Attribution: unidentified photographer, 1860s, courtesy Washington State Historical Society
Looking Back’s theme for 2026 is Downtown by the Decades. Edmund Sylvester, founder of Olympia, and his wife Clara Pottle Sylvester, had an imposing Italianate mansion built in the mid-1800s. It was located one block south of what is now Sylvester Park, on Main Street, now Capitol Way. This image is likely from the 1860s. Image selected and captioned by Deborah Ross on behalf of the Olympia Historical Society and Bigelow House Museum, https://olympiahistory.org.
unidentified photographer, 1860s, courtesy Washington State Historical Society