Above is a five-minute video slideshow of photos taken on Bainbridge during the 1960s. The slide show was prepared for the Bainbridge Public Library’s 50th anniversary celebrations last month.
Culled largely from the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum‘s archives, the photos depict some of the island’s last big blue-collar employers, including the Eagle Harbor shipyard, and plenty of new real estate offices.
Also popping up are a long-gone bowling alley, lumber yard, shoe store and Crazy Eric’s burger joint. Watch close and you’ll see (around the three-minute mark) the Unocal gas station site that has been making the news lately.
At least two businesses in the slide show – Town & Country Market and Esther’s fabric store – are still thriving today.
It’s striking to see how little Winslow Way has changed since the 1960s, and how much the newer Village shopping center on High School Road has been altered quite a bit.
The Bowling Alley still sort of exists. If you go to Island Fitness,in the very back where the weight room is – you will see the floors are the original hardwoods of the bowling alley!
I miss Crazy Erics and their Banana Milkshakes!
I found about half of the photos in this slide show from the advertising pages in the back of Bainbridge High School yearbooks from the 1960’s – that’s why most of the “employees” and “customers” in those business photos look so young.
The biggest difference between downtown Winslow then and now: lots of parking spaces in the 60’s!
Thanks for the look into the past. I lived on the island from ’47 to ’58 (when it was still mostly country). I have vivid memories of Strawberry Festivals,The building of the NIKE site and the “new” highway. Thanks for the memories.
Except for some of the business names, much of this was the same when I moved to B.I. in the early 1970s. At that time, “Winslow” ended where Cafe Nola is now. And that same space was the Puget Power office (later renamed to the current Puget Sound Energy). What these slides cannot show is that you could call anyone on the Island by dialing just the last four digits of their phone number. There was no fast food, no convenience stores, and the grocery stores were all closed by 7 p.m. But there were four bookstores in Winslow. A book of 20 ferry commuter tickets cost $5.10 and you could park all day and all night in the Diamond lot at the terminal for fifty cents.
Oh my oh my! I loved the whole wonderful slide show (thanks!) but best of all was seeing my dearly departed much beloved Uncle Fred, right there in Tyszko Insurance, helping someone fill out a claim! so sweet–and indeed that’s what Bainbridge Island stays in my memory, so sweet–what a place to have grown up–