In 1961, the Polynesia Restaurant opened at the end of Pier 51, in advance of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. The popular Tiki-style restaurant closed two decades later, a casualty of the expansion of the Washington State Ferry Terminal. In January 1982, after the interior fixtures and furnishings had been removed, the building was reinforced with steel I-beams and lifted from the pier.

Here, a huge crane has lifted the Polynesia Restaurant from the end of Pier 51 and is swinging it around onto a barge. The barge then floated the 7,200 square-foot building to a temporary site on the West Waterway of the Duwamish River. The owner tried to find another location for the building, but eventually allowed the Seattle Fire Department to burn it down.

Caption information sources: The Seattle Times, January 21, 1982; January 25, 1982; and June 5, 2010.
Caption information also derived from captions written by Post-Intelligencer staff and attached to the back of the photograph.