All of Wedgwood didn’t come within the Seattle City limits until 1954, and up until that time the neighborhood retained its rural character. Wedgwood was thinly populated and there were many vacant lots whose owners were holding land as an investment. Many of the pre-1940 houses in Wedgwood had a lot of space around them with large yards, and undeveloped areas nearby.
Unlike densely populated neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill, there were no apartment buildings in Wedgwood prior to 1948 and no commercial intersections with a lot of stores.
In the 1920s and 1930s in Wedgwood there were only a few isolated mom-and-pop stores along 35th Ave NE, such as the Jacklin’s near the corner of NE 75th Street, Shauer’s at NE 85th, the Morningside Market at 9118 35th Ave NE and Faulds Corner at the intersection of NE 95th Street. From early days Wedgwood was not a “walking” neighborhood, and even in the 1920s it was common for people to drive to market areas in Ravenna, Roosevelt or Green Lake.
What is a house supposed to look like?
There were not any developers who built whole sections of houses in Wedgwood in a particular style until Balch’s first Wedgwood plat in 1941. What came to be known as a “Balch house” set the precedent for decades to come of what type of houses were usual and expected in Wedgwood.
The concepts of traditional house styles (such as a pitched roof) and having a lot of space around houses (a big yard) is embedded in Wedgwood thought, so that today Wedgwoodians struggle to accept styles which don’t fit in with their ideas about compatible neighborhood house forms.
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Wedgwood in Seattle History 