In the early 1900s in Seattle, apartments were built along trolley routes to close-in neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill. Wedgwood was a remote neighborhood which didn’t begin to form an identity until the 1940s and was never served by a streetcar system. Up until 1948, Wedgwood had no apartment buildings and was still known as a semi-rural area of single-family homes where most people drove cars to work.
Albert Balch 1903-1976
Albert Balch started building his original plat of Wedgwood houses in the early 1940s but the development grew slowly due to wartime restrictions on materials. Once World War Two ended in 1945, there still was a struggle to get sufficient building supplies for new houses, but the post-war construction boom had begun.
After the war, floods of returning servicemen wanted to get married, have their own homes and start families. The Wedgwood neighborhood became synonymous with family living as the small but well-built Wedgwood houses beckoned to young married couples. Continue reading
Wedgwood in Seattle History 