Ye Olde Curiosity Shop
Ye Olde Curiosity Shop is a store founded in 1899, on the Central Waterfront of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is currently located on Pier 54. Best known today as a souvenir shop and museum, it also has aspects of a dime museum, and is an important supplier of Northwest Coast art to museums. As of 2008, the store has been owned by four generations of the same family. In 1933, the Seattle Star named Ye Olde Curiosity Shop one of the "Seven Wonders of Seattle", the only shop on the list. The other six Wonders were the harbor, the Ballard Locks, the Boeing airplane factory, the Seattle Art Museum, the Pike Place Market and the University District's Edmond Meany Hotel (now the Graduate Seattle hotel). Owners The shop was founded in 1899 by J. E. "Daddy" Standley (born February 24, 1854, in Steubenville, Ohio). He had already traded somewhat in curios and Indian goods as a grocer in Denver, Colorado. When he moved to Seattle in 1899, he encountered a boom town supplying and benefitting from the Klondike Gold Rush. He founded the business in 1899. An exhibit at the 1909 Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition in Seattle drew tourists, scholars, anthropologists