♪♪
-It's seen massive growth and myriad changes.
Now, Sea-Tac Airport is celebrating 75 years.
20 years ago,
it dazzled the world with its eye catching design.
Learn who dreamed up the downtown Seattle Public Library.
Part dance, part martial art,
the Brazilian tradition of Capoeira
is enjoying a resurgence.
These stories and more next on "CityStream."
♪♪
Hello, I'm Dennis Bounds, and welcome to "CityStream"
from Seattle Center.
♪♪
Soon the grounds here
will be filled with people celebrating Fiestas Patrias.
It's the annual commemoration of independence
for many Latin American countries.
This year's event is a partnership
with Sea Mar Community Health Centers and Seattle Center.
The two day celebration is September 14th and 15th.
We began with another celebration,
this one at Sea-Tac Airport,
which is celebrating 75 years of service.
The airport has seen many changes during that time
and experienced record growth.
Tatevik Aprikyan looks back at its history,
starting with opening day.
♪♪
-July 9, 1949 was a beautiful summer day in Seattle.
Perfect for just this sort of event.
♪♪
-It's opening day at Seattle Tacoma International Airport.
-The future has arrived in the Pacific Northwest.
-The soaring control tower,
the airy glass walled concourses,
was hailed as America's most advanced airport terminal.
-My biggest memory is that it was really hot.
And when you think about it,
acres of concrete absorbing all that heat, no shade anywhere.
-30,000 people were there for the fanfare.
Days shy of her 4th birthday,
Kathy Mills Rozzini remembers the ride for the big day.
-I remember my sister in the car.
I think we were being brats
and so my parents were probably at their wits end.
And Cheryl said, "We're going to fly in an airplane."
And so I thought, "This is really cool."
Had no idea what an airplane was.
-That's little Kathy on the right with her family
at Sea-Tac 75 years ago.
-Got here and that no, we were not going to fly in an airport,
but we got a Coca Cola.
It was a day out. It was a trip. But I had no concept.
Airport, what's an airport?
-Rozzini grew up with aviation.
Her father was a World War II pilot,
her uncle an executive with United Airlines,
and her grandfather started Star Air Service,
which later became Alaska Airlines.
-The airport represented modern flight.
It was a big deal to fly. That's why everybody dressed up.
Men wore suits and the women wore hats and gloves.
-As traveling became more popular by the early '50s,
four airlines served 1,500 passengers a day.
Inside the terminal,
travelers enjoyed fine dining, a barbershop, even a Santa Claus.
In baggage claim, your luggage was handed to you.
-What I really love is getting out on a plane
and then they taxi and then they start out and then they go
[imitates engine] and I just love that.
♪♪
-The runways looked a little different than too.
Originally, the airport had four crosswind runways shaped
like an X, designed for airplanes taking off
and landing in almost any wind direction.
As airplanes were built to better handle crosswinds,
the X runways were eliminated
and the north-south runway was lengthened.
A few decades later, a third runway was added,
which is what we have today.
-We used to walk in the door, walk on the plane.
That was it. You might show your ticket.
I think they figured you know what,
if they've got this far, they have a different.
-In the early '60s,
Seattle was on the global stage hosting the 1962 World's Fair.
Many celebrities touched down at Sea-Tac at the time,
from astronaut John Glenn and Walt Disney,
to British Royal Prince Philip,
President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B.
Johnson, and Elvis Presley.
But the start of the '70s meant major cuts for Boeing.
The region's largest employer went from 100,000 employees
in 1967 to about 38,000 in 1971.
-When I first came here, you've got to remember
there was a big sign out by the freeway
out here, big light bulb, that said,
"Will the last person out of Seattle turn off the lights?"
after Boeing had let everybody go.
-That's Oris Dunham, now 84 years old.
He was the airport director in the '70s
and navigated the airport through a memorable
and turbulent decade.
-Well truly I saw the movie Airport.
I didn't know there was an airport director
until I saw Burt Lancaster be an airport director.
And so I started looking around.
I was selling fight control systems to airlines.
-Young Oris convinced the managers at Sea-Tac
to hire him as an unpaid trainee.
He worked his way up to airport director.
-For the first six months,
I'd spend a week washing cars.
Another week I'd work in a flight kitchen.
Another week I'd be with a floating cargo or baggage.
I got to see what the airport did, which was really good.
And then I started working through the different parts
of the port of Seattle airport operation.
And so I got a better education
than anybody's ever going to get to run an airport
because you saw it all.
-In November of 1971,
Dunham was in his early 30s and working the night D.B. Cooper
hijacked a plane traveling from Portland,
Oregon to Seattle, demanding a large ransom.
-Five minutes after they took off, he unlocked the back door.
Nobody knew you could unlock the back door in the air.
He did.
-Cooper parachuted out of the aircraft
with the money near the Columbia River.
Some of the cash was later found,
but he was never caught or identified.
It remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries
in U.S. history.
-You're only concern is just the public.
How do you keep the public safe?
-The public saw major changes at the airport during the '70s.
The expansion was the largest undertaking during that decade
as air traffic hit just over five million passengers.
Dunham says it was a nonstop construction site.
-We built two satellite terminals,
we second leveled the roadway, and built the parking garage.
Almost every week we changed the way people drove, walked,
or the airplanes taxied for two years.
-The subway trains we now use to get to the satellite terminals
were added in the '70s.
The driverless automatic shuttle trains were the first
of its kind in the country.
Dunham says by the early '80s
the airport was running like a well-oiled machine.
-Every day is a new day
and that's one thing about working in an airport.
You're never bored.
-Dunham went on to serve as airport director in Los Angeles,
where he ended up full circle with the actor
who inspired him to take on this job.
-And he said he wanted to meet somebody
who his movie had made their career
and now I have the picture at home.
Keep them flying Oris.
-Much has changed in 75 years.
Today Sea-Tac, or SEA as it's referred to now,
has grown to serve just over 50 million passengers in 2023.
Thirty-nine airlines now serve 93 domestic
and 33 international destinations.
-Maybe it's what it represents?
It represents traveling for business or family coming in
or you going out.
Now it's an everyday part of life.
-Sometimes the best part is knowing,
no matter how far you go, you still get to come back.
-I'm going to cry. I never really thought about it.
There is a real emotional attachment.
When you land at Sea-Tac,
there's that feeling of coming home.
♪♪
-Because of land constraints,
the airport cannot expand out much more,
so it's been expanding up.
But there's only so much that can be done.
And that's exactly
why another airport is being considered for this region.
Also, the airport is sharing many resources and photos
for its celebration making 75 years.
You can check them out by going to PortofSeattle.org.
After two decades,
Seattle's innovative downtown library still attracts stares.
See how it all came about as "CityStream" continues.
♪♪
-The downtown Seattle Public Library made headlines in 1960
for being the first branch in the country with an escalator,
which is nothing compared to what came next.
In 2004,
the new downtown library blew the roof off
of library innovation.
But Diane Duthweiler reminds us, it's now 20 years old.
-Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the inaugural tour of the new Central Library.
-The start of the 20th century and
Seattle plans a new Central Library at Fourth and Madison.
By the start of the 21st century,
the corner is a post Y2K wonder.
The highest tech library in the world,
head librarian Deborah Jacobs,
when it opened in 2004.
-There were very few people that applauded the design
when they saw it.
-Including library board members,
skeptical of giving the go ahead
to Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas's big box ideas.
-When you walk into that lobby,
if anybody going to say, "Wow?" -I hope so.
I hope they say wow the first time
they see the building down the street.
-It wowed.
-You know, whoever would have guessed
that our beloved Mariners would be in town
for a homestand and the hottest ticket
would be the Public Library.
-I want to be able to walk in that front door and say,
"Wow, we got it."
And I think we do have it. -Yeah, it's beautiful.
I'm speechless just like taking it in.
Wow. -What's behind the wow?
-I suspect you've heard that it looks,
so they have stacked up a bunch of books
and then moved them, and that was the design.
I have heard that as well.
I don't believe that to be true.
-Seattle Channels archives tell the real tale.
Architect Joshua Ramus shows the bar graph charting
library services by percentage of building use.
Sections were pulled out
and skewed to maximize light and views.
-The shape of the building
and its design was literally a mapping of this three
dimensionally directly into this.
So if you could actually hold the two together,
you would see that each platform
and each space in between is in this organization
as we had created on spreadsheet
and its dimension is completely determined
by the amount of program we're trying to fit in.
And that really was the core concept for the building.
Our first model of that was this one.
-From model to 11 storied stories.
-Hi. How can I help you today?
-Genealogy specialist John Lamont has worked
at the downtown branch since opening day.
-There was a line around the building.
Just such a spectacle.
You know, just so many people coming through the building.
It was just to sea of people.
-Let the wild rumpus begin.
♪♪
-One thing that didn't wow, a wearable communication device.
-It was this new cool technology piece
and you push a little button to log in
and you push a little button to call your colleagues
and it didn't work that great.
-And the library location once known for its escalator,
now has an infamous one.
-It was just kind of funny.
Someone would lean in and they'd ask where's the down escalator.
In this building there's up escalators
to get you from 5 to 7 and 7 to 10
but you have to take public stairs or the elevator
to get back down.
-It's a little confusing and it would be great
if we had it down escalator.
-It would be able to let people off
at the 8th floor art gallery and music practice rooms.
Four floors down,
the most photographed spot in the library, the all red floor.
♪♪
On the ground floor,
a children's reading room and an auditorium,
public spaces, offices, and the books all encased in glass.
-Knock on a steel,
but we have not had issues with leakage.
-Not even with the 10,000 windows are washed.
-This is my favorite building by far to work on
and there's a lot of similarities
with mountain climbing.
-Exterior hooks and water spigots allow Jasper Baksh
and his crew to clean roughly four square blocks of glass,
some of it angle inward.
-You're holding on with these ropes here
and you're just sitting in a harness.
You've got to scrub these windows,
but then below you, just 10 floors of empty space really,
cars driving by below, and it's just exciting.
-Once a year,
a Puget Sound window maintenance team spends
two to three weeks scaling and descaling library windows.
-Sometimes you will find bird droppings
on the underside of the building
and that is extremely bizarre to me.
I don't know what's going on there.
And there's not a part of it that's,
you know, harder to reach.
You just have to know how to get there.
Everything's designed really well.
Honestly, it's a very interesting building.
-I love walking in this building every day
and I think of this building
as sort of a community cathedral
with these incredible triangular panes of glass.
I mean, what a backdrop?
-Sunsets are often pretty amazing color
and the lights just streaming through and, you know,
the lattice work.
The patterns are projected on the floor and the walls
and it's beautiful, you know.
And then in the winter we get little tufts of snow, you know,
in the diamond shape.
-I think it still meets the needs
of what community are using it for,
to access information, to engage with each other,
to engage with ideas.
Whether I would call it high tech,
I think it's where it needs to be.
-I feel like we've got the tools that we need.
You know, it still feels new.
I think people who come visit still feel
like it's fresh and exciting.
♪♪
-Library managers tell us there are no plans for
any major redesign of the downtown library.
Is it a martial arts, a dance or a game?
Learn more about the Brazilian tradition of Capoeira
next on "CityStream."
♪♪
-Welcome back to "CityStream" from Seattle Center,
where Fiestas Patrias will soon be observed.
It's a festival to celebrate the independence
of Latin American countries, including Brazil.
That country is home to a martial art and
dance form known as Capoeira
that is having a resurgence in West Seattle.
And the focus is on giving back to the community.
Brian Callanan has our story.
-Elbows up. Good, good, good.
-To understand the Brazilian art of Capoeira,
you have to hear it, see it, and feel it.
-Kind of sad pushups. We got to work on that.
-Capoeira is a dance, Capoeira is a fight,
but we like to say that we fight like dancers
and we dance like fighters. -And for Jen Hobbs,
otherwise known as Professora Agua Viva
for jellyfish like moves, Capoeira is also a way of life.
-That's it, Isaac. Really, really good.
-She began teaching Capoeira classes in West Seattle
back in 2016
and opened her Viva Arts location to train older
and younger Capoeiristas alike.
-That really became my passion is working
with families and kids.
And so having something that a family can do together
is really beautiful.
-Hobbs has studied Capoeira since 2001,
after seeing a live performance in San Francisco,
and now travels to Brazil each year to train,
educate herself, and discover new ways
to pass along what she's learned.
-So we share this kind of culture and history,
even though it's not our own.
And I don't mean it that we, you know, take anything from it.
We learn about it and we respect it.
-It's a respect her students take to heart
as they reenact how Africans were enslaved
and taken to Brazil hundreds of years ago,
and then practiced a disguised form of martial arts
to protect themselves that became Capoeira.
-It looked like dancing
and they'd play songs that looked like dancing,
but it was actually a form of martial arts
that used to defend each other with.
-Capoeira is constant motion beginning
with a rocking step move called a ginga
and featuring chutees, or kicks,
acrobatic cartwheels or Au, and esquivas, dodging moves as well.
Brazil banned Capoeira in the late 1800s,
but a master, or mestre, named mestre Bimba
brought it back in the 1930s,
preserving a complex and challenging history
that students like Salea Milard
are taking in as a modern day lesson.
-My favorite part of this class
is the inclusiveness, right?
There is people of all different levels.
No matter if you're black or white,
no matter what religion you practice, we're all together.
-And that sense of togetherness
has spilled out the doors here at Viva Arts
and onto the streets of Seattle with students
and their families reaching out to help those in need.
-I get one chip.
-The Viva Arts family has pulled together food-
-Go team.
--clothing,
and other essentials to create care packages
for people living on the street.
-So you guys can fill up your pack.
-Hobbs,
whose family housed foster kids while she was growing up,
delivers the goods
to the nonprofit Seattle Homeless Outreach.
-I feel like I have the space
and I have the ability to bring a community together
and have them realize they can be a part of the solution,
or at least to help out.
That's a really big deal for a lot of these people.
-I think it's important because it helps people.
-I hope people don't starve and they know
that people are there for them to help them.
-Okay, clap, clap, clap.
-Being there for his students
is what Thyago Da Cruz is all about.
-Can everybody do like this?
-Da Cruz, otherwise known as mestre Phoenix,
is Hobbs's teacher.
-Be careful.
-He's a native of Brazil
who's run his own Capoeira school in Seattle since 2010,
by adhering to a saying from the revered mestre Pastina
that Capoeira is everything the mouth eats.
-You live Capoeira, you eat Capoeira,
you sleep Capoeira, you drink Capoeira.
Everything you do is Capoeira.
-It's an ethic he's proud to see continue
in his student Professora Agua Viva
and a new generation of students as well.
-The beauty of Capoeira is that it brings people together.
It's from the inside. You know? It's from the heart.
If I could tell a parent to give a present to their kids,
put them in Capoeira.
-At a special cord ceremony called a batizado,
celebrating their growing knowledge and achievement,
students are welcome and closely bound to a future in Capoeira.
It's a future full of learning, cultural awareness,
and community connection,
springing from the power and beauty
of this indescribable form of physical expression.
-I know people have community,
but there's something special about Capoeira.
And in my classes every single day I feel this.
I feel people being very moved just by learning
and sharing and people staying after to talk to each other.
Yes, beautiful. That's it. And this ripples out.
You ask anyone anywhere in the world in Capoeira
about why they're obsessed and why they come back,
their number one answer is going to be community.
It's beautiful.
It's kind of magical to be able to pass that
on the best way I can.
-To learn more about Capoeira and Viva Arts,
go to their website, vivaartsseattle.com.
We'll be right back.
♪♪
-Circle September 14th and 15th on your calendar.
That's when Fiestas Patrias comes to Seattle Center.
The annual event celebrating the independence
of Latin American countries.
One organization that's become a hub for Latinos and people
of all races is El Centro de la Raza.
For more than 50 years,
it's helped people find affordable housing,
job training, and childcare.
Enrique Cerna has more.
-Roberto Maestas said,
"We took this over in your name for the yet unborn
and future generations.
This is your home and everyone is welcome."
-October 1972,
Seattle is dealing with fallout from the Boeing bust,
protests against the Vietnam War,
and demands for equity and opportunity
from communities of color.
-What it meant I think to the Chicano community was it-
-At the time,
Roberto Maestas is leading an English
as a second language program
that serves as a focal point for a growing Chicano community.
-It developed into a program
that addressed itself to grass roots people.
-But then it was defunded.
Efforts to get the city to save the program
and to provide a place for it to exist go nowhere.
Maestas and other Chicano activists decide to take action.
They set their sights on the vacant,
rundown Beacon Hill School. On October 11th,
they show up saying they want to take a look inside.
-All of these people started coming up the sidewalk
and the maintenance person saw that
and he turned to Roberto and gave him the key and said,
"When you're done, lock up."
And of course, we were never done.
-The occupation lasts three months.
-And they did it in a peaceful way without violence.
I think the thing that makes it so successful
is that the community came and supported them.
-A deal is finally reached.
The building is leased to the activists for $1 a year.
El Centro de la Raza,
the Center for People of all Races, is born.
The real work begins.
-Now we have this building.
Now we have this opportunity.
How are we going to move this forward?
-El Centro's leadership set out to implement
Dr. Martin Luther King's philosophy of building
of beloved community that stands for justice,
opposes hate, aids those in need,
and helps the community help themselves
to succeed and thrive.
-It started off with education, right?
Then it started off with finding resources for food
and other things that our community needed.
-Childcare, preschool, and youth programs are created,
along with efforts to aid families, seniors,
immigrants and the unhoused.
-Yeah, I get pretty emotional every time we talk about it.
-Board chair Roxana Amaral knows firsthand
how El Centro can change lives.
When her family came to Seattle from Mexico,
it was El Centro
that helped them find their way in a new city and country.
-It's been an honor to not only be a recipient
and also receive the care
that we received as immigrant children
and then being able to build our skills
and set our foundation to then help others thrive.
-As years became decades,
El Centro stayed true to building a beloved community.
-This is more of a commitment, a way of life, a calling.
-That commitment and calling did not go unnoticed.
El Centro's advocacy for social justice
and economic opportunity made it a player in political circles.
-There was an audience there they could no longer ignore.
And when people came together and spoke out together
and voted together, it gets noticed.
-You also get noticed
when you take on a $45 million capital project
that creates Plaza Roberto Maestas with affordable housing,
retail, office, event, and early childhood development space.
-I think it took their respect level up
in some sectors in the nonprofit community and people sat back
and said, "Oh, look at that.?
-Today El Centro de la Raza provides
43 programs and services.
This year it will serve more than 22,000 people.
-Jobs, healthcare, education, housing,
those are basic human rights.
-Amidst the pandemic, racial reckoning and uncertain times,
El Centro is planning for the future.
It is developing projects to meet the growing need
for low income housing, child care,
and other services in Seattle's Columbia City neighborhood.
And it's expanding in Federal Way in South King County,
where Latinos now make up 56% of the population.
-El Centro just has demonstrated year after year,
decade after decade,
that they're in for the long haul and they're committed.
-It is amazing that El Centro has lasted 50 years
and now we're celebrating our 50th anniversary.
And it just seems so natural that we'll be here
for generations and generations to come.
-And that wraps up this edition of "CityStream"
from Seattle Center.
If you'd like to see more outstanding
Seattle Channel programs,
go to our website, seattlechannel.org
and click on feature shows.
I'm Dennis Bounds. Thanks for watching.
♪♪