Blue Heron in Meadowbrook Pond. Photo by Valarie.

Meadowbrook began as the name for the golf course which opened in 1932 on the former Fischer Farm property, present site of Nathan Hale High School on NE 110th Street.

Gradually other entities, including real estate developers, adopted the Meadowbrook name.  Meadowbrook officially became the name of the neighborhood in the 1990s as designated by the City of Seattle atlas of neighborhoods.

Meadowbrook is set in a beautiful natural environment at The Confluence of the North and South Forks of Thornton Creek.  These streams converge at Meadowbrook Pond on the east side of 35th Ave NE at about NE 107th Street.

Meadowbrook Community Center at 10517 35th Ave NE

Today the center of the Meadowbrook neighborhood is on 35th Ave NE where there are features such as Thornton Creek, Meadowbrook Pond, and the Meadowbrook Community Center & Swimming Pool.

Nearby is Nathan Hale High School and Jane Addams Middle School on either side of NE 110th Street.  John Rogers Elementary School is five blocks to the east, at 4030 NE 109th Street.

Other activities in Meadowbrook include the Thornton Creek Alliance volunteer group, the Meadowbrook Garden & Orchard, and the Nathan Hale Horticulture and Urban Farm.   Meadowbrook has a lively community council which serves as a clearinghouse of information about the neighborhood and a forum for discussing concerns.

 NE 110th becomes a school street

In 1944 the Shoreline School District was formed, north of the Seattle City Limits which was at NE 85th Street at that time.  Shoreline bought property for the construction of new school buildings on the north side of NE 110th Street, from 31st to 34th Avenues NE.

The new Jane Addams Junior High School opened in September 1949, but it never gave its name to surrounding streets such as becoming the “Addams neighborhood.”  This might have been because the golf course with the Meadowbrook name was still open on the south side of NE 110th Street.  The golf course was open from 1932 until 1961 when the property was purchased to become the site of a high school.

Jane Addams Junior High School circa 1960 looking southward across NE 110th Street to the Meadowbrook Golf Course.

Seattle Public Schools began efforts in the 1950s to acquire the Meadowbrook Golf Course property for a new high school, and it was a long struggle because the golf course owners did not want to give it up.  Action was taken called “condemnation” which was a legal process to affirm that the property would serve to the benefit of the public, so the school district could buy it even from an unwilling seller.

Building a new high school

Nathan Hale High School at 10750 30th Ave NE in Meadowbrook was built in 1963 and is the last high school built in Seattle.

A new high school was to be built on the golf course site and members of the community thought that the school should be named Meadowbrook.

At first it seemed that there was a good possibility of a Meadowbrook High School.  Then the school district asserted rules about the naming of schools, that they should be named for presidents or for other figures in American history.  Thus, the name Nathan Hale, a hero of the American Revolution, was chosen for the high school which opened in September 1963.

The new high school was sited on NE 110th Street closest to the corner of 30th Ave NE.  Other portions of the property were used for parking lots and athletic fields.  Later developments of the site included a Seattle Parks Department community center building, and a swimming pool accessed from 35th Ave NE.

The school and the creek fight one another

The south branch of Thornton Creek runs parallel to the Nathan Hale High School building. Bridges link the student parking lot to the building.

From the beginning of the construction of Nathan Hale High School, there were environmental problems because they had not taken the Thornton Creek Watershed into account.

The South Branch tributary stream was “channelized” to run straight east-west parallel to the new school building, but this was inadequate for the large watershed with water coming in from several directions.  In the early years of Nathan Hale High School, after it opened in 1963, the athletic fields were soggy, and the tennis courts actually sank as they were filled with water.

Today the preservation of the Thornton Creek Watershed is one of the biggest features of Meadowbrook.  Neighborhood residents appreciate the vibrant natural environment.  Many residents are involved in Thornton Creek Alliance, an activist group seeking to preserve the health of the creek and raise awareness of ecology.

The Confluence and the creation of Meadowbrook Pond

Beginning in the 1990s a large detention pond was created to collect and filter water at The Confluence: Meadowbrook Pond.  Located on the east side of 35th Ave NE at about NE 107th Street, the pond is the site of the merging of Thornton Creek tributaries which flow southeast from here, out to Lake Washington at Matthews Beach.

Meadowbrook Pond on July 4, 2024, courtesy of Friends of Meadowbrook Pond.

What’s in a name?

Looking eastward on NE 110th Street we see the Meadowbrook Apartment building on the corner of 34th Ave NE. Photo by Valarie.

In the 1960s at the beginning of the process to build a new high school, neighborhood residents wrote to the School District saying that they were “tired of being described as living in that area “south of Lake City” or “north of Wedgwood.”  Because of the golf course, neighborhood residents had begun thinking of themselves as “in Meadowbrook.”

But the neighborhood efforts to have the school named Meadowbrook did not succeed, and it was not until the 1990s that Meadowbrook received an official identity as assigned by the City of Seattle.

In the 1990s the City of Seattle established a Department of Neighborhoods and involved Seattle residents in forming community councils. Then the name “Meadowbrook” began to come into greater use.  This name had somehow stuck with residents even though the original name source, the Meadowbrook Golf Course, had been gone since 1961.

Today the Meadowbrook Community Council is still going strong with lively, well-attended meetings and multiple activities.  At each meeting neighborhood activists report on projects such as the Meadowbrook Community Garden & Orchard, Meadowbrook Pond, the Tool Library, street & infrastructure issues, monitoring of the health of Thornton Creek, and events of local interest.

Meadowbrook Garden is on 30th Ave NE next to the entrance to the Nathan Hale student parking lot. Photo by Valarie.