contains content that is written like an advertisement . please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view . february 2015 learn how and when to remove this template message for the charles dickens story see the old curiosity shop . the current shop on pier 54 2007 . ye olde curiosity shop is a store on the central waterfront of seattle washington united states founded in 1899 . it has moved several times mainly within the waterfront area and is now located on pier 54 . best known today as a souvenir shop it also has aspects of a dime museum and was for many years an important supplier of northwest coast art to museums . as of 2008 the store has been owned by four generations of the same family . in 1933 the seattle star named ye olde curiosity shop one of the seven wonders of seattle the only shop on the list . the other six wonders were the harbor the ballard locks the boeing airplane factory the seattle art museum the pike place market and the university district s edmond meany hotel now hotel deca . 1 contents 1 owners 2 name and location 3 customers 4 goods and exhibits 5 influence 6 further j. e. standley influence in seattle 7 notes 8 references 9 external links owners edit this 1922 postcard shows ye olde curiosity shop in its home at that time on colman dock . today this site is part of pier 50 the washington state ferry terminal . the postcard shows a variety of artifacts on display in front of the shop including whale jaw bones 1 ton each 22 feet largest in u.s. a giant clam shell weighs 161 pounds from equator a hat worn by chief seattle and several totem poles . the shop was founded in 1899 by j. e. daddy standley born february 24 1854 in steubenville ohio 2 . he had already traded somewhat in curios and indian goods as a grocer in denver colorado . when he moved to seattle in 1899 because his wife s health required a lower altitude he encountered a boom town supplying and benefitting from the klondike gold rush . he founded the business in 1899 . an exhibit at the 1909 alaska yukon pacific exposition a y p exposition in seattle drew tourists scholars anthropologists and collectors and was enormous publicity for his already somewhat famous shop . 3 it also won standley a gold medal in the category of ethnological collections . 4 standley s shop presented a jumbled mix of curiosities and significant art objects . he collected and sold what came his way but also had local native american artists make objects to his specifications . he sold genuine tlingit totem poles but also replicas by carvers descended from the vancouver island based nuu chah nulth tribe who were living in seattle and even inexpensive souvenir totem poles made in japan . a flair for the bizarre and grotesque led him to include items such as shrunken heads from the amazon some of them definitely genuine others probably not . 3 in addition to the shop standley built a home he called totem place on a 1 acre 4 000 m2 estate in west seattle . the estate s collection of totem poles whale bones and other curiosities replete with a japanese style teahouse and a miniature log cabin drew sightseeing tourists in its own right . 5 in 1937 standley at the age of 83 was hit by a car on alaskan way the road along the seattle waterfront and his leg was broken . he never fully recovered 3 although he remained active in the business to within 4 days of his death on october 25 1940 . 4 standley s son edward joined the shop in 1907 and worked there until his death in 1945 . 2 russell james first joined the business in 1912 and eventually married standley s daughter . 2 except for his service in world war i james worked there until 1952 . standley s grandson joe james began working in the shop in 1946 and operated the business for over 50 years . 2 4 joe james s son andy and daughter debbie were also involved in running the business from at least the 1980s . 6 the shop s current owners the aforementioned andy james and his wife tammy also owned market street traders founded 2007 closed 2010 in seattle s ballard neighborhood . market street traders specialized in fair trade goods . 7 prior to that for about 25 years the jameses operated a second waterfront store on pier 55 known at various times as waterfront landmark and ye olde curiosity shop too . 4 8 ye olde curiosity shop too closed around the same time market street traders opened . 8 name and location edit entrance to the current pier 54 shop flanked by totem poles . ye olde curiosity shop began in late 1899 as standley s free museum and curio on second avenue at pike street . 3 it moved in november 1901 to 82 w. madison across from the old rainier grand hotel on front street now first avenue . at that time the store was called the curio ; it soon became standley s curio . in june 1904 standley moved his store to the waterfront renamed it after charles dickens s novel the old curiosity shop and adopted the motto beats the dickens . 1 2 4 ye olde curiosity shop and indian curio the latter portion of the name was dropped around 1907 settled in at 813 on railroad avenue on colman dock . it would reside on colman dock for over 50 years occupying several different locations on the dock and leaving briefly during periods when the dock was being remodeled . from february 7 1916 to january 1 1917 the shop operated on second avenue near virginia street . from some time in january 1937 to june 1 1937 operated from 814 first avenue near columbia street . 2 in 1963 as the washington state ferries system was taking over and completely reworking colman dock the shop moved to the next pier north pier 51 now also part of the ferry terminal . 6 the pier 51 store was designed by paul thiry and modeled after a longhouse . 2 8 in april 1988 the shop moved to its current location on pier 54 next to ivar s acres of clams . over a million objects were moved . 6 customers edit in recent times the shop has about 1 million visitors a year . 1 the shop has had many notable customers over the years . visitors have included teddy roosevelt j. edgar hoover jack dempsey charlie chaplin red skelton john wayne katharine hepburn james van der beek and sylvester stallone . cartoonist robert ripley of ripley s believe it or not bought totem poles and other crafts for his new york estate . the store s logs show that queen marie of romania visited and sat in the chinese chair and that louis tiffany bought curios idols and a mammoth tusk 1 5 many museum collections include items purchased from the shop mostly objects from the arctic regions . 9 the royal ontario museum in toronto has several such items including a haida stone totem pole and a mammoth tusk engraved with scenes of eskimo life in an arctic village . 1 george gustav heye made many purchases from the shop for his museum of the american indian which later formed the core collection of the national museum of the american indian in washington d.c. 10 the newark museum in new jersey also features a collection from the shop including tlingit tools and woven baskets . the shop also supplied museums in cleveland ohio portland oregon and at the university of washington . 1 standley normally gave museums a 35 % discount and occasionally donated items outright . it was a point of pride for him that his shop supplied such institutions . 11 a national museum in sweden bought one of the longest known pairs of prehistoric mastodon tusks more than 13 feet 4.0 m in length . 1 as late as the period from 1976 though 1980 the shop auctioned off 2 000 pieces of native american art. 3 goods and exhibits edit sylvester the mummy . at least one of the shop s historic suppliers was of comparable fame to any of its visitors princess angeline daughter of chief seattle after whom the city is named made baskets which were later sold there . 1 in its early years much of the shop s stock came from alaska . standley acquired both recent and older alaskan works of art and craft as well as natural history specimens from whalers traders revenue cutter captains alaska natives always referred to at the time as eskimos visiting seattle and alaska shopkeepers functioning as middlemen . some of those who brought him items especially in the early years are likely to have stolen those from their rightful owners in alaska or to have dug them out of archaeological deposits . native alaskan yup iks and inupiats who had long been traders were happy to find a market for items they considered good for nothing worn out cast off tools and implements . 12 from quite early times standley established what kate duncan calls the scrim of large and disparate natural history specimens and curios dangling from the ceiling and standing about that dominates the shop visually and transform s even the known into the curious . 13 items for sale in recent times range from dime store trinkets to a 10 000 totem pole . 1 as of 2007 these included a 1.50 tailpipe whistle bullwhips jumping beans matreshka dolls from russia first rate vegetable ivory carvings goatskin imitation shrunken heads from ecuador and the usual run of seattle souvenirs . 8 in the 1920s the shop had at least six separate suppliers in texas making sewing baskets from the shell of an armadillo which would be lined with satin and the tail fastened to the neck area to form a handle . 3 nowadays the most culturally significant items still in the store s collection are not for sale though they are out to be viewed . 1 items on display but not for sale include an early 19th century russian samovar dozens of totem poles east asian weapons woven cedar mats and fir needle baskets netsuke jade carvings narwhal tusks and a walrus oosik . 6 also on display are two mummified human bodies sylvester and sylvia . 6 sylvester acquired in 1955 functions as an informal symbol of the shop . for years the general belief has been that he was the victim of a late 19th century shooting in the arizona desert and that the extreme dryness of the desert naturally mummified the body . 5 however ct scans in 2001 2005 and an mri in 2005 suggest an embalmer injected an arsenic based fluid shortly after death . the body is one of the best preserved mummies known . 14 15 newly published information and a photograph from 1892 indicate that sylvester originally named mcginty belonged to confidence man soapy smith until he sold it 1895 in hillyard washington . 16 while sylvester is almost certainly what the shop claims him to be other artifacts are of far more dubious origins . the shop makes no claim of comparable pedigree for its taxidermically stuffed mermaid . 5 one of the store s several coin operated attractions is black bart a rather literal take on the phrase one armed bandit . it is a slot machine in the form of a one armed 6 foot 5 inch 1.96