 Panorama of Pier 57 | |
| Characteristics | |
|---|---|
| History | |
| Coordinates | 47°36′22″N122°20′31″W / 47.6061°N 122.3419°W |
Pier 57 (originally Pier 6) is located in Seattle, Washington near the foot of University Street. Currently under private ownership, the pier is now a tourist attraction with gift shops and restaurants, and houses the Seattle Great Wheel.
The pier was originally built for the John B. Agen Company. It was built in 1902 by the Miller and Geske Construction Company and repeatedly modified over the course of the next decade. In 1909, the pier passed into the hands of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, the last of four transcontinental railroads to reach Seattle. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul was commonly known as the "Milwaukee Road," so the pier became known as the "Milwaukee Pier." It soon became the terminal for the McCormick Steamship Line, the Munson McCormick Line and Osaka Shosen Kaisha, and by the mid-1930s was also known as the "McCormick Terminal." In the 1950s, at least part of the pier was used for fish processing.
By the 1960s, the Port of Seattle owned the pier, and had cut holes in the deck for recreational fishing, but the pilings were deteriorating and the pier was settling unevenly.
The city purchased Pier 57 from the Port in 1971, [1] after cargo shipping at the piers was relocated years earlier to the container port to the south, [2] [3] and renovated it over the next three years. In 1989, the city traded Pier 57 for Piers 62 and 63, [4] and it is now privately owned.
The renovated pier features restaurants, shops, an amusement arcade, and an early 20th-century carousel. [1] [5]
Seattle businessman and waterfront developer Hal Griffith has envisioned a Ferris wheel on Elliott Bay for nearly 30 years. Along with his family, he is the owner of the Pier 57 upon which the Seattle Great Wheel is located. In addition to the wheel, the pier is the location of Miner's Landing, which consists of souvenir gift shops, tourist attractions, and variety of seafood restaurants. [6]
During the 1980s, Griffith began developing plans to ensure the perpetual existence and success of the family's business ventures on the pier. His plans had long included continual development of the waterfront on Puget Sound to provide entertainment and recreational opportunities for tourists and local residents. His goal was to drive success through innovative ideas, staying a step ahead of the competition. Griffith often met logistical and political roadblocks that inhibited development on the waterfront, but he was determined to build the Ferris wheel on Pier 57, located adjacent to the Alaskan Way Viaduct. While Griffith applied for building permits in November 2010, the project took approximately three years to complete. General work outside of actual building included retrofitting the pilings that support the pier. [7]
In June 2012, the Seattle Great Wheel opened. The 175 foot Ferris wheel has 42 climate-controlled gondolas, each holding up to six passengers. [8]
During development and acquisition of the wheel, the State of Washington, King County, the City of Seattle, and the Port of Seattle solidified plans to dig a tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which had been damaged in an earthquake in 2001. The plans included creating a tunnel that would run beneath the city's downtown core. The initial phase of demolition and removal of the viaduct began on October 21, 2011. [9] Griffith was concerned that without a large tourist attraction, many waterfront businesses would suffer and go out of business during construction. The Seattle Great Wheel was designed to resolve these issues and draw visitors to the waterfront.[ citation needed ]
Navy Pier is a 3,300-foot-long (1,010 m) pier on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Navy Pier encompasses over 50 acres (20 ha) of shops, restaurants, live theaters, family attractions, parks, gardens, and exhibition facilities and is one of the top destinations in the Midwestern United States, drawing over nine million visitors annually. It is one of the most visited attractions in the entire Midwest and is Chicago's second-most visited tourist attraction.
Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is in the U.S. state of Washington, extending southeastward between West Point in the north and Alki Point in the south. Seattle was founded on this body of water in the 1850s and has since grown to encompass it completely. The waterway it provides to the Pacific Ocean has served as a key element of the city's economy, enabling the Port of Seattle to become one of the busiest ports in the United States.
The Seattle Aquarium is a public aquarium in Seattle, Washington, United States, located on Pier 59 on the Elliott Bay waterfront. The aquarium opened in 1977 and is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).
The Alaskan Way Viaduct was an elevated freeway in Seattle, Washington, United States, that carried a section of State Route 99. The double-decked freeway ran north–south along the city's waterfront for 2.2 miles (3.5 km), east of Alaskan Way and Elliott Bay, and traveled between the West Seattle Freeway in SoDo and the Battery Street Tunnel in Belltown.
State Route 519 (SR 519) is a state highway in Seattle, Washington, United States. It connects Interstate 90 (I-90) to the Port of Seattle and Colman Dock, which serves as the terminus of two ferry routes. The highway travels along city streets, including two named for Seattle Mariners personalities: Edgar Martinez Drive and Dave Niehaus Way, as well as Alaskan Way. SR 519 was established in 1991 on preexisting streets that were first built in the early 20th century. State projects moved the southern terminus of SR 519 in 2010 to its current location and temporarily rerouted it during demolition of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
The Waterfront Streetcar, officially the George Benson Waterfront Streetcar Line, was a heritage streetcar line run by King County Metro in Seattle, Washington, United States. It traveled for 1.6-mile (2.6 km) along Alaskan Way on the city's waterfront facing Elliott Bay, under the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The Waterfront Streetcar used a fleet of five W2 trams from Melbourne, Australia.
The Alaskan Way Seawall is a seawall which runs for approximately 7,166 feet (2,184 m) along the Elliott Bay waterfront southwest of downtown Seattle from Bay Street to S. Washington Street. The seawall was being rebuilt in the 2010s as part of a waterfront redevelopment megaproject estimated to cost over $1 billion.
Fisherman's Wharf is a neighborhood and popular tourist attraction in San Francisco, California, United States. It roughly encompasses the northern waterfront area of San Francisco from Ghirardelli Square or Van Ness Avenue east to Pier 35 or Kearny Street. The F Market streetcar runs through the area, the Powell / Hyde cable car used to line runs to Aquatic Park, at the edge of Fisherman's Wharf, and the Powell / Mason cable car line runs a few blocks away in the past.
Penn's Landing is a waterfront area of Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, situated along the Delaware River. Its name commemorates the landing of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, in 1682. The actual landing site is farther south, in Chester. The city of Philadelphia purchased the right to use the name. Penn's Landing is bounded by Front Street to the west, the Delaware River to the east, Spring Garden Street to the north, and Washington Avenue to the south, and is primarily focused on the Christopher Columbus Boulevard corridor.
Alaskan Way, originally Railroad Avenue, is a major north-south street in Seattle, Washington, that runs along the Elliott Bay waterfront from just north of S. Holgate Street in the Industrial District—south of which it becomes East Marginal Way S.— to Broad Street in Belltown, north of which is Myrtle Edwards Park and the Olympic Sculpture Park. The right-of-way continues northwest through the park, just west of the BNSF Railway mainline, and the roadway picks up again for a few blocks at Smith Cove. It follows a route known in the late 19th century as the "Ram's Horn" because of its shape. The street gave its name to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which until 2019 carried Washington State Route 99 through downtown Seattle. The northern section of Alaskan Way is also signed as its honorary name, Dzidzilalich.
The Central Waterfront is a neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is the most urbanized portion of the Elliott Bay shore. It runs from the Pioneer Square shore roughly northwest past Downtown Seattle and Belltown, ending at the Broad Street site of the Olympic Sculpture Park.
Waterfront Park is a public park on the Central Waterfront, Downtown, Seattle, Washington, USA. Designed by the Bumgardner Partnership and consultants, it was constructed on the site of the former Schwabacher Wharf. The original park closed in September 2020 after a failed inspection; the pier was completely removed by February 2021. A replacement park began construction in 2022 and is scheduled to open in 2025.
The State Route 99 tunnel, also known as the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel, is a bored highway tunnel in the city of Seattle, Washington, United States. The 2-mile (3.2 km), double-decker tunnel carries a section of State Route 99 (SR 99) under Downtown Seattle from SoDo in the south to South Lake Union in the north.
Colman Dock, also called Pier 52, is the primary ferry terminal in Seattle, Washington, United States. The original pier is no longer in existence, but the terminal, now used by the Washington State Ferries system, is still called "Colman Dock". The terminal serves two routes to Bainbridge Island and Bremerton and has an adjacent passenger-only facility at Pier 50 for King County Water Taxi and Kitsap Fast Ferries routes.
Pier 54 is a tourist pier in Seattle, Washington. Previously an active shipping pier and warehouse, Pier 54 was originally known as Pier 3 until it was renumbered during World War II. This pier was also known as Galbraith dock and the Galbraith Bacon dock. Because of the large number of smaller local steamships, generally built of wood, that used the pier up until the 1930s, the pier was also known as the “Mosquito Fleet dock”.
Pier 55 is a pier in Seattle, Washington. Pier 55 was originally known as Pier 4 until it was renumbered during World War Two.
The Seattle Great Wheel is a 53-meter tall giant Ferris wheel at Pier 57 on Elliott Bay in Seattle, Washington, United States. At an overall height of 175 feet (53.3 m), it was the tallest Ferris wheel on the West Coast of the United States when it opened in June 2012.
A boardwalk is a promenade along a beach or waterfront. In North America, and particularly in the United States, many waterfront commercial boardwalks have become so successful as tourist attractions that the simple wooden pathways have been replaced by esplanades made of concrete, brick or other construction, sometimes with a wooden façade on the surface. An entertainment boardwalk often contains an amusement park, casinos, or hotels on a pier-like structure. One of the earliest such boardwalks was designed in New Jersey and opened June 26, 1870, in Atlantic City, and one of the longest is Mazatlán's Malecón, at 13 miles (21 km) of oceanfront boardwalk.
Fisherman's Restaurant and Bar is a seafood restaurant in Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington.
