State Street in Aberdeen soon could become Hume Street again, part of an effort to connect the present with the past and the downtown core with the waterfront.
The street was renamed in 1937 from Hume Street to State Street to distance the city from what some thought was a too-colorful past involving bars and brothels.
Now, more than 75 years later, the street is home to mostly industrial and commercial operations, the brothels long since gone.
The City of Aberdeen Planning Commission and the city’s Historic Preservation Commission are leading the charge to change the name back, reflecting the beginnings of the city.
A meeting will serve as a “public discussion,” said outgoing Planning Commission Chairman Brian Little, and will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 4, at City Hall. “The essence of the conversation will be building a future Aberdeen,” he said.
State Street is a dividing line between downtown and the waterfront, Little says.
Changing the name will not only restore the street to its historic beginnings but also will unify the city as it progresses in its waterfront plans.
“There’s been a lot of effort to move Aberdeen from a 19th century mill town into modern times,” he said. “This is part of that — who knows if it will work or not, but it’s worth trying.”
Costs to the city will be minimal, Little says. The city already has its own sign shop and employees can put up the new signs.
But there are legitimate costs for business owners. When the name of the street is changed, addresses on letterheads and business cards have to be changed.
If business owners have State Street in the company name, a change could mean significant costs or even a potential loss of customers, Little said. “When first presented with this idea, businesses will look at their bottom line,” he said. “Pinning hope on something like this versus the bottom line, that’s a tough argument.”
The city sent a letter to each State Street business on Nov. 19 to notify them of the possible name change and invite them to the Dec. 4 meeting.
The commission, as well as the mayor and City Council, are hoping the meeting can iron out concerns and they would like to learn more about the community response.
A city ordinance to change the name was moved to a second reading on Monday, Nov. 24.
A second reading and public hearing for the ordinance will be held on Wednesday, Dec. 10.
A historic sign denoting “Hume Street” currently is above the official State Street sign on the corner of State and South L streets.
Pioneer cyclists and ill repute
Hume Street was named after one of the first Aberdeen business owners, George Hume, who bought a 5-acre salmon cannery in 1877. The company expanded and later was known as the Aberdeen Packing Company.
The newly formed town put down its roots after the company was formed, drawing a plat in 1883 five years before Washington became a state.
Like other towns founded in the ruggedness of pioneer life, Aberdeen had its seedy side. It’s said that Hume Street housed gambling, drinking and prostitution at the turn of the century.
A June 22, 1937, article written by Ed Van Syckle of the Aberdeen Daily World mused back, almost fondly, at the legacy of Hume Street, reminiscing in a story about one of the most prominent joints, the Palm dance hall, being torn down.
“In its day it was the hottest spot in town, but little remains now remindful of the old Palm dance hall on Hume Street,” Van Syckle wrote.
Ladies of the night were available and drinks were plentiful.
“The Palm in its heyday boasted at least 40 girls, short dressed, bespangled and beruffled. Fully five tenders worked behind the horseshoe bar. Beer foamed and sloshed incessantly,” he wrote.
Not far behind the drinking was roughhousing.
“Loggers by the hundreds stomped into town on a Saturday night. Came the seamen too, very thirsty and ready,” Van Syckle wrote. “With this hard-bitten crowd invariably came the big Missouri hooktender from the Coats-Fordney works. He came for the fighting. And came too Charles Brant, as handy a nose-puncher and chin-slugger as ever clenched a fist. Those were lively times.”
In order to escape the past, the city voted to change the name to State Street though a 1937 ordinance.
A brief published in the Aberdeen Daily World on Nov. 23, 1937, reported that business owners had requested the name change “because of the ill repute with which the name has been connected in times past.”
Property owners, the article said, from the west end of Hume Street and business owners along the street were tired “of the slighting references made to their street.”
On Dec. 29, 1937, the Aberdeen City Council approved the name change, deciding on “State Street.”
“A pioneer name was erased last night when the city council, on petition of property owners, changed the designation of Hume Street, named after the city’s first cannerman, to State street,” the Aberdeen Daily World reported on Dec. 30.
“As the city moved away from the river, lower Hume Street gradually became the scene of loggers and mill workers’ night life — saloons, gambling halls, dance palaces and similar places became numerous.”
The street, however, did not always have a negative reputation.
“In the early days, when the Weatherwax mill, first in the city, was located at Hume and I streets, the street was almost as important as Heron Street,” the article reported. “It was one of the first planked streets here and many a pioneer cyclist learned to ride and ‘scorch’ up and down its several blocks length.”
In renaming the street, it’s hoped that connecting the past to the present while linking the water to the downtown could mean increased interest in the city.
The question is — do people want to go back to the original name.
That’s what the meeting aims to figure out.
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