Throughout 2021 the Sunday Olympian’s Looking Back feature portrayed events and people from the Sylvester’s Window cityscape project. The 1899 cityscape features a bicycle parade around the grounds of Sylvester Park. Bicycling was all the rage in the last years of the 19th century. Pictured here are Olympia’s Robert Blankenship and another unidentified man with their “wheels,” including a high-wheeled pennyfarthing, already going out of style when the photo was taken.
unidentified photographer, courtesy State Capital Museum Collection, Washington State Historical Society, catalog C2009.0.2
Text © Deborah Ross and The Olympian 2021