Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, US. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle's founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay. The early structures in the neighborhood were mostly wooden, and nearly all burned in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. By the end of 1890, dozens of brick and stone buildings had been erected in their stead; to this day, the architectural character of the neighborhood derives from these late 19th century buildings, mostly examples of Richardsonian Romanesque.
Duwamish is a retired fireboat in the United States. She is the second oldest vessel designed to fight fires in the US, after Edward M. Cotter, in Buffalo, New York.
David Swinson "Doc" Maynard was an American pioneer, doctor, and businessman. He was one of Seattle's primary founders. He was an effective civic booster and, compared to other white settlers, a relative advocate of Native American rights. His friendship with Chief Seattle was important in the formation of the city of Seattle, and it was he who proposed the city be named for this important chief. Maynard was Seattle's first doctor, merchant prince, second lawyer, Sub-Indian Agent, Justice of the Peace, and architect of the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855.
This is the main article of a series that covers the history of Seattle, Washington, a city in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America.
History of Seattle, Washington 1900–1940
Two conflicting perspectives exist for the early history of Seattle. There is the "establishment" view, which favors the centrality of the Denny Party, and Henry Yesler. A second, less didactic view, advanced particularly by historian Bill Speidel and others such as Murray Morgan, sees David Swinson "Doc" Maynard as a key figure, perhaps the key figure. In the late nineteenth century, when Seattle had become a thriving town, several members of the Denny Party still survived; they and many of their descendants were in local positions of power and influence. Maynard was about ten years older and died relatively young, so he was not around to make his own case. The Denny Party were generally conservative Methodists, teetotalers, Whigs and Republicans, while Maynard was a drinker and a Democrat. He felt that well-run prostitution could be a healthy part of a city's economy. He was also on friendly terms with the region's Native Americans, while many of the Denny Party were not. Thus Maynard was not on the best of terms with what became the Seattle Establishment, especially after the Puget Sound War. He was nearly written out of the city's history until Morgan's 1951 book Skid Road and Speidel's research in the 1960s and 1970s.
Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared with other city centers on the U.S. West Coast due to its geographical situation, being hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by Elliott Bay, and on the south by reclaimed land that was once tidal flats. It is bounded on the north by Denny Way, beyond which are Lower Queen Anne, Seattle Center, and South Lake Union; on the east by Interstate 5, beyond which is Capitol Hill to the northeast and Central District to the east; on the south by S Dearborn Street, beyond which is Sodo; and on the west by Elliott Bay, a part of Puget Sound.
Lake View Cemetery is a private cemetery located in Seattle, Washington, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, just north of Volunteer Park. Known as "Seattle's Pioneer Cemetery," it is run by an independent, non-profit association. It was founded in 1872 as the Seattle Masonic Cemetery and later renamed for its view of Lake Washington to the east.
The Denny Triangle is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, that stretches north of the central business district to the grounds of Seattle Center. Its generally flat terrain was originally a steep hill, taken down as part of a mammoth construction project in the first decades of the 20th century known as the Denny Regrade, which is another name for the neighborhood on the regraded area. The name Denny Triangle, referring to the northeastern portion of this regrading project, is a term that has gained currency as this neighborhood has seen increasing development in the first decades of the 21st Century.
Queen Anne is a neighborhood and geographic feature in Seattle, Washington, United States, located northwest of downtown. The affluent neighborhood sits on the eponymous hill, whose maximum elevation is 456 feet (139 m), making it Seattle's highest named hill. Queen Anne covers an area of 7.3 square kilometers (2.8 sq mi), and has a population of about 28,000. It is bordered by Belltown to the south, Lake Union to the east, the Lake Washington Ship Canal to the north and Interbay to the west.
Cascade is an urban neighborhood abutting Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States, located adjacent to South Lake Union. It is bounded by: Fairview Avenue North on the west, beyond which is the rest of the Cascade Neighborhood; the Interstate 5 interchange for Mercer St to the north, beyond which is Eastlake; Interstate 5 on the east, beyond which is Capitol Hill; and Denny Way on the south, beyond which is Denny Triangle. It is surrounded by thoroughfares Mercer Street (eastbound), Fairview Avenue N. and Eastlake Avenue E., and Denny Way. The neighborhood, one of Seattle's oldest, originally extended much further: west to Terry Avenue, south to Denny Hill on the South, and east to Melrose Avenue E through the area now obliterated by Interstate 5. Some recent writers consider Cascade to omit the northern "arm", while others extend it westward to cover most of South Lake Union.
Georgetown is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is bounded on the north by the mainlines of the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad, beyond which is the Industrial District; on the west by the Duwamish River, across which is South Park; on the east by Interstate 5, beyond which is Beacon Hill; and on the south by Boeing Field.
South Lake Union is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, so named because it is at the southern tip of Lake Union.
Reginald Heber Thomson was a self-taught American civil engineer. He worked in Washington state, mainly in Seattle, where he became city engineer in 1892 and held the position for two decades. Alan J. Stein wrote that Thomson "probably did more than any other individual to change the face of Seattle" and was responsible for "virtually all of Seattle's infrastructure".
The topography of central Seattle was radically altered by a series of regrades in the city's first century of urban settlement, in what might have been the largest such alteration of urban terrain at the time.
The Central Waterfront of Seattle, Washington, United States, 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.
Elmer H. Fisher was an architect best known for his work during the rebuilding of the American city of Seattle after it was devastated by fire in 1889. He began his career as a carpenter and migrated from Massachusetts to the Pacific Northwest, where he practiced architecture from 1886 to 1891. After his reputation was damaged by litigation and personal scandal in Seattle, he relocated to Los Angeles in 1893, where he only had modest success as an architect before returning to carpentry, dying around 1905 with his final years almost as mysterious as his early years; the details of his death and his burial location remain unknown. His commercial building designs played a major role in reshaping Seattle architecture in the late 19th century and many still survive as part of the Pioneer Square Historic District.
The architecture of Seattle, Washington, the largest city in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., features elements that predate the arrival of the area's first settlers of European ancestry in the mid-19th century, and has reflected and influenced numerous architectural styles over time. As of the early 21st century, a major construction boom continues to redefine the city's downtown area as well as neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill, Ballard and, perhaps most dramatically, South Lake Union.
The Calhoun Hotel, later known as the Palladian Apartments and currently the Kimpton Palladian Hotel is a historic hotel building located in downtown Seattle, Washington. Constructed in 1909, The building was built on the recently regraded northeast corner of Second Avenue and Virginia Streets by Scott Calhoun (1874-1952), a well known attorney and Seattle's Corporation Counsel who helped form the Port of Seattle. He commissioned prominent local Architect W. P. White to design an eight-story hotel building, containing 153 rooms on the upper floors and retail at ground level. It was the first building to be completed on the site of the Denny Regrade. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 2013. Converted to apartments by the 1980s, In 2014 it was restored back into a hotel and is currently run by the Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants brand as the Kimpton Palladian Hotel.
1st Avenue is a major street in Seattle, Washington, United States. It traverses Downtown Seattle, including Pioneer Square and Belltown, as well as the adjacent neighborhoods of SoDo and Lower Queen Anne. Numerous landmarks including parks, museums, and historic buildings are located along the street, including Pike Place Market. The Great Seattle Fire of 1889 destroyed much of it and it had to be rebuilt. Parades have taken place on it before and after the fire.
