Throughout 2021 the Sunday Olympian’s Looking Back feature portrayed events and people from the Sylvester’s Window cityscape project. The 1856 cityscape depicts Clara Pottle Sylvester with her husband, Olympia’s co-founder Edmund Sylvester, pointing out their new home, then under construction. Clara arrived in Olympia as a newlywed in 1854. She was an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage and helped establish the Woman’s Club, one of the first on the West Coast.
Unknown photographer, around 1870s, courtesy State Capital Museum Collection, Washington State Historical Society, catalog C1947.2.3
Text © Deborah Ross and The Olympian 2021