The Wedding Plan - By Dick Wagner
The first step in the Transportation grant project is to document and identify the unique history and stories of Lake Union that could be shared through exhibits and interpretative activities.
The founder of The Center from Wooden Boats, Dick Wagner, is documenting many of the compiling stories and the history of Lake Union, from his unique perspective of living and working on Lake Union for over three decades. These narratives are in draft form, and should be considered a work in progress. We welcome any thoughts, comments or stories you may have.
The Wedding Plan
Some cities reach a level of development and never change. Venice looks the same today as it did 500 years ago. The newest building in Venice’s Piazza de Marco was completed in 1492. Seattle, however, has never stopped changing since the first huddle of log cabins in 1851. In the 1890’s R.H. Thompson, Seattle’s first city engineer put together the foundation of growth from a pioneer settlement to a cosmopolitan city. Thompson flattened some of Seattle’s precipitous hills, installed a water and sewer system for a population of 400,000, a road system and purchased thousand of acres for parks and playgrounds.
This was the frame for a city beautiful. Seattle brought in the esthetic experts to create the scene. In 1903 the Olmstead Brothers, Landscape Architects who had designed Central park in New York, New York, were hired to make over New York, Washington. The Olmsteads gave Seattle high grades for its outstanding natural vistas and convoluted geography that enhanced its neighborhood character by their geographical borders. The Olmstead plan made our major parks works of art with views of mountains, saltwater and fresh water, including the State University campus. They designed pathways to link the open spaces.
In 1906 Virgil Bogue, Seattle’s Municipal Planning Director, submitted a proposal to give Lake Union a special identity. All the street cars, ferries, railroads, and shops could have a common terminal at the South end of Lake Union. It would become the transportation hub of Seattle. South Lake Union would become Seattle’s new downtown.
The design was classic renaissance in layout, architecture, materials and details. South Lake Union in the 1850’s and 60’s was heavily forested. Its principal occupants were deer, bears, and mountain lions. By 1883 this area, once part of David Denny’s claim, was annexed to the city. Soon thereafter it became the Cascade neighborhood. By 1900 there were restaurants, groceries, boarding houses, laundries, single family residences, churches, a bowling alley, a brewery, a baseball field, and a kindergarten. It was a workers neighborhood. The famous labor leader, Dave Beck, grew up in Cascade. His first job was in a Cascade laundry. The taxpayers of Seattle rejected Bogues proposal, by ballot, in 1912. No wonder. One hundred years later, Virgil Bogue is smiling in his grave!
The Gas Works was another monumental proposal. In 1905 a plan was presented to build a coal gas factory on Lake Union. This sounded a lot more realistic and public benefiting than the Bogue scheme, and the city accepted. The Gas Works was built on the wide, gently sloping gravel spit at the north end. Prior to the gas plant, it was a place where deer came at dusk, to drink from the lake. Coal from the mines in the south end of Lake Washington was brought by tug and barge to the Lakeshore and Eastern rail station at the village of Yesler on the east side of Webster Point. The coal was then hauled by train to the Gas Works. Huge burners transformed the coal into gas. Orange flames would periodically spurt from the chimneys. At night the flames punctuated the sky and were reflected across the lake. The gas manufacturing structures were riveted iron sheets, unpainted because the sheets were almost pure iron, with only surface orange rust.
The gas was used for home appliances and street lights. It served Seattle through 1956, when Seattle was connected to a natural gas line from Canada.
In 1968 Seattle decided to purchase the old gas plant and make it a park because of its fabulous 270 degree view of the lake and the downtown skyline. The city decided the designer would be Landscape Architect Rich Haag and the park be a memorial to the late Mrs. Harlan Edwards, who as City Council member was a staunch advocate for green spaces. Haag’s design memorialized the sites’ historic iron structures. The Edwards family were shocked and withdrew their support. The city took a look at the design, approved it and called it Gas Works Park. It opened in 1973. Even without its original wharf, the park immediately became connected to water transportation. It has the greatest view of infinite types of boats all day long and the premier place to be spectators of the Tuesday night Duck Dodge sailboat race from early May to early September.
While the citizens of Seattle looked in disfavor at the Lake Union plan by Bogue, they were thrilled with the idea of a Worlds’ Fair on the lakeside. It would be a destination for fun and education for every member of the community and be a venue to show off the city, state and northwest region as a great place to live or invest in. The site chosen was Olmsteads’ University of Washington campus on Portage Bay.
It would be called the Alaskan-Yukon Pacific Exposition. There would be displays of natural resources, industrial products and Pacific Rim cultures. Included in the plan was a shoji screened Tokyo Tea House and a village of Igorrate tribe members of the Philippine Islands. Another feature was a New York to Seattle automobile race. Seattle’s first motor car arrived in 1900. It was electric powered. The proud and lonely owner was Ralph Hopkins, shoe store proprietor. By 1907 there were 300 horseless carriages, electric, steam and gasoline powered in Seattle, and one filling station, at Holgate Ave and Alaskan Way.
The Expo was to open on June 1, 1909. The state would contribute a building to show Washington’s wonders. It was 1907 and the state was clueless where to get the funds, until some legislative genius said lets sell part of Lake Union!
The state had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s declare Lake Union navigable water, because native canoes criss-crossed it from time before history. That gave the Corps the right to determine the “harbor lines.” The space between the harbor line and the shore was appropriated by the state, who sold it for $10 per front foot of water. The great Seattle water grab. Legal or not, the state raised the money for the Expo and the investors decided to rent their submerged lots as houseboat moorages. They would be placeholders until future profitable opportunities would appear.
Lake Union quickly filled up with houseboats for workers in the industries around the lake. At the same time houseboats were being built in Lake Washington as wilderness get-aways for the new middle class citizens. All had elegant canoes, rowboats, sailboats or motorboats as accessories. The boat livery industry thrived in Lake Washington from Madison Park to Rainier Beach. Lake Union houseboats were blue collar. Lake Washington houseboats were high collar.
During prohibition houseboats were built in Portage Bay as entertainment centers. The law enforcement authorities allowed Portage Bay to be the tolerance zone for booze and brothels. There was 24 hour rowboat taxi service from the U.W. campus. Dan Dygert, a teenage entrepreneur used his inboard engine powered dory to get whiskey from a backwoods still in north Lake Washington. He would cover the bottles with bark he liberated from the log booms he passed on the way to Portage Bay. When he arrived at the floating sin city he was, ostensibly, selling bark to fuel the houseboats stoves.
Lake Union was thought of as a placeholder for whatever genius idea that seemed to boost the economic growth of the city. In 1910 Mayor Hiram Gill thought of blasting off Queen Ane hill to allow better topography for advancing our commercial area. After all, there was a technology of high pressure water to use. The hill could be washed into Lake Union and fill it to a convenient level for easy access to a centrally located industrial center. The plan was not adopted, Mayor or not.
In 1903 Ford introduced the production line to America at his factory in Detroit. Seattle’s Worlds Fair and the transcontinental auto race that concluded in Seattle may have encouraged Ford to build an assembly plant in Seattle in 1913 at the northern edge of the city – South Lake Union.
At peak production 143 Model T’s could be assembled at the brick and terra cotta factory on the corner of Fairview Ave and Valley Street the northeast corner of Cascade. The land must have been cheap because in 1913 there were no roads north of Valley Street.
The lake was already on the road to industrialization. As soon as the Ship Canal was completed it became a sawmill, shingle mill and boatbuilding center. The Steam Plant for electric power was built in 1914, on the eastside of the lake. It had seven generators powered by water from the reservoir in Volunteer Park. The water ran down an aqueduct during night time, when there was least demand for water. The generator power was switched to oil in 1916, when tankers could pass through the Locks. The original wharf for the tankers still exists. The Steam Plant has now become the research laboratory of Zymogenetics.
From the Olmstead plans to completion of the Locks, Seattle had its first feel-good, show it off period. Showing off is an understatement. The sluicing down of the hills, building the locks, and creating world class parks was a decade of cutting edge engineering and long range vision by a small sized, middle class city on the upper left hand corner of an unmapped wilderness. Seattle and Lake Union took on a new look and a new sense of potentials way beyond the founder’s dreams. It was like getting ready for a life changing event: a wedding plan.
In 1906 Virgil Bogue, Seattle’s Municipal Planning Director, submitted a proposal to give Lake Union a special identity. All the street cars, ferries, railroads, and shops could have a common terminal at the South end of Lake Union. It would become the transportation hub of Seattle. South Lake Union would become Seattle’s new downtown.
The design was classic renaissance in layout, architecture, materials and details. South Lake Union in the 1850’s and 60’s was heavily forested. Its principal occupants were deer, bears, and mountain lions. By 1883 this area, once part of David Denny’s claim, was annexed to the city. Soon thereafter it became the Cascade neighborhood. By 1900 there were restaurants, groceries, boarding houses, laundries, single family residences, churches, a bowling alley, a brewery, a baseball field, and a kindergarten. It was a workers neighborhood. The famous labor leader, Dave Beck, grew up in Cascade. His first job was in a Cascade laundry. The taxpayers of Seattle rejected Bogues proposal, by ballot, in 1912. No wonder. One hundred years later, Virgil Bogue is smiling in his grave!
The Gas Works was another monumental proposal. In 1905 a plan was presented to build a coal gas factory on Lake Union. This sounded a lot more realistic and public benefiting than the Bogue scheme, and the city accepted. The Gas Works was built on the wide, gently sloping gravel spit at the north end. Prior to the gas plant, it was a place where deer came at dusk, to drink from the lake. Coal from the mines in the south end of Lake Washington was brought by tug and barge to the Lakeshore and Eastern rail station at the village of Yesler on the east side of Webster Point. The coal was then hauled by train to the Gas Works. Huge burners transformed the coal into gas. Orange flames would periodically spurt from the chimneys. At night the flames punctuated the sky and were reflected across the lake. The gas manufacturing structures were riveted iron sheets, unpainted because the sheets were almost pure iron, with only surface orange rust.
The gas was used for home appliances and street lights. It served Seattle through 1956, when Seattle was connected to a natural gas line from Canada.
In 1968 Seattle decided to purchase the old gas plant and make it a park because of its fabulous 270 degree view of the lake and the downtown skyline. The city decided the designer would be Landscape Architect Rich Haag and the park be a memorial to the late Mrs. Harlan Edwards, who as City Council member was a staunch advocate for green spaces. Haag’s design memorialized the sites’ historic iron structures. The Edwards family were shocked and withdrew their support. The city took a look at the design, approved it and called it Gas Works Park. It opened in 1973. Even without its original wharf, the park immediately became connected to water transportation. It has the greatest view of infinite types of boats all day long and the premier place to be spectators of the Tuesday night Duck Dodge sailboat race from early May to early September.
While the citizens of Seattle looked in disfavor at the Lake Union plan by Bogue, they were thrilled with the idea of a Worlds’ Fair on the lakeside. It would be a destination for fun and education for every member of the community and be a venue to show off the city, state and northwest region as a great place to live or invest in. The site chosen was Olmsteads’ University of Washington campus on Portage Bay.
It would be called the Alaskan-Yukon Pacific Exposition. There would be displays of natural resources, industrial products and Pacific Rim cultures. Included in the plan was a shoji screened Tokyo Tea House and a village of Igorrate tribe members of the Philippine Islands. Another feature was a New York to Seattle automobile race. Seattle’s first motor car arrived in 1900. It was electric powered. The proud and lonely owner was Ralph Hopkins, shoe store proprietor. By 1907 there were 300 horseless carriages, electric, steam and gasoline powered in Seattle, and one filling station, at Holgate Ave and Alaskan Way.
The Expo was to open on June 1, 1909. The state would contribute a building to show Washington’s wonders. It was 1907 and the state was clueless where to get the funds, until some legislative genius said lets sell part of Lake Union!
The state had the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s declare Lake Union navigable water, because native canoes criss-crossed it from time before history. That gave the Corps the right to determine the “harbor lines.” The space between the harbor line and the shore was appropriated by the state, who sold it for $10 per front foot of water. The great Seattle water grab. Legal or not, the state raised the money for the Expo and the investors decided to rent their submerged lots as houseboat moorages. They would be placeholders until future profitable opportunities would appear.
Lake Union quickly filled up with houseboats for workers in the industries around the lake. At the same time houseboats were being built in Lake Washington as wilderness get-aways for the new middle class citizens. All had elegant canoes, rowboats, sailboats or motorboats as accessories. The boat livery industry thrived in Lake Washington from Madison Park to Rainier Beach. Lake Union houseboats were blue collar. Lake Washington houseboats were high collar.
During prohibition houseboats were built in Portage Bay as entertainment centers. The law enforcement authorities allowed Portage Bay to be the tolerance zone for booze and brothels. There was 24 hour rowboat taxi service from the U.W. campus. Dan Dygert, a teenage entrepreneur used his inboard engine powered dory to get whiskey from a backwoods still in north Lake Washington. He would cover the bottles with bark he liberated from the log booms he passed on the way to Portage Bay. When he arrived at the floating sin city he was, ostensibly, selling bark to fuel the houseboats stoves.
Lake Union was thought of as a placeholder for whatever genius idea that seemed to boost the economic growth of the city. In 1910 Mayor Hiram Gill thought of blasting off Queen Ane hill to allow better topography for advancing our commercial area. After all, there was a technology of high pressure water to use. The hill could be washed into Lake Union and fill it to a convenient level for easy access to a centrally located industrial center. The plan was not adopted, Mayor or not.
In 1903 Ford introduced the production line to America at his factory in Detroit. Seattle’s Worlds Fair and the transcontinental auto race that concluded in Seattle may have encouraged Ford to build an assembly plant in Seattle in 1913 at the northern edge of the city – South Lake Union.
At peak production 143 Model T’s could be assembled at the brick and terra cotta factory on the corner of Fairview Ave and Valley Street the northeast corner of Cascade. The land must have been cheap because in 1913 there were no roads north of Valley Street.
The lake was already on the road to industrialization. As soon as the Ship Canal was completed it became a sawmill, shingle mill and boatbuilding center. The Steam Plant for electric power was built in 1914, on the eastside of the lake. It had seven generators powered by water from the reservoir in Volunteer Park. The water ran down an aqueduct during night time, when there was least demand for water. The generator power was switched to oil in 1916, when tankers could pass through the Locks. The original wharf for the tankers still exists. The Steam Plant has now become the research laboratory of Zymogenetics.
From the Olmstead plans to completion of the Locks, Seattle had its first feel-good, show it off period. Showing off is an understatement. The sluicing down of the hills, building the locks, and creating world class parks was a decade of cutting edge engineering and long range vision by a small sized, middle class city on the upper left hand corner of an unmapped wilderness. Seattle and Lake Union took on a new look and a new sense of potentials way beyond the founder’s dreams. It was like getting ready for a life changing event: a wedding plan.