Lake Washington Boulevard
Seattle, Washington
"Lake Washington Boulevard is a Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation property that extends from the Montlake neighborhood to Seward Park, on or near the shore of Lake Washington. John Charles Olmsted (1852-1920) located it in his 1903 plan for Seattle's park and boulevard system to take advantage of Seattle's landscape, including the lake, forested parks, and views across the lake and of distant mountains. The boulevard was constructed in parts, starting with an initial section in Washington Park. More than five miles were completed in time for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition held on the University of Washington campus in 1909, and the final segment was opened in 1917."
Ott, Jennifer. "Lake Washington Boulevard (Seattle)" HistoryLink.org February 08, 2013http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=10244
Samuel Lancaster & Sam Hill
"[Sam Hill] invited Lancaster to bring his family to Seattle and work in that great city for six months -- all at Hill's expense. [James] Wilson [U.S. Secretary of Agriculture] agreed to give Lancaster a six-month leave [from his job as a consulting engineer with the Bureau of Public Roads]. When the six months were up, Lancaster resigned his national position and began working with Reginald H. Thompson, Seattle Parks Department commissioner, to design a $7 million system of boulevards and parks in Seattle. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition was planned for 1909, and Seattle wanted to shine for the event."
Willis 31
Robert W. Hadlow, Columbia River Highway Historic District, National Historic Landmark Nomination
Even though many see Samuel C. Lancaster as the preeminent player in early twentieth-century road building in the Pacific Northwest because of his work on the CRH, his role in the region began several years earlier in Washington State. Late in the first decade of the twentieth century, the Seattle Park Department employed him as a consulting engineer, where he helped design and oversee construction of a system of parks and boulevards outlined by the well-known landscape architect, John C. Olmsted. These contributions to Seattle’s coming of age were part of the city’s preparations for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, which also included an extensive regrading of Seattle’s hilly business district. The city’s civic leaders were determined to beautify Seattle for the event, which was a self-promotion vehicle to celebrate its phenomenal recent growth and bright future. A look at Lancaster’s role in Pacific Northwest road building needs to begin, though, with an understanding of his formative years—when illness opened up opportunities for him to hone his skills as a young and energetic civil engineer.6
6 Ronald J. Fahl, “S. C. Lancaster and the Columbia River Highway: Engineer as Conservationist,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 74, no. 2 (June 1973): 105. Forward-thinking promoters conceived of the Alaska-Yukon Pacific Exposition as the heart of a program to help Seattle compete with Portland, its rival port city in the Pacific Northwest. Portland had, a few years earlier, inaugurated similar “city-beautiful” projects in anticipation of its highly successful Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905. See George A. Frykman, “The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, 1909,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 53 (July 1962): 89-99; see also Dorothy O. Johansen, Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest, 2d ed. (New York, 1967), 405-21.
Hadlow, National Historic Landmark Nomination. 47.
At the 1906 WSGRA convention in Yakima, Samuel Hill and Lancaster had struck up a close, lifelong friendship—the key to it was their mutual passion for good roads. Shortly, Hill convinced Secretary Wilson to loan Lancaster for six months to lobby in Washington for increased state aid for road construction during the 1907 state legislative session. Six months, though, was not long enough to convince lawmakers to make a stronger commitment to good roads.12
Meanwhile, Hill convinced Seattle Park Department commissioner Reginald H. Thomson to hire Lancaster to oversee the design and construction of a $7 million park and boulevard system concept outlined by John C. Olmsted in 1903 as part of Seattle’s preparation for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909. The plan added fifty-miles of boulevards ringing the city and 2,000 acres to Seattle’s already large park system.13
Lancaster and the board gave priority to Lake Washington’s western shore, immediately east of Seattle’s downtown business district. There, Lancaster created a thirty-foot macadam roadway of easy grades and gentle curves, with a concrete sidewalk paralleling it near the water’s edge. A row of shade trees was planted along a parking strip to tie in the parkway with the naturally wooded slopes. Where needed, Lancaster designed ornamental concrete bridges and culverts to span the many creeks that emptied into Lake Washington. In sum, he had taken the practical experience he had gained just a few years earlier in Tennessee and applied it where it also required a strong awareness of aesthetic considerations and sensitivity to the natural surroundings’ creative beauty.14
Hadlow, Robert W. “Columbia River Highway Historic District, National Historic Landmark Nomination." Portland: Oregon Department of Transportation, 2000. 49.
The Olmsted Plan & Construction
FRIENDS OF SEATTLE’S OLMSTED PARKS: History
...the Seattle Board of Park Commissioners decided in 1902 that it wanted a more elaborate park system. To reach this goal, the Board planned on hiring the best landscape architect in the country, Frederick Law Olmsted. In addition, the Park Commissioners believed that the Olmsted name would add an air of distinction to the growing city.
When the Board contacted the landscape architecture firm in Brookline, Massachusetts, however, they discovered that Frederick Law Olmsted was in poor health. He would die the following year. His son, Frederick Jr., had joined the firm, now known as the Olmsted Brothers, but he was teaching and could not make it to Seattle. The firm wrote that their senior partner, John Charles Olmsted, was available. The dubious Board wanted to know more about this 'other' Olmsted. After the firm sent a letter listing his extensive park planning work, which they normally felt was rather unnecessary, the Board finally hired John Charles Olmsted. Rarely did the Board of Park Commissioners ever make such a wise decision in choosing the 'wrong' man.
Although the Park Commissioners did not know it, John Charles Olmsted was the most experienced landscape architect in the country in 1903.
FRIENDS OF SEATTLE’S OLMSTED PARKS: Historyhttp://seattleolmsted.org/historyAccessed July 16, 2020
FRIENDS OF SEATTLE’S OLMSTED PARKS: History
Almost 100 years later, parks have become even more central to the city's existence. Surveys by the Park Department over the last 30 years show that parks act upon us at a level we don't always understand. When asked if they used parks, many of those surveyed initially said "No," but when probed further, the respondents realized that they walked, biked or drove through or by a park, noticed the trees and water in the parks on almost a daily basis, and most often one designed by the Olmsted Brothers. Part of the park system's appeal is that these greenspaces do not feel like designed landscapes, but blend into their residential surroundings.
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The central feature of the Olmsted plan was a twenty mile-long parkway that ran from Bailey Peninsula (Seward Park) to Fort Lawton (Discovery Park). From Bailey the pleasure drive would snake along the lake shore, climb up and wrap along the bluff that now encompasses Colman and Frink Parks, dive back down to the water at Madrona Park, and eventually turn inland to Washington Park. From here the roadway would cut to the UW campus, pass through it to Ravenna Park and the adjacent ravine (Cowen Park), and eventually parallel the brook that flowed from Green Lake. The parkway would continue through Woodland Park, descend to the northwest corner of Queen Anne, wrap around the hill's north end and through Interbay to Smith's Cove with a final extension along the Magnolia bluffs to Fort Lawton.
In addition, spur roads would connect Lake Washington Boulevard at Mt. Baker Park to Beacon Hill Park (Jefferson). A second link went from Washington Park along Interlaken Boulevard with forks to Volunteer Park and Roanoke Park. Another boulevard would connect Kinnear Park on Queen Anne with Magnolia.
FRIENDS OF SEATTLE’S OLMSTED PARKS: Historyhttp://seattleolmsted.org/historyAccessed July 16, 2020
Jennifer Ott, Lake Washington Boulevard (Seattle)
The plan also included five sections of boulevards that would ring the city. Land prices in the central business district had already risen enough that it was too expensive to buy enough land for a boulevard through the downtown.
The boulevards ran between large city parks, such as Jefferson Park on Beacon Hill, Washington Park in the valley east of Capitol Hill, and Green Lake Park in the city's north end. In 1907, the park commissioners hired Olmsted to expand the system plan to include newly annexed lands to the north and south. Olmsted added additional boulevards in West Seattle, South Seattle, and Ballard. The siting of boulevards took advantage of ridges and shorelines, to incorporate views of water and mountains, and of the many ravines along the sides of the hills, to be immersed in the native woods. This use of what landscape architects call "borrowed landscapes" can be found in a number of Olmsted-designed features in Seattle.
A key element of the boulevard system Olmsted designed is Lake Washington Boulevard, which was originally made up of individually named boulevard segments until they were renamed as one in the early 1920s. It connected a number of parks, including Washington, Frink, and Colman, and showcased the region's beauty with views across the water and out to the distant mountains.
...
In his 1903 report, Olmsted gave the city guidance as to what property should be acquired for Lake Washington Boulevard. Looking beyond the actual roadway, he included recommendations for which parts of the landscape should be preserved. For the section running north from Seward Park to Holgate Street (then the southern city limit, before annexations extended Seattle southward), he recommended for purchase, "[a] comparatively narrow fringe of land sufficient for the needed drives and walks and for the preservation of the foreground of woods" ("Report of the Olmsted Brothers," 74). From there to Madrona Park, he recommended acquisition of the entire hillside and the lake shore, with room for the parkway at the top of the hill. Between Madrona Park and the Denny Blaine neighborhood, the road would drop back down to the lakeshore using a strip of land 150 to 200 feet wide. Over the hill to Washington Park, Olmsted envisioned a wide parkway area that would include the forested land along the roadside.
Olmsted prepared designs for some of the parks and boulevards in the plan, whenever budgets allowed. He laid out the route of much of what became Lake Washington Boulevard in the 1903 report, but he did not design its actual alignment or make specific planting plans for its borders in the lakeshore sections. In Washington Park, however, he prepared detailed plans for the parkway. In Frink and Colman Parks he provided suggestions for improving the parkway alignment to make it curve more gracefully or to provide enough room for walks alongside the roadway.
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In 1906 voters approved a $500,000 bond issue for parks and Olmsted wrote to Commissioner J. Edward Shrewsbury (d. 1931), "In short, I distinctly advocate the expenditure of practically all of the half million dollar loan in parks having landscape advantages, mainly upon areas along the shore of Lake Washington, including also an area on Magnolia Bluffs overlooking the Sound" (Olmsted to Shrewsbury).
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In 1908, city leaders working on preparations for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition at the University of Washington campus began a push to construct streetcar lines and roads to carry fairgoers from downtown, where most of them would arrive via trains and ships, to the fairgrounds north of Lake Union. A key component of this effort was Lake Washington Boulevard, which would showcase the region's beauty to impress visitors with one of Seattle's greatest aesthetic assets.
The city's crews could not complete the entire boulevard from Bailey Peninsula to the university, but they were able to piece together a route from where Stan S. Sayres Memorial Park is today, near 43rd Avenue S, by the summer of 1909.
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The Board of Park Commissioners managed to complete a good portion of the boulevard prior to the opening of the fair. In their annual report for 1909 the commissioners reported:
"Special efforts were made and heavy expenditures were required in carrying out our plan to have our north and south chain of boulevards along or overlooking Lake Washington from the Mount Baker district, north to the Exposition grounds, open for traffic, so that our Eastern visitors might enjoy the beauties of our lake and mountain scenery" ("Sixth Annual Report," 67).
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In 1917, the last section of the boulevard, extending it final two miles to Seward Park, opened. Efforts to extend the boulevard a mile and a half beyond Seward Park had met with resistance in 1909, but Olmsted urged the park commissioners to pursue the project:
"The scenic advantages of having a pleasure drive on the shore are probably greater at this portion of the parkway than at any other, because owing to the general trend of the shore being somewhat to the west of south, Mt. Rainier will be more continuously in view than will be the case from most of the Lake Washington Parkway north of Bailey Peninsula. Another great advantage of keeping the parkway on the shore is that it will afford continuous frontage upon the lake where residents of the city, especially those within convenient walking distance, may promenade or rest, or picnic, or take boats with the fullest enjoyment of the lake and mountain scenery" (Olmsted to Frink).
It appears the park commissioners did not pursue the project. The lakeside boulevard ends today at Seward Park.
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Seattle's population continued to grow at prodigious rates as the boulevard was constructed. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Seattle grew from 80,671 to 237,194 people. What had been forested or recently logged land surrounding much of the boulevard route in 1903 began to fill with residential development. A number of trolley lines connected the lakeside neighborhoods with downtown Seattle and promoted development. The 1916 opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal lowered Lake Washington by about 9 feet as it dropped to the same level as Lake Union. This exposed new shoreline alongside the boulevard, which was developed into park land.
Ott, Jennifer. "Lake Washington Boulevard (Seattle)" HistoryLink.org February 08, 2013http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=10244
Route
"Lake Washington Boulevard is a scenic, approximately 8-mile (13 km), route through Seattle, Washington, that hugs Lake Washington for much of the drive. There are views of the lake, small sections of rainforest, meadows, and views of the Cascade mountains."
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Washington_Boulevard
Jennifer Ott, Lake Washington Boulevard (Seattle)
Olmsted encouraged the city to extend Lake Washington Boulevard south to the Bailey Peninsula even before that land (now Seward Park) was purchased for park purposes in 1911. The peninsula jutted into Lake Washington and, unlike most land near the city, retained its old-growth forest. Olmsted saw potential for a large park with native plants and undisturbed forest land. Olmsted's plan included a boulevard starting at the peninsula and following the lake shore to Colman Park (north of the Mount Baker neighborhood), where he proposed the road would climb inland to run along the ridge northward before dropping down again to the shore north of Leschi Park. Farther north, much of the land on the point at Madison Park had already been subdivided and so from the Denny Blaine neighborhood south of Madison Park the route turned inland and angled northwest over the hill to Washington Park.
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It is an on-going challenge to maintain the integrity of the boulevard in the face of increased traffic and development, but its importance in showcasing the beauty of Seattle's natural setting is unparalleled.
Ott, Jennifer. "Lake Washington Boulevard (Seattle)" HistoryLink.org February 08, 2013http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=10244
Bicycle Sunday
Bicycle Sunday: Seattle Parks and Recreation Department
Lake Washington Boulevard closes to motorized traffic from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. during Sundays in the summer months.
Bicycle or walk along Lake Washington Boulevard south of Mount Baker Beach to Seward Parks entrance. For more information download the poster or download our Bicycle Sunday brochure for route maps.
Bicycle Sunday: Seattle Parks and Recreation Departmenthttp://www.seattle.gov/parks/bicyclesunday/
Links
HistoryLink.org
Ott, Jennifer. "Lake Washington Boulevard (Seattle)" HistoryLink.org February 08, 2013
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=10244
Williams, David B. "Olmsted Parks in Seattle, HistoryLink.org Essay 1124." HistoryLink.org May 10, 1999
http://historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=1124
FRIENDS OF SEATTLE’S OLMSTED PARKS
Montlake Blvd
Seattle Parks and Rec
Lake Washington Blvd.
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/park_detail.asp?ID=412
Seward Park
http://www.seattle.gov/Parks/environment/seward.htm
Genesee Park
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/park_detail.asp?id=409
Bicycle Sunday
Wikipedia
Lake Washington Blvd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Washington_Boulevard
Genesee_Park_(Seattle)
Friends of Seward Park: History
Seward Park Environmental & Audubon Center
Sherwood Park History Files
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/sherwood.htm
Seattle Parks and Recreation's Sherwood History Files are the incredible legacy of Donald N. Sherwood (1916-1981), who worked as an engineer for Parks for 22 years from 1955 to 1977.
In the course of his work, which included designing buildings and producing brochures, Sherwood began compiling sketch maps of the parks, annotating them with historical information. He started writing individual histories for each facility when the information didn't fit on the maps.
In the early 1970s, Sherwood discovered that older department files were being destroyed as employees retired. Sherwood urged that valuable Parks records be sorted and preserved. In 1972 he was assigned the responsibility. Although given little time to perform this duty, Sherwood threw himself into the activity with vigor, and continued this work until his position was eliminated, due to a budget reduction, in 1977.
Some additional material was added to the collection after this date by various Park Department employees. Sherwood continued his research and writing on the history of Seattle parks until his death in November 1981. The original histories and drawings of the parks he generated after leaving City employment were donated to the Museum of History and Industry following his death.
For more detailed information about the Sherwood History Files, please visit the GUIDE TO THE DON SHERWOOD PARKS HISTORY COLLECTION in the Seattle Municipal Archives. (Seattle Parks and Recreation: Sherwood Park History Files)
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/LakeWashingtonBlvd.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/SewardPk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/GeneseePFandPk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/SayresPk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/ColmanPk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/FrinkPk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/LeschiPk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/MadronaPk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/VirettaPk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/DennyBlaineLakePk.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/DennyBlainePK.pdf
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/HowellPk.pdf