Pioneer Hall turns 100

Madison Park’s oldest waterfront structure, Washington Pioneer Hall (1642 43rd Avenue E.), will be celebrating its Centennial tomorrow. Home of the Pioneer Association of the State of Washington, the building was opened in 1910 and may be the longest surviving commercial structure located in the neighborhood. It was built on land donated in 1902 by Madison Park founder, Judge John J. McGilvra, whose family home, Laurel Shade, was located to the south of the site (in what is now known as the Reed Estate). Loretta Denny of the famous Seattle pioneer family (Denny-Blaine, Denny Regrade, Denny Way, Denny Hall) bequeathed $20,000 for the construction of the building, which was dedicated on June 7, 1910.

The Hall is reputedly the only remaining structure in Madison Park that sat directly next to Lake Washington before the Lake was lowered in 1916 as the result of the building of the Ship Canal. When the Lake decreased in elevation by 8.8 feet that year, the building suddenly found itself sitting on a beach lot rather than waterside. This is the scene in the early 1900s (apparently post Lake lowering):

And this is what the back of the site looks like today:

Local historian Junius Rochester, who lives in Madrona, has a nice overview of the Pioneer Association on HistoryLink.org. The bylaws of the Association make membership available to “lineal descendants of Pioneers who were residents of Washington Territory prior to statehood.” I’m sure we all remember that statehood occurred in 1889 (November 11, to be exact). I am told that there are approximately 900 members of the Association at the present time.

Pioneer Hall primarily serves as a museum of the history of Washington Territory and early Washington State, with exhibits of paintings, photos, clothing, furniture, and other memorabilia of pioneer families on display. There are also books, recordings and biographical material housed there; and since 1992, the Fiske Genealogical Library has been located in the basement of the Hall. In 1970, Pioneer Hall was entered into the National Register of Historic Places, a fact memorialized by the bronze plaque on the front of the building.

The Hall is open to the public on the second Sunday of each month, from 1 until 4 p.m. The Pioneer Association will be celebrating the building’s Centennial on Saturday, June 19 with a Salmon Bake at Madison Park. Information is available from PioneerPicnic@aol.com or from Jeff Christensen (206-390-6810). Technically, the deadline for reservations (at $24 per person) was on Friday; but perhaps if you want to attend they will still let you in if you blame your recalcitrance on the Madison Park Blogger for failing to notify you in time.

[Historic photo courtesy of the University of Washington Libraries.]

We could be living in Monroe Park

If you were paying attention earlier this week and cared to do so, you could have celebrated the 259th anniversary of the birth of James Madison, fourth President of the United States, born on March 16, 1751. It’s unlikely that many of us regularly reflect (if ever) on the fact that Madison Park was named—at least indirectly—for the Father of the Constitution. Though our connection with the President is a fact, it certainly didn’t have to be that way. We could just as easily be living in a lovely lakeside community named for the author of the Monroe Doctrine. Here’s the story of why this is Madison Park.

As all the histories of the area confirm, Judge John J. McGilvra (that’s him below) built the first homestead in what is now Madison Park. In 1864, during the Civil War, McGilvra either built or substantially improved a road from downtown Seattle to his 420-acre estate on the Lake, which he called Laurel Shade. According to McGilvra’s biography on Wikipedia, the road was known then as the Lake Washington wagon road, and from the beginning it was the only direct route from the salt water of Elliott Bay to the fresh water of the Lake. That’s still the case today.

But it’s not true, although many website histories make the claim, that McGilvra named the road that he had built “Madison Street.” The naming was actually done by Arthur Denny, a City founder and its first surveyor. According to photographer and historian Paul Dorpat, author of the “Seattle Then and Now” series, Denny needed another “M” street after having already named a Seattle street for his brother “Marion.” As longtime Seattleites know, the convention for remembering downtown East-West street names is the mnemonic “Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest.”

This method for remembering the order came later, certainly. The naming came first; and it was Denny’s idea to pair Seattle’s streets by the first letter of their names: Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion…” But then what? After naming these first five, Denny needed another “M” in order to keep the alliteration going. He had already used one president, Jefferson, for a street name. Why not another? Two possibilities existed at that time: Presidents Monroe and Madison.

Dorpat says that the answer was “obvious.” But I don’t see why. There is a SW Monroe Street in Seattle, but that clearly came along much later (it is far south of downtown). Denny could have easily chosen Monroe. But for whatever reason, Madison it was. And Denny was able to go from there to complete the string: Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike and Pine.

About sixteen years after the building of the road, McGilvra deeded about 24 acres for a park at the end of the road. In early pictures, the park is captioned “Madison Street Park,” and that was apparently how the Park got its name: the park at the end of Madison Street. Eventually it became simply Madison Park, and the growing community that surrounded it became the Madison Park neighborhood.

So that’s the story of why we’re not living in Monroe Park. Now you know.

[John J. McGilvra picture courtesy of the Museum of History and Industry, middle picture of Laurel Shade courtesty of the University of Washington Libraries collection, lower picture of Madison Street in 1932 courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives. Compare to the 1939 picture posted earlier on this blog.]

Seventy years ago in Madison Park

I don't know about you, but I am fascinated by history and find old photos of Madison Park particularly arresting. This is a 1939 photo looking westward up E. Madison Street from the area of the Village. While the trolly tracks are clearly visible, traffic is certainly not.

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If you have old photos of the Park that you think Blogger readers would be interested in seeing, please send them my way. I will be presenting historic photos on the site from time to time. This one is courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives.

Defining Madison Park: an essay (part one)

You might think it would be a pretty easy thing to describe the community in which you live, defining, for those not in the know, its characteristics and its boundaries. A simple neighborhood definition might be possible for a lot of places in this town; but, as I’ve discovered, it’s not a simple thing to accomplish when it comes to Madison Park. For it’s a fact that there is no consensus on what it means to live in Madison Park. The City has an opinion, the local realtors have one, the area’s community councils each have one—and their views are certainly not identical. And then there are the people who actually do (or, in the opinion of others, do not) live in the Park.

Where, exactly, does Madison Park begin, and where does it end?

Let’s start with a premise, perhaps the only one, on which all of us can agree: living in Madison Park does not mean sleeping, homeless, within in the confines of the actual City park known by the same name. Yes, the community does get its geographic identify from the City park, but the two things are not synonymous. Once we agree on that fact, however, we are probably done with consensus. From this point forward the story gets complicated and the disagreements sometimes become acute.

I first became aware of the problem of defining Madison Park well before I moved here. Although a native Seattleite, I had lived my entire life ‘north of the canal’ and was simply unfamiliar with the details of neighborhood geography ‘south of the cut.’ I made the mistake of introducing a friend to someone by saying that “she lives in Madison Park like you do!” I was immediately corrected by my friend, who told me she didn’t live in Madison Park! Really? This was a surprise to me, since I’d visited her at her house. “You’re just confused,” she told me, “I actually live in Washington Park.” “What’s the distinction?” I asked. “Washington Park is south of Madison, Madison Park is north,” she told me. This, it turns out, is the mutually exclusive proposition endorsed by a few: Washington Park is not a part of Madison Park. This was news to me then—and it still is.

I suspect it’s also news to a lot of other people who live in Washington Park, as some people think I do. Other people, by the way, don’t think I do. For not only is there a dispute over whether Washington Park is part of Madison Park, there’s also a dispute over where Washington Park itself begins and ends. Do I really live in Washington Park? And even if I do, is Washington Park also home to my neighbors on the next block? Well there’s a dispute about that as well, since the City thinks that many of us down here actually live in a neighborhood called Harrison Denny-Blaine, which isn’t Washington Park at all. In the City’s opinion, not only is The Seattle Tennis Club not in Washington Park, it isn’t even in Madison Park! Confused? I told you this was complicated.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

In the beginning there was the park, Madison Park, the land for which was set aside by landowner Judge John McGilvra in 1880. Madison Street had already been named (but not by McGilvra, as is sometimes claimed), and the park at the end of the street logically became Madison Park (the picture above shows the Park in 1900). McGilvra, who owned the surrounding land, developed some of it into cottages, and the growing community along the Lake soon became known as the Madison Park neighborhood. To this point, the story is pretty straightforward.

By early 1900’s the City had already set aside (but had yet to substantially develop) the 260-acre Washington Park, which would later, beginning in the 1930’s, be developed into the Washington Park Arboretum under an agreement between the City and the University of Washington. (The picture above shows Lake Washington Boulevard snaking through the Park in 1913). During the 1920’s, meanwhile, a 216-acre “country club within the city” had been built in Madison Park. Opening in 1927, Broadmoor provided Seattle’s wealthy with a gated community on a golf course, all located within shouting distance of downtown. This is Broadmoor, circa 1930:

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Thus, by the late 1930’s the three major components of Madison Park were well established, with Washington Park at one “end” of E. Madison Street, Madison Park at the other, and Broadmoor sitting secluded and serene in the middle. The neighborhood of big houses and mansions built in the area south of Broadmoor (and therefore south of E. Madison Street) become known, apparently early in the 1900’s, as the Washington Park neighborhood. The designation may have been prompted by a desire to distinguish the area from the grittier and more working class housing of Madison Park to the east. Washington Park certainly had a greater cachet than the rest of Madison Park, although after Broadmoor opened, Washington Park was no longer the most exclusive enclave within Madison Park.

Unlike Washington Park, there’s no problem defining the boundaries of Broadmoor: the community is pretty well walled in. The only question that concerns us here, therefore, is whether Broadmoor is part of Madison Park or is not part. I haven’t taken a poll on the subject, but I suspect there may be a few people living there who feel they are not residents of Madison Park. But that’s certainly not the official view. Broadmoor, I am told, has historically been represented on the Madison Park Community Council (MPCC), and to quote current Broadmoor Homeowners Association president Erin McCormick, “I consider our neighborhood part of Madison Park. In fact when I am asked where I live, I say ‘Madison Park area’ because that is well known to people not from the area, and it is a destination point.” Most Seattleites who are in the know, I imagine, would agree that Broadmoor is in Madison Park, just as they think of Blue Ridge as an exclusive section of Ballard. Google, for what it’s worth, actually places Broadmoor at the very center of Madison Park:

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While there may be a few exclusivists out there who hold themselves aloof from Madison Park, the record seems pretty clear that both Broadmoor and Washington Park have historically been considered parts of Madison Park and are so viewed by most residents. The interconnection of Broadmoor and Washington Park with the rest of Madison Park is further reinforced by the fact that the Madison Park business district serves as the focal point for most residents of the area. Bert’s, Bing’s, Madison Park Hardware, and Pharmaca are among the many places along the strip where people from each of the neighborhoods intermix on a daily basis. And of course the city park and its beach provide another common point of reference for what is really one big Madison Park community.

Once we accept the idea that we’re all in the Park together, you might think it would be a relatively simple matter to define our boundaries. After all, the Park is surrounded on two sides by water and Lake Washington Boulevard is generally accepted as the demarcation line to the west. But it’s a fact that to both the south and the west there are multiple disputes over large chunks of Madison Park’s territory.

Before we get into all that, let’s start with this blog’s working definition of the community: “Madison Park is bounded by Lake Washington Boulevard E. on the west and south (to the intersection with 39th Avenue E.) and by Lake Washington and Union Bay to the east and north respectively.” Here’s what that looks like on the map:

This definition of Madison Park is consistent with Wikipedia’s definition (I should know, since I wrote it). It has a couple of advantages: 1) it is fairly easy to explain, since Lake Washington Boulevard extends almost to the water at Lake Washington, allowing that street to define both the western and southern boundaries of the Park and 2) it is almost exactly the same definition as used by the U.S. census for King County Tract 63 (shown at right).

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For some reason, the Census Bureau doesn’t extend the tract all the way south to the intersection of 39th Avenue E. and Lake Washington Boulevard. Instead, it extends only to 36th Avenue E. and then meanders up Hillside, over to McGilvra and down 39th for awhile, finally reaching the Lake at “E. Mercer Street” (which appears not to be a real street at that point). The difference between Census Tract 63 and our definition of Madison Park, however, is fairly insignificant—amounting, by my count, to 60 or 70 high-end houses.

The City of Seattle, meanwhile, has a very different take on Madison Park’s southern border, eliminating almost all of Washington Park from Madison Park. Here’s what the City’s neighborhood map looks like:


As you can see, a majority of the territory south of E. Madison Street is missing, including all the blocks south of E. Prospect Street and most of the blocks south of E. Lee Street. In fact, the southern border of Madison Park, as defined on the City’s map, is what some people think is the real border between Washington Park and Madison Park. In other words, everything south of E. Madison Street doesn’t necessarily constitute Washington Park, just certain blocks. And these are the very blocks that appear not to be a part of Madison Park in the City’s opinion. In fact the City seems to think that Washington Park is part of some other neighborhood, namely something called Harrison Denny-Blaine.

Now if you have never heard of Harrison Denny-Blaine, you are not alone. Denny-Blaine is certainly a recognized neighborhood, but Harrison Denny-Blaine? If you Google it you find that every reference to HDB ties back to the City’s use of the term on its neighborhood maps. Real estate websites such as Zillow, Redfin and Trulia follow the City’s convention and use the HDB designation, as does Google (although Google places the neighborhood south of Washington Park rather than including Washington Park in HDB).

Why the City appears to believe there’s a Harrison Denny-Blaine neighborhood and why Washington Park is included in it are among the issues we will explore in Part Two of this story, to be posted next week. We’ll also explain why the Madison Park houses located closest to Washington Park Arboretum are designated as “Madison Park” by realtors while some houses that are closest to Madison Park itself (the actual city park, that is) are designated as “Washington Park.”

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Confused? Stay tuned.

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[Historic photos courtesty of the Seattle Municipal Archives.]

Steamboat Days on Lake Washington

Back in the early days of Madison Park, at a time when we were the principal port connecting Seattle to many of the towns on the Eastside, steamboats plied the Lake daily and their passengers thronged our dock on their way to or from work, school or shopping in Seattle. On weekends, Seattleites flocking to Kirkland and to other points in the “country” mingled on the dock with Eastsiders coming into town to play or shop. At that time, the Park played the kind of “vital link” role that Edmonds or Mukilteo play today for their communities “on the other side.”

The first motorized vessel on Lake Washington was reportedly a boat called the James Motrie, which arrived in 1870, according to the Seattle Times. The earliest passenger-carrying steamboats on the Lake were small vessels such as the Xanthus and the Cyrene, most likely the boats shown in the colorized postcard above. The Cyrene was primarily used for Lake cruising, rather than for scheduled service. As regular passenger traffic on the Lake increased, larger vessels were introduced, often built in Lake Washington shipyards, such as an early one located at Sand Point. The Acme was another early Lake cruiser:

In 1890’s and early 1900’s there were many different operators with boats plying the Lake, but as the new century gained momentum a former Lake Washington boat captain, John Anderson, became the dominant operator with his Anderson Steamship Co. He built a shipyard at Houghton (now Carillon Point in Kirkland) and ran his boats over much of the Lake, making landfall at as many as 50 different locations. Anderson took advantage of tourist interest in Lake Washington during the Alaska-Yukon Exposition in 1909, operating 12 different boats on various lake runs.

The Kirkland was an early sidewheeler introduced into the Lake:

By 1911, Madison Park had regular scheduled passenger service eight times a day to Kirkland and Juanita and seven times a day to Houghton and other communities in the Kirkland area.

This was in addition to sightseeing cruises that also originated at the Madison Park dock. Leschi was also a major transportation hub at that time, with scheduled service to Mercer Island, Medina and Bellevue.

The development of the auto resulted in some changes to transportation across the Lake, with at least one of the larger passenger ships, the Urania (shown above) being converted to carry a few cars as well as passengers. But the passenger-only mosquito fleet continued to exist alongside the auto-ferries, since the smaller boats were able to land at many more locations, and in any event most people did not have their own cars. Tragically, many of the early Lake steamships were the victims of poor technology and safety procedures, burning and often sinking to the bottom of the Lake. (The website of the Submerged Cultural Resources Exploration Team has the fascinating stories of three such wrecks, including that of the Urania, shown below after its 1914 burning off of Houghton).

In spite of these an other hazards, robust passenger-only ferry operations continued through the Great Depression and into the years of the Second World War. One of the boats with the longest record of service (1915-1945) was the Ariel, which was owned and operated by Marcus and Henry Johnson. Former Washington Governor John Spellman, whose family moved from Broadmoor to Hunts Point during the 1930’s, well remembers taking the Ariel (shown above) into Madison Park when he was a student at Seattle Prep during the early war years.

On a typical day, he recalls, the boat would touch docks in Houghton, Yarrow Point, Evergreen Point, Medina, and Hunts Point before making the run across the Lake to Madison Park. The captain would only pull into one of the Eastside docks if he saw someone was waiting to be picked up, otherwise it was on to the next. Steaming in the fog could be dangerous, and some mornings the boat took much longer than its normal 30 minutes to cross, with the captain tooting the steam horn periodically to listen for echoes.

The Johnsons regularly let kids into the cabin, but the adult passengers generally flocked to the lower deck, in the middle of which were the engines, sunken a bit below the deck level and surrounded by a railing. Passengers enjoyed playing cards or checkers to pass the time, and in winter it was the only place on the boat that was warm. Spellman can remember listening to the Billy Conn-Joe Lewis fight on the radio while crossing on the the Kirkland ferry one evening. He also tells of a memorable day when a black Labrador jumped off the dock at Hunts Point and swam all the way across the Lake in the wake of a sailboat. The dog, he recalls, got to ride on the boat going back.

During the war the passenger ferries carried large numbers of workers at the Houghton shipyard to and from their jobs. Spellman recalls that after the Ariel docked at the side of the Madison Park ferry dock in the afternoons, many of the returning shipyard workers high-tailed it into the dock restaurant and bar, where there were plenty of pin-ball machines and several of those early motion-picture machines. That’s probably where the restaurant made most of its money, Spellman believes. In any event, the restaurant did not outlast the end of the ferry runs in 1950.

Spellman feels that something was lost when the floating bridges eventually eliminated the need for passenger ferries on the Lake. Perhaps feeling like many present-day commuters from Vashon or Bainbridge, Spellman remembers commuting by boat across the Lake as simply a less-hectic, more joyful experience: “Simply put, it was a much more civilized time. You greeted and talked to fellow passengers--and you didn't honk your horn at them.”

Readers wishing to learn more about the history of steamships on the Lake should check out the Wikipedia article and note the book references cited at the end, in particular H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest by Gordon R. Newell.

[Pictures of the Kirkland and the Ariel, courtesy of the Kirkland Heritage Society, from Our Foundering Fathers by Arline Ely.]

Madison Park: a port no more

When my wife and I first moved to Madison Park early in this century, one of our neighbors welcomed us to “this destination community.” I asked what exactly he meant by the term, and he explained that Madison Park is a place people come to for a reason. No one drives through here just to get to somewhere else.

In this sense, the Park is different from most Seattle neighborhoods, and I’m certain that fact has shaped the character of our community. But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, for the first 70 or more years of Madison Park’s existence, it was actually a thoroughfare and access point for communities on the east side of the Lake. Kirkland, for example, was boosted in its early rise by the lifeline to Seattle provided by both passenger and vehicle ferries landing at Madison Park.

The above photo (click to enlarge) shows the dock as it looked in the first decade of the 1900s, one hundred years ago. At the dock is the ferry Lincoln, which was operated by the King County Ferry System. Madison Park itself initially developed as a link to the Eastside. The trail originally blazed by John McGilvra in the 1860s from downtown to his homestead here on the Lake (later Madison Street) became the primary route for settlers from communities across the water to get to Seattle to shop or to sell their produce and wares. As noted by local historian Alan J. Stein, many of the people who originally pioneered towns like Kirkland got their first glimpse of the Lake—and the possibilities beyond—from our beach. Madison Park thus became a vital commercial link, as well as a lakeside resort community.

Initially, the Madison Park dock was a steamer landing where several independent steamboat companies plied their trade. Our community grew up around the landing (which was next to McGilvra’s property) and eventually a trolley-car line was built on Madison to speed travelers on their trip to downtown. By the early 1900s, with the development of the eastside and the consequent increase in cross-lake traffic, King County decided to develop a vehicle-ferry system for Lake Washington. The ferry King County of Kent was the first of several King County ferries that operated until 1950 from the Madison Park dock at the foot of Madison. Another early ferry was the Washington (shown below), which handled the Kirkland-Madison Park run from 1908 through 1915.

This is the Madison Park ferry dock as it looked in the 1930s:

In coming months, I will be doing blog posts further exploring the history of the steamers and ferry boats operating from Madison Park, as well as an entry on the cable-car trolley line from the Park into downtown. History buffs stay tuned.

[Upper dock photo and photo of the Washington are courtesy of the Kirkland Heritage Society. Photo of the ferry dock in the 1930s is courtesy of the Museum of History & Industry, via the University of Washington on-line digital photo collection.]

Elephant causes pandemonium in the Park!

Well, it was exactly one hundred years ago today that it happened, but on May 28, 1909, a circus elephant named Queenie escaped from her handlers and ran amok in Madison Park for awhile before being recaptured. Queenie was one of the many animal attractions of a short-lived amusement park called White City located right here in Madison Park for several early years of the twentieth century.

As told by Alan J. Stein in an essay on HistoryLink.org, Queenie’s adventure started when a couple of little white dogs crept too close to her while she was being moved from her tent to another location in the park. The handler lost control, and the spooked Queenie gave chase to the dogs. As she rumbled through the park she managed to crash into the merry-go-round, breaking some of the wooden horses. Giving up on the dogs, which had broken to freedom by scampering under a fence, the pachyderm decided to take a break at the fruit stand, where she helped herself to a selection of apples and oranges. While she was munching away, she allowed a chain to be attached to her leg so that she could be tethered to the ground until her trainer arrived to lead her back to her assigned place.

The Seattle Times report of the incident has two women fainting as a result of the ruckus (this was apparently considered perfectly understandable female behavior in those days). It is lucky the two ladies did not stay around after their ordeal to witness a much more horrific event. Later that day, “a fox terrier owned by the manager of the animal menagerie wandered too close to a cage containing a Bengal tiger. In a flash, the feline reached through the bars, pulled the dog inside, and…” well, let’s just say that the poor terrier had a fate that was quite different from that of the two little white dogs that got away from Queenie.

Located south of Madison Street on the shore of the Lake, White City was a rather brief affair. It was apparently opened to take advantage of the crowds flocking to Seattle for the Alaska-Yukon Exhibition, which ran at the site of the University of Washington from June 1, 1909 until October 16, 1909. The Exhibition was Seattle’s first world’s fair and brought visitors from around the globe.

Admission to White City was ten cents; and in addition to its merry-go-round, the park boasted a Ferris wheel, side shows, and a miniature train ride for children and adults called the Lake Shore Railway. Some of the attractions were apparently brought over from the site of the Alaska-Yukon Exhibition after the fair closed.

White City appears to have lasted as a summer attraction only until 1912, when the park’s owners, the Borderland White City Co., finally called it quits. Queenie’s later career is not chronicled.

[Picture of Queenie pushing a White City concession building on rollers is from the Seattle Times May 30, 1909, courtesy of HistoryLink.org. The White City postcard courtesy of Jim Abbate.]