When Scott Handley became a league bowler in 1962, Seattle had some 25 active bowling centers.
Handley worked at two of them as a teenager — Village Lanes and Green Lake Bowl. At Village, one of his duties was to clean the yellow grease pencil off the reusable plastic tel-e-score sheets after each night of league.
“I had a pile of used sheets, and I’d take one. Spray, spray. Wipe, wipe. Then I had another pile for the clean ones. I must have washed thousands of those over two years. I also worked two years as a pinchaser at Green Lake. I cleaned, washed pins, washed carpet brushes [that cleaned off the AMF pit carpets as they rotated] — I would crawl down, pull those out and use a big blower to clean them out.”
Handley knew there were dozens of other centers in Seattle, but he never got to see most of them — something he regrets.
“I knew there were a lot and I wondered about them, the different bowling centers, what they looked like,” he said. “I didn’t go around to as many as I wish I had. And that’s part of the reason I’m doing what I’m doing, to see what I missed to the extent that that’s possible.”
And so began Handley’s journey, some six years ago following his retirement. He began a quest to find out everything possible about every Seattle bowling center, past and present. And with that quest has come an unofficial title, that of Seattle’s resident bowling historian.
Handley has kept a spreadsheet documenting every Seattle bowling center on which he’s been able to find records. The information includes address, open/closure date, number of lanes, type of equipment, and any other interesting tidbits.
“I started with the UW library, and looking at Polk city directories,” Handley said. “Then from there I went to the public library, looking at telephone directories, display ads in the Yellow Pages, and contacting historical societies.
“When I began this project, I had no library card and I hadn’t had one for many years,” he said. “Now, I have three!”
Equipped with addresses of buildings long gone, Handley began making appointments at the Puget Sound Regional Archives in Bellevue. He would give the addresses to archives staff ahead of time, and they would pull the appropriate documents and have them waiting for Handley when he arrived.
Kenmore Lanes started out as a 24-lane center, but went through three remodelings to bring the current total to 50 lanes. It also featured a swimming pool in the 1960s.
“They had photos taken of every address in conjunction with King County tax records,” Handley said, which conveniently resulted in an exterior photograph of almost every Seattle-area bowling center of the past several decades.
“I also went through the records and scrapbooks of the [Greater Seattle USBC] association and there are many old copies of the Northwest Bowler,” Handley says. “I’m grateful to them for running so many pictures.”
Main Bowl (1941-1959), 306 Main St., was the early incarnation of Imperial Lanes, which closed earlier this year and was one of the last two centers left inside Seattle city limits.
Handley shows me a thick binder of clippings and photographs, along with other loose materials he has borrowed from a son of the late proprietor Jack Fasso. He has spent hours looking through news archives and publications on microfilm. He also shows me a spreadsheet documenting more than 100 bowling centers from the past century, meticulously catalogued along with the opening and closing date, street address, type of equipment (Brunswick/AMF) and number of lanes.
A 1957 photo from Handley’s research shows one of the two centers that bore the name Federal Way Lanes. This one (1955-1959) had a skating rink.
Hillcrest Bowl (1960-2009), in the Renton Highlands, was a 24-lane AMF house. It is currently a Grocery Outlet store whose owners incorporated some of the history as a bowling center into the store design.
On his spreadsheet Handley also lists any unusual or noteworthy discoveries, and a quick scan reveals some interesting tidbits:
• A duckpin center apparently existed in downtown Seattle between 1943 and 1949; listed as “Duck Pin Bowling” in the city directory, it was also apparently known as “D & L Bowling Alley.” There was also a five-pin center during the 1940s, at Fourth and Lenora, that later became Fourth Ave Bowl.
• There have been four centers in Seattle called Ideal Alleys or Ideal Recreation; the last such center was the site of the 1951 WIBC tournament and closed in 1969.
• Seattle’s largest-ever bowling center, Rainier Lanes, featured 36 AMF-equipped lanes and 24 more Brunswick lanes upstairs. It closed in 1981.
• The largest current center, Kenmore Lanes, has undergone several transformations. It opened in 1958 with 24 lanes; eight lanes were added in 1966, eight more in 1974, and 10 were added in 1979 to bring it to its current total of 50 lanes. It also featured a swimming pool in the early 1960s.
A clipping from Northwest Bowler features a picture of the six-lane Ballard Bowl (1936-1962).
Handley also discovered that many bowling centers from different eras shared the same names.
“I found out there were two Kent Bowls, two White Center Bowls, two Federal Way Bowls, two bowling alleys on Vashon Island, two West Seattle Bowls and two Highline Bowls,” he says. (Of these, only one Kent Bowl, one West Seattle Bowl and one Hiline Lanes survive.)
The Seattle Field Artillery Armory, built in 1939, hosted the 1954 American Bowling Congress Open Tournament. It later became known as the Food Circus during the 1962 World’s Fair and is now simply the Seattle Center Armory. It’s home to a children’s museum, food court, performing arts stage, high school and offices.
Handley says he doesn’t have any immediate plans for the material he’s found. He also doesn’t know when he’ll be done, since there is always more waiting to be discovered. And while Handley’s collecting is mainly a personal project, he would like to see local bowling history on display — perhaps in a museum — someday.
Similarly, Handley also doesn’t have any current plans for the piece of bowling history that’s sitting in his garage: a masking unit from lane 2 at Robin Hood Lanes. (He bought the AMF mask from Craigslist for $10. The Edmonds, Wash. center closed in April 2013 to make way for a chain drugstore.)
“Right now, I don’t have a destination in mind,” he says. “I’m simply enjoying the journey.”
Story and photos © 2015 by Kevin Hong.
Historical clippings and pictures were collected by Scott Handley from UW Libraries; Puget Sound Regional Archives (a branch of the WA Secretary of State); Northwest Bowler newspaper; and other public libraries and historical society archives.
The Bowling History Book 