Category Archives: Neighborhood features
The Stairways of Wedgwood
The City of Seattle’s geological formation looks as though a glacial hand pressed into the land like cookie dough. There are valleys across Seattle and north-south-running ridges as though the dough oozed up between the fingers of the hand. For … Continue reading
Along the Road: the Evolution of 35th Ave NE
From early years Wedgwood in northeast Seattle was a car-centric neighborhood because of the lack of other transportation options. Streetcar lines never reached Wedgwood, and there was no city bus service because the neighborhood was outside of the Seattle City … Continue reading
Annexed Cities
One of the most common questions I receive on my blog is about the Seattle City Limits and on what date different areas came into the city. Some neighborhoods of Seattle such as Ballard and Ravenna started out as separate … Continue reading
Life and Legacy in Wedgwood in the 1930s: the Hentschell Family
The Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle was never reached by a streetcar system, and the area remained outside of the City Limits until the 1940s-1950s. Up until after the end of World War Two in 1945, the (future) Wedgwood area … Continue reading
Binek’s Electric Bakery, a Beloved Business in Wedgwood in the 1950s
During the World War Two years of the 1940s the population of Seattle swelled with military and with civilian workers. People left other states in the USA to come to Seattle and get jobs in wartime industries such as Boeing … Continue reading
Before There Was a Wedgwood Safeway: From Rural to Urban
The area around the NE 75th Street intersection in Wedgwood never had an organized scheme of development. As a result, people who came to live there in the 1920s saw startling changes over the years in everything from road grading … Continue reading
Before There Was a Wedgwood Safeway: the Plat of Public Lands
Today’s Wedgwood neighborhood is defined as extending from NE 75th to 95th Streets along the central arterial of 35th Ave NE. These “boundaries” are arbitrary but were suggested by the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods in the 1980s to … Continue reading
House-Moving from Shearwater in Wedgwood
In January 1972 a very unusual house-moving event took place in the Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle. Twelve small houses (600 square feet each) were moved from 40th Ave NE near Decatur School, to 7320 35th Ave NE in the … Continue reading
House-Moving from Dahl Field in Wedgwood
In the 1940s and 1950s the Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle began to take on its identity. The Wedgwood name gradually came into popular use when local businesses began using it, and it was solidified by the choosing of the … Continue reading
The Busy Growing Years of Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Seattle
Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church has a storied history as one of the oldest congregations in the Wedgwood neighborhood of Seattle, second only to Wedgwood Presbyterian Church. A Catholic parish called St. Ignatius began in the neighborhood in … Continue reading
