Center for Urban Horticulture at 3501 NE 41st Street, Seattle
The spectacular sunshine on Sunday, April 15, 2012, added to the joy of the celebration of the life of Frank Brancato, a Wedgwood resident who died in September 2011, just after his 96th birthday.
Friends and family gathered at the Center for Urban Horticulture for Frank Brancato’s memorial service.
During their retirement years Frank and Dorothy Brancato founded the Wedgwood Community Council.
On October 19, 2013, friends and family gathered to celebrate the life of Dorothy Brancato who resided in the Wedgwood neighborhood for more than fifty years. Dorothy gave gifts of unique investment in the lives of all those she touched. She was an artist, seamstress, department store display specialist, gardening enthusiast, wife, mother, church member, community activist and encourager.
During their retirement years Dorothy and her husband Frank never slowed down. They founded the Wedgwood Community Council in March 1987, one of the first community councils to be formed under the then-new Department of Neighborhoods, City of Seattle.
The Wedgwood business district hosts trick or treat for Halloween. Cartoon by Bob Cram, September 1994 Wedgwood Community Newsletter.
When World War Two ended in 1945 the generation of young adults who had grown up during the war was eager to leave behind the deprivations and hardships of those years. Most especially the young men who returned from war service wanted to marry and settle into civilian life. The post-war “boom” in the number of newlyweds soon resulted in a soaring birth rate known as the Baby Boom which lasted from 1946 to 1964.
In the post-war period the Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle became very much characterized by young couples, and many of the 1950s activities of the Wedgwood Community Club were geared to families with children.
Hunter Tree Farm pumpkin sales are open on October weekends.
The Wedgwood neighborhood in northeast Seattle has several claims to fame. It is the birthplace of the Burke-Gilman Trail and is one of the most tree-conscious neighborhoods of Seattle (see category on this blog: trees.)
A unique space in Wedgwood, called The Gathering Place, is the Hunter Tree Farm at 7744 35th Ave NE. With permission of the Hunter family, the space is used year-round for fresh-market sales stands such as berries, and for community activities.
While we wait in anticipation for the annual Christmas-tree sales to begin at Hunter’s on the day after Thanksgiving, on weekends in October 2013 the Hunter family brought pumpkins to Wedgwood.
In years subsequent to 2013, the pumpkin sales have often been sponsored by the local Scouts troop as a fundraiser for their outdoor program of hiking and camping.
Valarie says: Photographer Joe Sweeney highlights the wonders of the bird world. We are delighted that his chipping sparrow photo is featured in Connie Sidle’s new book about the Montlake Fill at the Union Bay Natural Area.
This week’s photo, taken June 1, 2013 at the Union Bay Natural Area (Montlake Fill) in Seattle, WA, features a CHIPPING SPARROW.
On the first day of June of this year, I enjoy a very productive morning of birding at the Fill. I find two new species for the year: a pair of REDHEADS and a YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD. I also get great looks at a RED CROSSBILL, a bird I never grow tired of seeing. Toward the end of my walk, I photograph a CHIPPING SPARROW, just before it disappears into the brush. Afterwards, I give little thought to that sparrow, because I used to see plenty of Chipping Sparrows when I lived in San Diego. So, I’m quite surprised the next day when I learn that a Chipping Sparrow hadn’t been reported at the Montlake Fill in nearly two years.
Connie Sidles has birded the Fill since 1986. She surveys the…
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The entrance to Meadowbrook Pond is on 35th Ave NE at about NE 107th Street, marked by these large rocks at the sidewalk.
Meadowbrook Pond is located east of 35th Ave NE at about NE 107th Street, its entrance framed by the flame ash street trees which line the arterial. The pond is part of a low-lying flat area called the Confluence because the North and South Branches of Thornton Creek combine here.
The Thornton Creek system flows from Shoreline and northeast Seattle through eighteen miles of tributaries, in two major branches which converge at the Confluence at Meadowbrook Pond.
At the Confluence there is high groundwater and periodic flooding. For that reason, Meadowbrook Pond was created in 1996 for flood management and for filtering sediments in the water.
Flowing out of Meadowbrook Pond, the water continues to Matthews Beach and into Lake Washington. Sediments, if carried downstream, would silt up the outlet of the creek at Matthews Beach and then the water would back up and cause flooding. Filtering sediments out of the water at Meadowbrook Pond helps prevent flooding downstream.
The entrance to the Inverness neighborhood is at about NE 87th Street off of Sand Point Way NE.
The Inverness neighborhood is located in northeast Seattle between NE 85th to 90th Streets, 45th Ave NE to Sand Point Way NE. Inverness is on a very steep hillside which had no houses or any kind of development until 1954. During that post-World-War-Two time period, there was a boom in housebuilding in yet-undeveloped areas of northeast Seattle. Despite the difficulties of the steep slope, in that time a developer started building the Inverness houses.
Inverness is just next door/east of the Wedgwood neighborhood, adjoining at 45th Ave NE, and Inverness is north of the Sand Point Country Club & Golf Course. But there is no way to get directly from Wedgwood to Inverness because of the sharp drop-off of the terrain east of 45th Ave NE.
The Sand Point Country Club and Golf Course in northeast Seattle sits on a high northeast-facing bluff with a view out over Lake Washington and to the mountains beyond. The golf course opened on July 4, 1927, and took its name as a reference to the nearby Naval Air Station which was already under development in that decade.
Samuel E. Hayes, the founder of the golf course, must have hoped to capitalize on the prestige of the military presence and the anticipation of more people coming to live in northeast Seattle near the naval base on Sand Point Way NE. It was also in that year of 1927 that Sand Point Way NE was officially named, and legislation was initiated to pave the road.
The golf course at the Sand Point Country Club sits on a high bluff and has views to the northeast out over Lake Washington. Photo by Valarie.
Some of the neighborhood names in northeast Seattle started out as plat names, then gradually became the identifiers for whole areas. Wedgwood started as a plat name filed by developer Albert Balch in July 1941, from NE 80th to 85th Streets, 30th to 35th Avenues NE. This previously-undeveloped forty-acre tract became so well-known for its charming Cape Cod-style cottages that the name “Wedgwood” spread to become the identity of the whole neighborhood.
Hawthorne Hills was originally a plat name which now describes the northeast Seattle neighborhood around NE 55th Street at 40th Ave NE. At that intersection the Burke-Gilman Trail follows the line of a former railroad route and proceeds eastward toward Lake Washington.
Author’s note: text and photos in this article are protected under a Creative Commons Copyright.
Seattle Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad opening, 1887. Image 2002.3.936, Museum of History & Industry, photo by Asahel Curtis.
In the 1880s Seattleites were fed up with being snubbed by railroad corporations. The last straw was the Northern Pacific’s selection of Seattle’s rival city, Tacoma, as the western terminus of the NP’s cross-country line. Under the leadership of Judge Thomas Burke, Seattleites banded together to found their own railroad, the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern. The line would extend from downtown through north Seattle and along the shore of Lake Washington, stopping at lumber mills and brickyards along the way. The goal was to get to the coal fields at Gilman (Issaquah.)
Construction began in January 1887 and about forty miles of track were completed that year. Rails reached Bothell, just past the north end of Lake Washington, on Thanksgiving Day, 1887. Today the course of the old SLS&E railroad line is the Burke-Gilman Trail for walking and biking. At Bothell Landing (near Blyth Park) the Burke-Gilman continues as the Sammamish River Trail, all the way out to Marymoor Park in Redmond.
Wedgwood in Seattle History 