Take a Walk Through Wedgwood History with me, Valarie, on any/all Saturdays in September 2015. We will meet under the Safeway sign, 35th Ave NE at the corner of NE 75th Street at 10 AM. We will look at the buildings we have in Wedgwood today and how Wedgwood got that way, during the post-World-War Two building boom. Prior to the war’s end in 1945, there were no apartment buildings in Wedgwood and there still were many people who kept chickens and cows. Today all the vacant spaces in Wedgwood are filled up and the neighborhood is beginning to experience the pressures of urbanization.
A 1953 view of NE 81st Street in the original Wedgwood emphasized its natural setting in tall trees. Photo by Werner Lenggenhager in the Seattle Public Library Historic Photos Collection.
Wedgwood began to grow very rapidly after the end of World War Two in 1945. With the end of the war came large numbers of returning servicemen who married and began looking for a place where they could have a house and raise a family. As of 1945, while other parts of Seattle were already built up, in Wedgwood there were vast tracts of heavily treed, vacant land still available. The post-war pressure for housing led to the creation of the Wedgwood neighborhood which is still in evidence today, with single-family homes on either side of a linear commercial district along 35th Ave NE.
Wedgwood in Seattle History 