Wilson’s Food Store in Wedgwood

Posted on June 1, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History

From 2012 to 2018 the building at 2415 NE 80th Street was the home of the NE Seattle Tool Library, an initiative of the NE Seattle Sustainable movement.  The Tool Library is a lending library for items which can be borrowed, saving money from having to buy seldom-used equipment such as a power-washer.  The NE Seattle Tool Library is also known for its classes and exchange of services, such as a Fix-It Night when people can bring household items and learn how to repair them.

In June 2018 the NE Seattle Tool Library moved to a larger space at the historic LaVilla Dairy building, located just east of Lake City Way NE at 10228 Fischer Place NE.

The little building at 2415 NE 80th Street started out as a neighborhood convenience store in 1946.  It was torn down in the summer of 2022 along with the adjacent North Seattle Friends Church at 7740 24th Ave NE, to build a new classroom building for University Preparatory Academy. For updates, see the photos at the end of this article.

Wilson's Grocery photo courtesy of Gerald Nielsen on Seattle Vintage

Wilson’s Grocery Store at 2415 NE 80th Street, photo courtesy of Gerald Nielsen. Continue reading →

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A New Cafe Coming to Wedgwood

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History

Good new businesses are always welcome in Wedgwood’s commercial district along 35th Avenue NE.  A Seattle company, the Grand Central Bakery, announced that they will open a Wedgwood cafe at 7501 35th Ave NE, in the former View Ridge Pharmacy space at the northwest corner of NE 75th Street.

Grand Central Bakery.construction as of October 9 2018

Grand Central Bakery and Cafe in-process, 7501 35th Ave NE, October 2018.

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From Ravenna to LaVilla: the NE Seattle Tool Library

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History
Tool Library new coordinators Chris and Mike.June 2016

Tool Library Coordinators

The NE Seattle Tool Library is a community-based nonprofit organization for sharing tools and knowledge of how-to-fix-it.  The Tool Library has been very successful in its mission and in June 2018 it moved from its original site, 2415 NE 80th Street, to 10228 Fischer Place NE in the historic LaVilla Dairy Building.  Membership fees, annual tool sales, fundraisers and a grant from the City have helped the Tool Library pay rent and utilities.

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Mylo Lindgren, Wedgwood Hero

Posted on April 28, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History

The early years of the Wedgwood Community Club in the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by the dedicated involvement of young couples who had developed leadership skills through the World War Two years of the 1940s.   Mylo Lindgren was just such a community activist: he served in the war, married and then spent more than fifty years as a Wedgwood resident and community leader.

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Gas Stations and the Maturing of the Business District in Wedgwood

Posted on April 18, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History

Photo by Greg Gilbert, Seattle Times newspaper, May 9, 1971.

A HistoryLink article by Greg Lange tells of the large-scale layoffs of employees at Boeing Aircraft which set off a recession in Seattle from 1967 to 1972.  The population of Seattle plummeted as people left town to find work elsewhere.  Two local real estate agents thought it would be funny to put up a billboard about the exodus, saying, “Will the Last Person Leaving Seattle – Turn Out the Lights.”

Besides Boeing employees, many other people such as restaurant workers lost their jobs when the population of Seattle decreased and small businesses could not sustain themselves.  In that time period the Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle had been established and growing for about 25 years and was beginning to show signs of the end of one era and the start of another.  We can see how the slowdown in the economy affected Wedgwood at the start of the 1970s, with fewer and fewer small, locally-owned stores, and the coming of more banks and larger chain stores.  Gas stations went out of business, too, because of higher operating costs and fewer customers.

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Wedgwood’s NE 95th Street Gas Station Intersection

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History

In the 1940s the intersection of 35th Avenue NE and NE 95th Street had gas stations on three corners, and a used-car lot as well.   This intersection on the northern boundary of the Wedgwood neighborhood was once called Morningside or sometimes Maple Leaf, in reference to the elementary school on NE 100th Street.

There has been a gas station at 9500 35th Ave NE since 1932.  The barber shop (red building) also dates from that year.

Up until the 1940s, the intersection of NE 95th Street had more “going on” than the intersection of NE 85th Street.  For a while there were gas stations on three of the four corners of NE 95th Street, some small stores and a barber shop at the northeast corner.

To the east of the intersection of 35th & 95th there was a small grocery & pharmacy.   West of the intersection, in mid-block on NE 95th Street Mrs. Curtis had her Maple Leaf Gardens floral business.

Gradually in the 1940s and 1950s, with the development of Albert Balch’s Wedgwood neighborhood centered at NE 85th Street, the residential population grew more there and businesses began to cluster around NE 85th.  That intersection ultimately became the heart of Wedgwood, while the intersection of NE 95th Street lacked further business development.  Over time there were fewer businesses at NE 95th Street, rather than more.

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Gas Stations and Intersections in Wedgwood

Posted on April 5, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History
NE 75th Street intersection.Photo by Christopher Priest of The Urbanist

Looking west along NE 75th Street from the intersection of 35th Avenue NE.  Photo by Christopher Priest of TheUrbanist.org

The Wedgwood neighborhood of northeast Seattle has a linear business district along the arterial 35th Avenue NE, with stores clustered at the major intersections of NE 75th, 85th and 95th Streets.  As the neighborhood began to take shape in the 1940s, there were one or more gas stations at each of these intersections.

Pictured at right, the Subway sandwich shop at the southwest corner of NE 75th Street & 35th Ave NE, was once the site of a gas station.

By the 1980s the number of gas stations in Wedgwood had declined sharply and they were replaced mostly by store buildings.

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Gas Stations and Open Space in Wedgwood: the Morningside Substation

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History

Even in the short history of the Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle, there are some sites which have had multiple different buildings and uses over time.  One such site is the northwest corner of NE 86th Street on 35th Ave NE.  This corner first took on an identity in 1949 when it became the Morningside Electrical Substation at the back portion of the lot farthest from 35th Ave NE.  Then from 1949 to 1968 at the front of the lot, there was the M & M Mobil gas station. From 1968 to 2013 a modular building brought onto the site, was used by businesses.  Today the space is vacant, awaiting development as a pocket park.

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Business Changes and Development Pressures in Northeast Seattle: Neighborhood Stores

Posted on March 1, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History
Wedgwood courtesy of HistoryLink

Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle. Map courtesy of HistoryLink.

The years following the end of World War Two in the 1940s saw the rise of new kinds of stores.  Some were big supermarkets which had a much wider variety of products than traditional corner grocery stores, and some were small convenience markets where the kind of products you might want to pick up quickly, such as a bottle of ketchup, were sold.

Different kinds of stores vied with one another in the post-war retail environment.  In 1946 a chain of stores owned by the Southland Corporation, changed their name to 7-Eleven to emphasize their longer hours of operation.

Wedgwood in northeast Seattle once had two 7-Eleven stores along the arterial 35th Ave NE, but there are no more now.  More changes are coming, as a former 7-Eleven building which became Wong’s restaurant, is proposed to be torn down and replaced by townhouses.

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Gas Stations and Growth in Northeast Seattle: Gray’s Service Station

Posted on February 22, 2018 by Wedgwood in Seattle History

From 1936 to 1940 King County, Washington, which includes the greater Seattle area, undertook a survey of all existing buildings, both houses and businesses.  The survey was 75% funded by the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) which helped provide jobs during the economic depression years of the 1930s.

The Puget Sound Regional Archives, repository of the property records of King County, is located on the campus of Bellevue College.

The property survey included photos which helped King County’s tax assessors assign a property tax value to buildings.  Today the collection of photos is kept in archival storage at the Puget Sound Regional Archives.

A current photo of a house or other building can be found on King County’s on-line Parcel Viewer.  To find your house, enter your address on the Parcel Viewer page and click through to Property Detail, then click on the “camera” icon.

When a building has been torn down and replaced, the old photo is kept with its previous records.  To write this article about a site in northeast Seattle which formerly had a gas station called Gray’s, I (Valarie) went to the Puget Sound Regional Archives to look at the old property photos of the corner of NE 65th Street.

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