Nate & Keene Packard On Automobile Row In Seattle

By the time this photo was taken, automobile merchants in many cities had established an Automobile Row where many of the dealers set up shop. Seattle had its own, and the Nate & Keene Packard Agency was located on it, at Belmont Avenue and East Pike Street at the time this photo was taken between 1908 and 1909.

By 1910, the Packard dealer had moved a short distance away to 600 East Pine Street. In 1911, the dealership was reorganized as J.T. Keene and Co. Note the “KN” monograms at the top of the building above.

According to Seattle Now And Then, the source of this photo and more information, we learned more about Auto Row: The local “1911 Polk City Directory under the simple heading “Automobiles ” named forty-one sellers. Of the forty-one sellers named, thirty-one are either on Broadway Avenue or Pike Street. “Auto Row,” then, was two rows intersecting”.

Thanks to Tim Martin for the help with the details about Nate & Keene. More excellent Model 30 Packard photos and information can be viewed below.

Tim Martin sent in the photo above and his description: “A 1908 Packard Model 30 Runabout in some sort of staged shot. It’s hard to believe someone was in the coast to coast car delivery business in that era. There must be an interesting story behind this, but I haven’t found it yet”. Chris Paulsen has identified the license plate as being a 1912 and from New York State.

The early Packard story is quite interesting and has been covered here extensively in the past. You can view the Rod Blood Collection of 100s of photos of the cars that Packard took between the years of 1899 and 1916. The two seen above and below show the quality of the archive.

The image above is the 1908 Model 30 engine with a 5 x 5.5-inch bore and stroke that displaced 432 c.i. The T-head four was rated at 30 h.p., but it actually produced between 50-60 horsepower. Below is a mud-covered 1909 Model 30 Touring Car from the Packard factory that was driven from “Detroit, Michigan and over the mountains of Pennsylvania and return”.