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    Seattle's Green Lake
    Seattle's Green Lake
    Seattle's Green Lake
    Ebook164 pages37 minutes

    Seattle's Green Lake

    By Brittany Wright

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    About this ebook

    Discovered in 1855, Green Lake has been an essential feature within Seattle's distinctive juxtaposition of landscape architecture and urban expansion, providing recreation and community focus for the last 150 years. Named after the persistent algae bloom that still occurs, the lake is a valuable natural landmark at the center of a neighborhood in transition, and its past is threaded with tenacious organizations and ambitious individuals. From its first homesteader, Erhart "Green Lake John" Saifried, to the vision of the Olmsted brothers, from Guy Phinney's menagerie to the triumph and tragedy of Helene Madison, from ice-skating to the Aqua Follies, this broad collection of vintage images illustrates a bygone era and provides a unique perspective on community values and ecological struggle.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439634295
    Seattle's Green Lake
    Author

    Brittany Wright

    In this new volume, author and resident Brittany Wright has culled more than 200 historic and rarely seen images from the archives of the University of Washington and the Museum of History and Industry, as well as from private local collections. Together these images and the informative text that accompanies them pay tribute to a singular neighborhood in the heart of the city.

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      Book preview

      Seattle's Green Lake - Brittany Wright

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      INTRODUCTION

      About 14,000 years ago, the massive ice sheets of the Vashon Glacier rolled south from Canada. Rising to a thickness of roughly 3,000 feet, they advanced across most of what is now Washington State, rearranging the land into a unique variety of salient hills and basins. When the glacier receded to reveal these striking new landforms, numerous catchments had been carved into the landscape, characterizing one of the most unusually alluring geographies in the United States.

      In September of 1855, a man by the name of David Phillips, on behalf of the U.S. Surveyor General, arrived at the edge of a body of water a mile wide, surrounded by a forest of Douglas fir and protected by soft hills. Struck by the profuse algae blooms coloring the waters, he named it Lake Green. Fourteen years later, Erhart Green Lake John Siegfried claimed 130 acres of land there and built the first pioneer cabin known to exist on its shores. One by one, then in droves, settlers and investors fell under the rich magnetism of the lake. While desiring to make it the centerpiece of urban and commercial development, they had a profound respect and concern for the lake as a natural landmark from the very beginning. As William D. Wood wrote for the Green Lake News in 1903, Its shores and waters can always be kept free from the obstructions and dangers of commercial use. Wood purchased Siegfried’s holdings in 1887 and quickly became one of Seattle’s most prominent individuals of the day, holding many influential positions, including probate judge of King County and then mayor, as well as partner in both the Green Lake Electric Railway and the Seattle and Yukon Trading Company. Working closely with a superior group of other visionary leaders, such as Guy Phinney, Corliss Kilbourne, Judge Frederick A. McDonald, and John Olmsted, Wood planned rigorously to protect the lake as he helped to develop its neighborhood, ensuring a foundation for a place, free and accessible to everyone, that would attract visitors from all over to this vibrant heart of a community.

      The varied architecture throughout the Green Lake neighborhood conjures an almost indescribable raptness for the beholder. For newer residents, it evokes a nostalgia for a time that can only be experienced second hand. For others, there seems to be a sort of comfort that those times have not yet disappeared entirely—a reminder of what the lake has meant to them. Like any other neighborhood, Green Lake has its stories, as unique as each of the old houses still overlooking the water. But unlike any other neighborhood, these stories crisscross over the surface of the lake, like the ice-skaters that clamored to catch each other’s outstretched hands gliding by, many winters ago.

      A multitude of laborious efforts have been exerted since Green Lake’s founding to halt its decay by treating its waters and dredging its sediments. It is no small wonder that, because of a community that truly believed this feature was meant for a brighter future, it still exists today with all it has to offer. Each of its abundant attractions and facilities, from the Small Crafts Center and Evans Pool, to Duck Island and even the shoreline itself, has a tale to tell involving the hard work, inspiration, and design of multiple individuals. Many of its original landmarks did not survive, and their memories fade perilously the longer they remain unpreserved. Those that do survive are equally as interesting, their histories being a mixture of incredible luck as well as examples of time-tested design and vision.

      One feels a similarly mysterious enchantment upon examining the fragmented remains of the Aqua Theater. It is a truly moving experience for one to close his or her eyes and imagine the thousands of people lining up, cheering deliriously, applauding, dazzled by high-dive tricks or being absorbed by an overture echoing across the night waters of the lake. In pondering this once exceptional structure, one finds

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