Question: Ever wonder where Seattle keeps its oddities? It is here at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop.
Welcome to a place unlike any other. We’re standing before Ye Olde Curiosity Shop a Seattle institution since 1899.
Joseph Edward Standley founded this unique establishment. He was a collector of curiosities and an entrepreneur. Standley started his collecting hobby as a boy in Ohio. He traded baskets with river travelers. Later in Denver, he decorated his grocery store with Native American trinkets. Customers wanted to buy them. So he started buying and selling curios.
Standley moved to Seattle and opened Standley’s Free Museum and Curio. The name evolved to Ye Olde Curiosity Shop by 1907. The shop’s location changed a few times. It was always near Seattle’s central waterfront.
Scores of explorers whalers and traders sold souvenirs to Standley. The 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition boosted his business. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop became an integral part of Seattle history. Celebrities collectors and locals flocked to see the oddities. They came to see shrunken heads Native artifacts and mummies.
Standley had a knack for finding unique items. He acquired Northwest Coastal totem poles. He also got woven cedar mats and carved masks. The shop even had a grain of rice with the Lord’s Prayer inscribed on it. Customers entered through an arch of whale jawbones. Standley claimed he found them on a Vancouver Island beach. He paid some Indigenous people to float them to Seattle on a raft.
Ye Olde Curiosity Shop became a must-see attraction. Famous visitors signed Standley’s guest book. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Warren G. Harding signed it. So did Charlie Chaplin and J. Edgar Hoover.
Museum directors also frequented the shop. George Gustav Heye bought over 1200 artifacts for his Museum of the American Indian. Other museums like the Royal Ontario Museum also bought items.
Standley was a Seattle booster. He promoted tourism and the city. He even suggested streetcar signs to guide tourists.
Standley died in 1940. His family continued to run the shop. His grandson Joe James started working there at age 12. One of the shop’s most popular items is Sylvester the mummy.
In 1963, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop moved to Pier 51. The building resembled a Native American longhouse. In 1988, it moved to its current location on Pier 54.
Today, the shop still offers tourist souvenirs. You can find whistles coffee mugs and tee shirts. Shrunken heads are now rubber. Sylvester the mummy is still on display.
Ye Olde Curiosity Shop has been a Seattle landmark for over a century. It reflects the city’s history of trade exploration and fascination with the unusual. It is a place where the past comes alive. It is a place that continues to intrigue and delight visitors.