A photograph from around 1870 captures the snow-clad home and store of Sam Williams at the northwest corner of Fourth and Main Street (now Capitol Way). Sam and his brother Charles eventually erected masonry buildings here. These, the three-story Mottman Building at the corner and the smaller Olympia Hardware building nearby, still exist and are on the heritage register. The home was moved to a site adjacent to the YMCA on Franklin Street, where older photographs of the YMCA building show it, but it no longer exists.
A.B. Woodard photo, about 1875, courtesy State Capital Museum Collection, Washington State Historical Society, catalog C2008.5.47
Text © Deborah Ross and The Olympian 2019 and 2026