kirk pool in the summer of 1970, two years after the pool opened. Unlike today’s municipal projects, it was built after a community campaign of donations and volunteer labor. All of the lifeguards and swimming instructors wore the same red and white striped suits with their various accomplishment badges sewn onto them. These young women had the patience of saints!
Finally, a summer of 1971 Kodak 110 instamatic shot of Juanita Beach on a weekday. Most moms of young kids were home in those days, so on a hot day Juanita Beach was the site of these intrepid women and a few teenage lifeguards trying to keep a lid on the utter mayhem. For most of these women utility was the name of the game, not fashion, as these trips were usually a non-stop adventure in keeping track of everybody, preventing sunburns, removing sunscreen from eyes, stopping splash fights, consoling the losers of splash fights, and reminding everybody that the concession stand was a privilege, not an entitlement.
8 - A young woman prepares to dive into Juanita Bay, c.1916
9 - Lake Washington High School Girls JV Swim team, c.1940
10 - A Norkirk Neighborhood resident models her new swimsuit, c.1955
11 & 12 - 1946 Summer Festival Pig Derby
13 1946 Summer Festival waterski demonstration, US Olympic Waterski Team member Norma Lyons thrills Kirkland crowds.