Category Archives: businesses

One Hundred Years in the Wedgwood Business District

The year 2022 marked one hundred years since the first store opened in what is now defined as the Wedgwood neighborhood, between NE 75th to 95th Streets in northeast Seattle. The north-south arterial 35th Ave NE is the central core of Wedgwood … Continue reading

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Names in the Neighborhood: Bryant

In northeast Seattle most of the neighborhood names are those of real estate developments such as Wedgwood, which originally was only a plat name. The builder of the Wedgwood group of houses, Albert Balch, did not deliberately set out to … Continue reading

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Aretha Curtis and Maple Leaf Gardens

In the years 1915 to 1945 the lives of Americans were bracketed by two world wars with an economic depression in the middle. For a few years in the 1920s, after the First World War and before the stock market … Continue reading

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Old-Time Stores and Gas Stations on Sand Point Way NE

Establishment of the Naval Air Station on the shore of Lake Washington in 1927 was the catalyst for street improvements and commercial development along Sand Point Way NE.  The City of Seattle officially named Sand Point Way and coordinated with … Continue reading

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Sand Point Way NE: Stores and Stations at NE 97th Street

The establishment of the Naval Air Station at Sand Point in the 1920s caused Sand Point Way NE to become an arterial street.  Even though the naval base grew slowly at first, its presence caused northeast Seattle to hope for … Continue reading

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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

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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

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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

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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

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The Business District of Wedgwood, Then and Now

Those of us who grew up in the Wedgwood neighborhood of northeast Seattle tend to be nostalgic about businesses and buildings of bygone years.  Some types of businesses which once were in Wedgwood, such as Dairy Queen, 7-Eleven stores and … Continue reading

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