This hummingbird photo along with more than a dozen other framed bird photos is part of an exhibit at Fuel Coffee in Montlake during the month of August 2015. The exhibit is entitled, “Where Nature Lives” by photographer and artist Larry Hubbell of the Union Bay Watch blog.
All of the photos are from western Washington and all but two are from around Union Bay near the Arboretum and near the University of Washington, Montlake and Laurelhurst neighborhoods of northeast Seattle.
Some of the commercial buildings in Wedgwood are very old and could be ripe for redevelopment.
What is the future of 35th Ave NE? This arterial corridor through the Wedgewood neighborhood of Seattle has businesses clustered mainly at the intersections of NE 75th and 85th Streets. As buildings at these intersections age and are replaced, we want to have a say in how new buildings look and what the commercial offerings will be. In a grass-roots process, the future of 35th Ave NE has been considered. The proposed zoning changes developed in this community process would require that in the future, new commercial buildings on 35th Ave NE must have a pedestrian-friendly street environment with storefronts at sidewalk level.
The Seattle unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park preserves the story of the 1897 stampede to the Yukon gold fields and Seattle’s crucial role in this event. On Friday, July 17, 2015, you can join in with activities to commemorate the Gold Rush.
The Theodora building, now called The Mod, is on 35th Ave NE at the southwest corner of NE 68th Street.
The (former) Theodora building is in northeast Seattle at 6559 35th Ave NE, at the southwest corner of NE 68th Street.
In 2016 the building went through a transition and remodeling to new use. The Theodora became a regular apartment building with a name change, now called The Mod.
The Theodora began in 1913 as a home for widows, mothers and children, on land donated by Marvin & Isabella Jones. In the early 1900s the Jones also made space for the Washington Childrens Home in the 3200 block of NE 65th Street.
The original Theodora home was in the same space as the present building, on 35th Ave NE. It was a three-story house where mothers and children could live together in their own room, and eat together at a table in the dining room. Childcare was provided so that mothers could find work.
The Theodora Home (present building) later became low-income housing for senior citizens, operated by the Volunteers of America. The Volunteers of America no longer operate housing in Seattle and they have consolidated their work in Snohomish County. Over several years’ time, the residents of the Theodora were helped to find other housing, and then the Theodora building was sold in 2015.
The history of the exploration of our Pacific Northwest region is built upon its landscape, including rivers, mountains, natural resources and the use patterns of traditional cultures. Two recently-released books tell stories of local history, fur traders, explorers, geology and the sites which have been preserved.
The Gold Rush of 1897 was an event which rocketed Seattle out of an economic depression because the city advertised itself as the launch point to the Yukon. Forever after, the economies of the City of Seattle and the North Country, including Alaska, have been linked.
Around Seattle’s neighborhoods there are old houses which embody the history of the city’s development and growth. In Seattle’s early years it seemed that carpenters were everywhere and today we can still see examples of carpenter-built wood-frame houses. The Pioneer Houses on Ballard Ave NW are an example of construction dating from the 1870s. To preserve the houses, in 1976 they were moved from their original downtown Seattle location, to Ballard Ave NW.
Walking along a sidewalk in the Wedgwood neighborhood one day, I saw what appeared to be a fancy front-yard mailbox… or was it a birdhouse? Upon closer examination I saw that the structure had a door with books visible inside. Over the book box door was a plaque which said, “Little Free Library.”
Fremont is easily reached from downtown Seattle by traveling along the west shore of Lake Union.
Fremont in Seattle was one of the city’s early neighborhoods with its own identity. It was founded as a land development, like a suburb, with the name of Fremont given because its investors came from Fremont, Nebraska.
In 1888 Edward and Carrie Blewett of Fremont, Nebraska, formed a business partnership with Seattle investors to develop the site.
The new Fremont was in a very advantageous location for water transportation and industrial use such as water-dependent lumber mills.
Because of the lack of roads between downtown Seattle to Fremont in 1888, people were mainly traveling across Lake Union by boat. The co-investors of Fremont intended to make it even more accessible from downtown Seattle via a streetcar line along the west side of Lake Union (Westlake Avenue).
In the Pacific Northwest, modern architecture has been described as Northwest Regionalism. From the 1930s to the 1970s the University of Washington in Seattle was the incubator of architects and a modernist movement. In their work these architects expressed the Pacific Northwest love of natural materials such as wood, and careful thought in the placement of a building to show its relationship to natural settings of trees and terraces.
Dr. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner
On Saturday, April 25, 2015, the downtown Seattle Public Library will host a lecture by University of Washington professor and architectural historian Dr. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner on the topic of regional modern architecture. Dr. Ochsner’s lecture will focus primarily on single-family residential buildings in Seattle and some small institutional buildings such as medical clinics, as buildings where Regional Modernism was most often expressed.
The downtown Seattle Public Library is located at 4th and Spring Streets.
Update:
Past architecture lectures by Dr. Ochsner are available in podcast from the website of the Seattle Public Library.
Wedgwood in Seattle History 