page_title: A. W. Piper
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: A. W. Piper / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Advertisement for A. W. Piper's bakery. Seattle city and King County directory ... comprising an alphabetically arranged list of business firms, farmers and private citizens - a classified list of all trades, professions, and pursuits - a miscellaneous directory, city and county officers, terms of court, public and private schools, churches, banks, incorporated institutions, secret and benevolent societies, etc., etc.
context_page_description: A. W. Piper was a Seattle, Washington pioneer whose name was given to Piper Orchard, Pipers Creek and Piper's Canyon in Carkeek Park, and who was elected in 1877–1878 a socialist Seattle City Council member. He owned a bakery known for its artistic confections that served Seattle and the Puget Sound region.
context_section_description: Piper was born in Kissingen, Bavaria around March 1826. He was educated as an artist, and emigrated to America in 1847 at age 19. In New Orleans he met Wilhelmina ("Minna") Hausman (June 1834 – 1930), who was from the Hanover area of Germany, and had come to America in 1853. The 1900 Census showed they had been married for 48 years, since around 1852, or else they were married a little later, in San Francisco in 1853, crossing the Isthmus of Panama to get to California. They lived in San Francisco for 20 years, and their first five children were born there. Piper attended the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute, receiving a certificate for "best specimens of ornamental sugar work" dated September 1857.
  By 1871 they were living in Victoria, British Columbia, where Piper was a confectioner on Government and Fort Streets. Three of the Piper's children were born in Victoria, and it was here that historian Thomas W. Prosch first met Piper. Prosch said Piper's store was popular and attracted visitors from around the region. An 1873 newspaper announcement said an Andrew William Piper, baker and confectioner of Government Street, declared bankruptcy in Victoria, B.C. on December 4, 1872.
  The Pipers came to Seattle in 1873. He owned a Bavarian style konditorei, the Puget Sound Candy Manufactory, in Seattle's Pioneer Square on Front St. between Cherry and Mill Streets. A typical konditorei is much more than a bakery, making candies and many other types of confections. He was known for his wedding cakes and other creative, artistic confections, including "Piper's Cream Cakes" (or "Dream Cakes") that were especially popular in the 1870s, made from a recipe Piper never revealed. By the 1880s Piper employed a number of assistants. Prosch said that Seattle's Lake Union often froze over in winter, and that in those days, before Seattle's ice factory was built in 1882, Piper would harvest large blocks of ice from the lake, which he saved until summer for making ice cream.
  In  1876, A. W. Piper ran for Seattle City Council representing the Third Ward and lost, coming in fourth out of five candidates. On his second run, for the Third Ward again, he just barely won a seat on the Council, in 1877, on the socialist ticket. From 1890–1896 the city charter was amended to use a bicameral system, made up of a House of Delegates with to members from each of the city's now eight wards, where previously there had been three wards, and a nine-member at-large Board of Aldermen. Piper ran for the Board of Aldermen in 1896, losing and coming third. He was also a socialist (or Populist) nominee for Seattle Mayor.
  Piper was known as an artist, having several unsigned paintings hanging in museums and the homes of pioneers, and he sculpted in clay and stone. He also drew political cartoons and news illustrations, including the lynching of three suspected murderers in Henry Yesler's yard in 1882. Many of the cartoons are in the University of Washington Libraries digital archives.
  On September 14, 1883, to commemorate the completion of the transcontinental Northern Pacific Railroad, celebrated that September 8 in Montana, Seattle threw its first potlatch with the railroad's president Henry Villard in attendance. Piper was put in charge of the jubilee's barbecue, held on the former grounds of the University of Washington.
  Piper's bakery was destroyed in the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889. All bakeries and candy makers in Seattle were destroyed in the Fire, and the industry reorganized afterwards, with some of the old businesses rebuilt and other new ones established. Piper did not rebuild, heading for Alaska instead.
  The Portland Morning Oregonian of May 4, 1888, reported that a newspaper called the Enterprise, intended to rival the size of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was incorporated with $25,000 capital by Piper with W.E. Lockard, H.F. Jones, J.C. Mavel and J.F. McDonald, just over a year before the Great Seattle Fire. After the Fire he ran a bakery in a tent in  Nome, Alaska, for two years, then returned to Seattle as a farmer and orchardist. Their 8
caption: Advertisement for Piper's bakery, 1885
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