A4 • Friday, September 3, 2021 | Seaside Signal | SeasideSignal.com
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Region’s history provides inspiration for photo restorationist
SEEN FROM SEASIDE
R.J. MARX
T
he stunning photographic renditions
of the Prom from 100 years ago owe
their beauty not only to the intrepid
photographers of the time, but to the man
who helped them fi nd a new life.
Photo restorationist Bruce Andrews
archived century-old museum negatives and
photographs and restored them to a crisp
and brilliant freshness.
He works from his house on S. Edge-
wood Street, in front of a large computer
and surrounded by boxes of postcards,
prints and negatives.
“I’ve done photo restorations for over 25
years,” Andrews said. “I started out doing
my own photos, and collected a goodly
amount of negatives and slides that folks
have either discarded, abandoned or I fi shed
out of the garbage, dirty beyond measure.
People didn’t know who or what they were.
“I guess it was partly due to my feel-
ing that as a photographer myself, the peo-
ple who took these images originally took
them because they meant enough to them to
capture a special image that would never be
able to be recaptured again.”
Seaside Museum/Bruce Andrews Restoration
This restoration of a photo by John Boyer shows a young woman posing in the sundial on the South Promenade at Seaside, Oregon circa 1947.
The building to the right was Gordon Shaw’s South Prom Bike Shop.
A passion
Andrews, who grew up on a farm in
Wasco and later moved to Portland, always
had a passion for photography, inspired by
his parents and grandparents. His mother
presented him his fi rst camera at 7.
She soon regretted it, he said, because
of how fast he would burn through a roll of
fi lm and the cost of processing.
“One thing I learned real early was com-
position from them,” Andrews said. “A lot
of people just go in and take snapshots.
“My mom said, ‘Get the angle that nobody
sees.’”
Andrews briefl y considered a career in
orthopedic medicine, but joined the railroad
industry instead.
“I ended up 30 years working for the
railroad as a — you name it: switchman,
weigh master, art offi ce, dispatching — just
about everything except drive an engine.”
Through his travels, he would discover
caches of historic photos, slides and neg-
atives. Many were damaged, discolored,
dirty and discarded.
“People either didn’t want them any-
more, didn’t know anything about them or
thought they were unsalvageable because of
the degree of damage,” Andrews said.
At a garage sale, he stumbled on a box
of glass plates and fi lm negatives. “I said,
‘You guys aren’t throwing that out, are
you?’ Long story short, they said, ‘If you
want to, take them.’ So I did.”
Absorbing lessons from others, he devel-
oped his own technique to work with glass
plates and negatives.
“I had some trial and error,” he said. “I
learned what not to do and what worked.”
Finally, he came up with his own solu-
tions for bringing old photos back to life.
“I call it my own Colonel Sanders’ rec-
ipe. The goal is as clean a negative or slide
as I could get. I wanted antique images, not
antique dirt.”
Andrews and his wife, Debbie, moved
to Seaside in 2010, giving up a 5-acre farm
in the Willamette Valley for a place by the
ocean.
“My wife and I came down here every
year of our married life for 47 years,” he
Bruce Andrews’ restoration of a 1954 image
of the Peter Iredale.
Seaside Museum/Bruce Andrews Restoration
This restored glass plate negative from the Seaside Historical Museum shows a candy wagon and
the Dixie Restaurant near the present-day Turnaround on the Seaside Promenade at Seaside,
Oregon circa 1918-1925. The boardwalk was replaced by the current Promenade in 1920.
said. “We loved coming here, but never
managed to fi nd a place. We just happened
to be walking down the street one day and
we saw a ‘for sale’ sign on this place.”
History buff
A history buff , he made contact with
Steve Wright, a city councilor and president
of the board for the Seaside Museum and
Historical Society. He volunteered to go
through their collections.
“Steve found out what I do,” Andrews
said. “He mentioned that they had no one
managing the photo archive at the museum
and he allowed me to have a look at the
photo room, which was a royal disaster, and
also the Montag plates that they had.”
Andrews is referring to William J. Mon-
tag, a photographer whose work remains a
basis for a lot of the museum’s images.
Montag started as a barber at the Sea-
side House on the golf course in the 1890s
before opening the city’s premier photo
business on the Prom.
Andrews suggested a few things that
should be changed to help the museum bet-
ter protect the deteriorating negatives.
“Long story short, before I knew it,
sweet-talking Steve had me as the guy in
charge of the museum’s photo archive,” he
said.
Andrews’ photo restorations aim to edu-
cate as well as visually entertain.
“One of the things that makes me diff er-
ent than a lot of other people is the fact that
I will go in and I want to research,” he said.
“I want to know the history. If you’ve seen
my stuff up there, you know, I write a pretty
good caption.
“That’s because I want to fl esh out that
particular image. I want people to know
what that image was and why it was great.
To make sure it’s not totally lost in history,
that it’s going to stay here.”
Bruce Andrews in front of his Seaside home.
R.J. Marx
Bruce Andrews in his offi ce, pointing to one
of his nautical restorations. This is the S.S.
Corona, which sank at Humboldt Bay in 1907.
GUEST COLUMN
PUBLIC MEETINGS
A shot in the arm for small business advertising
GUEST COLUMN
BRETT WESNER
A little-noticed initiative by
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA,
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR and
fi ve other senators would boost
local jobs, accelerate sales and
improve economies. The Local
Journalism Sustainability Act,
S. 2434, is designed to help
local news media support their
newsgathering missions.
One provision goes far
beyond off ering aid to com-
munity newspapers, local
news websites and other news-
gatherers. It would help small
businesses to dig out of the
economic doldrums by sup-
porting their advertising costs
in local news outlets, which
in turn will help publish-
ers and broadcasters to hire
journalists.
This provision would per-
mit small businesses to claim
a tax credit for a portion of
their advertising purchases
up to $5,000 a year. Credits
would remain, but in declining
amounts, for fi ve years.
The legislation, originally
introduced in similar form by
Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-AZ,
and Dan Newhouse, R- WA,
would also help subscribers by
providing them with a refund-
able tax credit up to $250 a
year. It provides fi nancial sup-
port for hiring as well, assisting
news organizations with jour-
nalists’ salaries.
It is the advertising tax
credit that is the unsung hero
of this legislation. Like a peb-
ble tossed into the pond of local
economies, it will show the rip-
ple eff ect of benefi ts in local
jobs, enhanced spending, reve-
nues to run local governments
and a boost to get American
small businesses back in the
CIRCULATION
MANAGER
Shannon Arlint
ADVERTISING
SALES MANAGER
Sarah Silver-
Tecza
PUBLISHER
EDITOR
Kari Borgen
R.J. Marx
game after a very tough couple
of years.
Every dollar of advertis-
ing spending generates $8.77
in sales, according to a 2010
study by IHS Global Insight, a
fi rm that periodically measures
advertising’s impact on econ-
omies. Advertising is directly
responsible for about 20 per-
cent of the American economy
by directly generating jobs in
media sales, creation of mate-
rials and collateral work but it
does far more by juicing activ-
ity in other businesses.
No surprise to anyone on
Main Street: after the 2008
recession small businesses cut
way back on their advertising
campaigns, dropping from their
normal 3-5% annual increases
to a stunning 6 percent cut in
2009. It is too soon to know
what the COVID-19 pandemic
has done to this spending, but
it would be no great revelation
to learn that the cuts equaled or
PRODUCTION
MANAGER
CONTRIBUTING
WRITERS
John D. Bruijn
Skyler Archibald
Joshua Heineman
Katherine Lacaze
Esther Moberg
SYSTEMS
MANAGER
Carl Earl
exceeded those following the
Great Recession. Expense cuts
are what businesses do to stay
afl oat.
But when they are ready
to climb back into the cockpit
for a new takeoff , the spend-
ing needs to accelerate rapidly.
Cash-strapped businesses may
be in no position to fuel their
journey though. That is why a
little boost in the form of the
Cantwell tax credit would be so
timely. If the economy behaves
as it usually does after
economic retraction, the
new spending will generate
more sales and the public cof-
fers will refi ll. The bill’s bene-
fi ts end after fi ve years but the
growth it generates will pay off
for decades.
Brett Wesner is chair of the
National Newspaper Associa-
tion, a community newspaper
organization and president of
Wesner Publications, Cordell,
Oklahoma.
Contact local agencies for latest meeting informa-
tion and attendance guidelines.
TUESDAY, SEPT. 7
Seaside Community Center Commission, 10 a.m.,
1225 Avenue A.
Seaside Library Board of Directors, 4:30 p.m., 1131
Broadway St.
Seaside Planning Commission, 6 p.m., 989 Broadway,
cityofseaside.us.
THURSDAY, SEPT. 9
Seaside Civic and Convention Center Commission,
5 p.m., 415 First Ave.
Seaside Parks Advisory Committee, 6 p.m., 989
Broadway.
Gearhart Parks and Recreation Master Plan, public
hearing , 6 p.m., www.cityofgearhart.com.
MONDAY, SEPT. 13
Seaside Tree Board, 4 p.m., 989 Broadway.
Seaside City Council, 7 p.m., 989 Broadway, cityofsea-
side.us.
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 15
Seaside Tourism Advisory Committee, 3 p.m., 989
Broadway.
Seaside Transportation Advisory Commission, 6 p.m.
TUESDAY, SEPT. 21
Seaside Planning Commission, 6 p.m., work session,
989 Broadway, cityofseaside.us.
Seaside Signal
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