Ye Olde Curiosity Shop has been one of Seattle’s most prominent tourist destinations for more than a century. The shop, today located at the northwest corner of Pier 54, played an important role in the market for Native Alaskan and Northwest Coast art almost from its inception and continues to trade in contemporary Northwest Coast carvings. Visitors to the shop can browse a substantial collection of Native art and material culture, both historic and contemporary, as well as a variety of “exotic curios” that store founder Joseph Edward (J. E.) Standley collected from around the world.

J. E. Standley moved to Seattle with his family in late 1899 and soon opened a curio shop on Second Avenue and Pike Street, just two blocks away from the Pike Place Fish Market today. In June 1904, Standley opened a new store at Colman Dock on Pier 52, naming it Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and Indian Curio after Charles Dickens’s book The Old Curiosity Shop. Standley advertized that his shop actually “beat the Dickens.”[1]

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop’s location at the waterfront next to the Colman Dock ferry and Standley’s friendly demeanor ensured a brisk trade in “curios” and art objects bought and sold by Native people, whalers and sailors, traders, gold seekers, government personnel moving between Seattle and the far North, international travelers, and regional ferry users alike. Anyone who had recently been in the North could bring ivory and Native objects to Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and exchange them for cash.[2]

Native Alaskan and Northwest Coast art rapidly became the shop’s primary trade and, in 1909, Standley and his shop were an important source of materials for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition’s ethnographic exhibit in the Alaska Building. The prestige and attention that the world’s fair brought to Standley’s shop positioned Ye Olde Curiosity Shop as a source for museum collecting for much of the twentieth century.[3]

In April 1988, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop relocated to Pier 54, its current home. More recently, after renovations to the pier, the shop has moved from the front of the pier to the northwest corner, where it stands now. The Standley family still runs the shop.[4]

Credits and Sources:

Description by Madison Heslop on behalf of the American Society for Environmental History.

Duncan, Kate C. 1001 Curious Things: Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and Native American Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. "About Us." Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Accessed August 22, 2016. http://yeoldecuriosityshop.com/pages/about-us.