Archives West Finding Aid

The Lowman & Hanford Stationery and Printing Company, later the Lowman & Hanford Company, was a printing company and retail stationery business operating in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle beginning around 1885.

James Lowman and Clarence Hanford were business and civic leaders in early Seattle, each with ties to Seattle's pioneer settlers. James D. Lowman (1856-1947) was born in Maryland and arrived in Seattle in 1877 at the invitation of his uncle, founding Seattle settler and sawmill owner Henry Yesler. Lowman worked as assistant wharf master on Yesler's wharf for four years, using his savings to purchase a half interest in the book store owned by W.H. Pumphrey in 1881, and buying out his partner two years later.

Clarence Hanford (1857-1920) was a Seattle native, the youngest son of Washington Territory pioneers. When Hanford was 13, he began learning the printing trade at the office of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which was published by his older brother, Thaddeus Hanford, eventually becoming foreman of the printing department. Hanford later bought out the job-printing department and established a job-printing office with a partner, J.H. McClair, in 1879, buying out McClair’s interest in 1881.

Around 1885, J.D. Lowman and Clarence Hanford consolidated their stationery and printing businesses into the Lowman & Hanford Stationery and Printing Company, with Lowman as President and principle stockholder, and Hanford as vice-president and manager of the printing and bookmaking department. The firm advertised as booksellers, stationers, printers and binders but also sold typewriters, sewing machines, pianos and organs. The new company added large presses and printed all the city's newspapers until their establishment was destroyed in the Great Fire of June 1889. The company returned to the "burnt district" after the fire, probably in temporary quarters at first, then building both the Lowman & Hanford Printing and Binding building (now the Washington Park Building) on Washington Street, along Railroad Avenue (now Alaskan Way), which they moved into in 1890, and the Lowman & Hanford building at 616 First Avenue, designed by Emil DeNeuf. Within months of the fire, they had erected and operated in the first two floors of the latter building, continuing operations during construction of the upper floors. The four-story building was completed in 1892, with three more upper floors added around 1902. Immediately next door, the 10-story Lowman Building at 107 Cherry Street was completed in 1906. These two buildings, along with the Howard Building and the Pioneer Building, forms the eastern edge of the area’s original public square.

Judging by entries in city directories, the retail store appears to have gone out of business in the 1960s, with the printing company ceasing operations some years previous.