Seattle, Theodore Peiser

Theodore Peiser – Downtown Seattle – 1878

November 14th, 2016

Theodore E. Peiser was based in San-Francisco before he moved up to Seattle. In Seattle, he had a photo shop and studio on 2nd ave downtown where he did a lot of portrait photography work. I have a bunch of portraits with the stamp of the shop, but those are not very interesting for the purpose of this collection. Several years later, Peiser moved to the Greenlake area.

This particular photo is thought to have been taken by the Peterson Bros. in 1878, and the negative has been used and redeveloped by Peiser later. I talked with some local experts that pointed out that a third photo exists in the collage, which was part of the original Peterson Bros panoramic negative set and view. This item is a 2-photo collage that includes Periser’s signature in the negative. If you look closely, there are street names and directions in the negative as well. The back of the photo carries the stamp and signature of Theodore Periser’s shop in the Greenlake area that was located on 61st St.