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West Spokane Street Bridge collision

1970s in SeattleBridge disasters caused by collisionBridge disasters in the United States

At 2:38 a.m. on June 11, 1978, the freighter Antonio Chavez rammed the West Spokane Street Bridge, thereby closing it to automobile traffic for the next six years. The pilot and master were both found negligent in causing the collision. The collision led to the opening of the current West Seattle Bridge in 1984. The incident occurred in west fork of the Duwamish Waterway, as the Chavez hit the West Spokane Street Bridge which had been raised to allow the ship to pass through. This blocked eastbound traffic to West Seattle, until the westbound span was temporarily adapted to handle two-way traffic.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article West Spokane Street Bridge collision (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

West Spokane Street Bridge collision
Southwest Spokane Street, Seattle

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N 47.571388888889 ° E -122.35333333333 °
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Spokane Street Bridge

Southwest Spokane Street
98134 Seattle
Washington, United States
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J. F. Duthie & Company
J. F. Duthie & Company

J. F. Duthie & Company was a small shipyard located on the east side of Harbor Island in Seattle, Washington. It was reportedly organized in 1911 (although there is no mention of it on the 1912 Baist map at the location where the shipyard would be built) and expanded to 4 slipways on 25 acres of property in World War I to build cargo ships for the United Kingdom, France and Norway, but those resources were eventually all diverted at the behest of the United States Shipping Board (USSB). Work on the new plant started on 10 September 1916 and the first keel was laid on 29 November the same year. At that time, the new Skinner & Eddy plant across the water was already launching its first two ships: Niels Nielsen (21 September) and Hanna Nielsen (23 October). Some 24 of the 33 ships built at J. F. Duthie were the "West boats," a series of steel-hulled cargo ships built for the USSB on the West Coast of the United States as part of the World War I war effort, with 12 requisitioned and 12 built under contract, 16% of the steel tonnage built in Puget Sound for the USSB. Duthie was supplied with boilers by Willamette Iron and Steel Works of Portland, Oregon.After the war, Wallace F. Duthie, the son of the founder J. F. Duthie, organized the dismantling of the shipbuilding facilities. Wallace died in 1922 at age 23.In 1928 the company's name was changed to Wallace Bridge Company. It built structural steel for local projects, including the Washington Athletic Club building in 1930.

Harbor Island, Seattle
Harbor Island, Seattle

Harbor Island is an artificial island in the mouth of the Duwamish River in Seattle, Washington, US, where it empties into Elliott Bay. Built by the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company, it was completed in 1909 and was then the largest artificial island in the world, at 350 acres (1.4 km2). Since 1912, the island has been used for commercial and industrial activities including secondary lead smelting, shipbuilding and repair, bulk petroleum storage, metal fabrication and containerized cargo shipping. Warehouses, laboratories and other buildings are located on the island. Harbor Island was made from 24 million yd³ (18 million m³) of earth removed in the Jackson and Dearborn Street regrades and dredged from the bed of the Duwamish River.Harbor Island lost its title as the world's largest artificial island in 1938 with the completion of Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, at 395 acres (1.60 km2). It regained the title in 1967, at which time its area had increased to nearly 397 acres (1.61 km2), but has now been far surpassed in area; since 2004, Rokkō Island in Kobe harbor in Japan is over 3.5 times larger. The official land area, as reported by the United States Census Bureau, was 406.91 acres (164.67 ha), at the 2000 census. There was also a permanent population of three persons reported on the island at that time. The West Seattle Bridge passes over the island, as does the newer Spokane Street Bridge, a swing bridge across the West Waterway. The East Waterway is crossed by a causeway supported a few feet above high tide by pilings. Vigor Industrial operates a 27-acre (10.9 ha) shipyard on the island, which is also the site of some of the Port of Seattle's terminals and the publishing branch of The Mountaineers (Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills, among others). The Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation built 45 destroyers for the United States Navy on the island from 1941 to 1946, in a yard now owned by Vigor.

Frank B. Cooper School
Frank B. Cooper School

Frank B. Cooper Elementary School, usually called Cooper School, serves students from kindergarten through 5th grade. Located in the Pigeon Point neighborhood of Delridge, Seattle, Washington, it is part of the Seattle Public Schools district. The school's 14-acre (57,000 m2) site is immediately adjacent to the 182-acre (0.74 km2) West Duwamish Greenbelt, one of Seattle's largest wildlife habitat corridors. This rich natural environment enhances the school's environmental education program. While the current building, located at 1901 SW Genesee Street, was opened in 1999, Cooper School enjoys a long history in the community, dating back to 1906, when a group of 70 students, children of steel mill workers, attended classes at Youngstown School in a small building offered by the Seattle Steel Company. A year later, a wooden building—known as Riverside School—was built for the school at the base of Pigeon Hill. As the population of the community grew, the wooden structure was replaced by a brick building 1917, which was designed by Edgar Blair, with a 1929 expansion designed by Floyd Naramore. In 1939, the school was renamed to honor Frank B. Cooper, a former Seattle school superintendent. The historic Youngstown School building, located at 4408 Delridge Way SW, now houses the Cooper Artist Housing and Youngstown Cultural Arts Center. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.One of the school's assets is its diversity. Approximately 80 percent of Cooper students are racial or ethnic minorities and approximately one-quarter are bilingual. The first African American teacher hired to teach in Seattle Public Schools, Thelma Dewitty, worked at Cooper School from 1947 until 1953. The Thelma DeWitty Theater at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center is named after her. On Thursday January 29, 2009 the Seattle School Board voted to close Cooper Elementary School and move the Pathfinder K-8 program to the Cooper campus.