Astoria Tour: Part 3

The Astor Hotel is the Birthplace of Cable Television

The Hotel Astoria — now known as the John Jacob Astor Hotel — was built shortly after Astoria’s second great fire, in 1922. Students of American history will know that in the great rush to build cities out of wood on recently stolen land fires broke out and destroyed those cities. Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and, of course, Astoria.

This is Astoria’s tallest commercial building. It has had a run of bad luck since its construction. The building was vacant in the 60’s. In the 70’s a ballot measure to tear it down failed - voters did not want to spend the money. Today it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Hotel Astoria was the birthplace of cable television. L. E. "Ed" Parsons - owner of Astoria radio station KAST, set it up in 1948. What a charming beginning for an industry that is now unredeemably evil. I’m thinking of you, failson James Dolan!

This concludes our three part series about Astoria. It would have been one article but I don’t think email newsletters want to be stacked with too many large photos.

—Alex

The Mighty Astoria Hotel.

On the way home we stopped at the Port of Ilwaco to drop Georgia off for one last fishing trip. She’s long lining for albacore tuna off the Oregon coast.