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S Pearl Street

This street, which is nowhere longer than a couple of blocks long, begins at 54th Avenue S in the east, just west of Andrews Bay and Seward Park, and finishes up at Corson Avenue S in the west, just east of Interstate 5.

According to Lucile Saunders McDonald, writing in The Seattle Times on January 1, 1956, it is named for Pearl Josephine Hulbert Faurote (1883–1981), granddaughter of Joseph and Catherine (Henderson) Dunlap (of S Henderson Street). I listed her as the street’s namesake when I originally posted this article. However, S Pearl Street is quite a bit north of Dunlap’s Plat of Land on Lake Washington — about 2¼ miles from Henderson. The name appears to have originated in Hillman City Division № 8, filed in 1903. As of May 19, 2021, neither I nor Valarie Bunn nor Rob Ketcherside nor Matt McCauley — who first called my attention to the fact that McDonald’s assertion was unsourced — have been able to find a connection between the Hillmans and anyone named Pearl. Nor does there appear to be any particular connection between the Hillmans and the Dunlaps or Hulberts, other than their all being active in Seattle real estate.

It seems, then, that the origin of Pearl Street should be regarded as an open question.

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S Fontanelle Street

This fragmented street starts at Rainier Avenue S and travels two blocks west to 46th Avenue S. It makes its next appearance in Beacon Hill as a block-long street hanging off Military Road S, just east of Interstate 5. There are a few more blocks in South Park, from 5th to 2nd Avenues S, then half a block in West Seattle just west of California Avenue SW and a few final blocks from just east of Vashon Place SW to 47th Avenue SW at Lincoln Park. It is named for Fontanelle, Iowa, where Joseph and Catherine (Henderson) Dunlap (of S Henderson Street) lived before coming to Seattle in 1869.

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S Henderson Street

This street is named for Catherine Henderson (1822–1891), wife of Joseph Dunlap (1818–1893), who gives his name to Dunlap Elementary School and the Dunlap section of Rainier Valley. HistoryLink writes of the couple, who came to Seattle from Fontanelle, Iowa:

Joseph and Catherine (Henderson) Dunlap arrived in the Puget Sound region in September 1869, having traveled by covered wagon from Iowa. According to family legend, when they arrived in the Puget Sound region, they followed a road over Beacon Hill and sent their son George up a tree to view the land to the south and east. There he spotted a flat valley and Lake Washington. The Dunlaps decided to homestead in that valley, located to the south of the Van Asselt and Mapel families. They claimed 120 acres extending east toward Rainier Beach.

It appears to have been Lake Street in the original Dunlap’s Plat of Land on Lake Washington (1889) but was likely changed when Rainier Beach was annexed to Seattle in 1907.

Today, S Henderson Street begins at Seward Park Avenue S, just west of Be’er Sheva Park, and runs ¾ of a mile west to Carkeek Drive S. On the other side of Interstate 5 and the Duwamish River, it runs ⁹⁄₁₀ of a mile through South Park from just east of 14th Avenue S to just west of 2nd Avenue S, the portion over Highway 99/W Marginal Way S being a footbridge. Once in West Seattle, SW Henderson Street runs ⅔ of a mile from 8th Avenue SW, just west of Westcrest Park, to 21st Avenue SW, where the arterial turns into SW Barton Place, and is then a two-block residential street from 22nd Avenue SW to 25th Avenue SW, where it is blocked by the Westwood Village shopping mall. On the other side of the mall, it’s ⅘ of a mile from 28th Avenue SW to SW Barton Street at Fauntleroy Park, and then a final couple of blocks from 43rd Place SW to Fauntleroy Way SW, just north of Washington State Ferries’ Fauntleroy Terminal.

 

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W Bothwell Street

This Queen Anne street exists in three separate block-long segments: 8th to 9th Avenues W, 10th to 11th Avenues W, and 12th to 13th Avenues W. It was named by and for James Bothwell (1858–1945), as part of the Home Addition to Seattle, Washington Territory, in 1888. In 1903, the Lewis Publishing Company’s A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of the City of Seattle and County of King, Washington, Including Biographies of Many of Those Who Have Passed Away, wrote of Bothwell:

Among the representative business men of Seattle none are more deserving of representation in this volume than James Bothwell, who is now successfully engaged in the mortgage, loan, fire insurance business, and care of property and estates in that city.

Portrait of James Bothwell
Portrait of James Bothwell, from Men of the Pacific Coast, Containing Portraits and Biographies of the Professional, Financial and Business Men of California, Oregon and Washington, 1902-1903
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Holman Road NW

Holman Road NW runs 1³⁄₁₀ miles from 15th Avenue NW just north of NW 87th Street to the intersection of Greenwood Avenue N and N 105th Street. For its last couple of blocks, it is Holman Road N. Work began on the diagonal street, then known as Holman Road № 1, in 1926 and was completed in 1929. (Holman Road № 2 is today known as Westminster Way N in Shoreline.)

The road’s namesake was Axel Holman (1867–1962), who according to various obituaries was born in Sweden and arrived in Seattle in 1886. A real estate agent and builder in later life, he, according to the July 4, 1962, issue of the Ballard News-Tribune, “built the Sunset Highway [and] helped to build the Milwaukee railroad through the Cascades” as a construction engineer. The March 10, 1947, issue of The Seattle Times reports that “against considerable opposition, Holman was instrumental in obtaining construction of Holman Road No. 1 and No. 2, near the northwest edge of Seattle, and he still has the loving cup presented to him in 1929 by the Ballard Commercial Club in recognition of that service,” and the July 2, 1962, issue of the same paper adds that he “owned a mine in Dawson City during the Gold Rush and in 1897 assisted in plotting the town-site of Skagway. He also laid the first wagon roadbed from Skagway through White Pass to the goldfields.”

Axel Holman, from March 10, 1947, issue of The Seattle Times
Axel Holman, from March 10, 1947, issue of The Seattle Times
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NE Latimer Place

This semicircular street, about 750 feet long, begins at NE 41st Street just west of 51st Avenue NE, and rejoins 41st just west of 55th Avenue NE. According to articles the Laurelhurst Blog and Puget Sound Business Journal, it was named for Norval Hastings Latimer (1863–1923), who had been president of the Dexter Horton National Bank. It was created in 1935.

The house that was the subject of both articles, 5515 NE Latimer Place, was, according to county records, built in 1925, two years after Latimer’s death — perhaps he had intended to purchase it once it was completed but it was his family who ended up doing so? Or perhaps it was in fact built a few years earlier. At any rate, the Laurelhurst Blog says that “the Latimer Family… re-platted the grounds to be sold in the 1930’s, saving the 20,000+ square foot lot and carriage house for themselves.“ (The recent owner of the house quoted in the PSBJ as saying “Latimer named the street after himself and sub-divided the property” was incorrect, as this happened 12 years after his death.)

Norval Hastings Latimer, 1890. Photograph by Boyd and Braas.
Norval Hastings Latimer, 1890. Photograph by Boyd and Braas.
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Nicklas Place NE

This short street runs just over a tenth of a mile from 50th Avenue NE by St. Bridget Catholic Church in the northwest to NE 50th Street by Villa Academy in the southeast. It was established in 1913 as part of the Montlake Tracts addition by “Magdalena Nicklas, a widow.” Legal advertisements in The Seattle Republican newspaper in 1908 show her husband’s name to have been John Nicklas. Based on this article by Valarie Bunn, this FamilySearch page, this Find a Grave page, plus an item in the November 25, 1941, issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, saying that 20 years earlier “the first woman to homestead on Sand Point, Mrs. Magdalena Nicklas, eighty-two, dies at her home,” we can expand the Nicklases’ biographical information to be Magdalena Kummer, 1839–1921, and Johann “John” Nicklas, 1834–1908, who were farmers in what is now Přimda, Czech Republic, but was then Pfraumberg, Austria–Hungary. They came to the United States in 1867 and to Seattle in 1878, and their land claim covered the 160 acres between what is now NE 45th Street on the south, NE 55th Street on the north, 45th Avenue NE on the west and 55th Avenue NE on the east.

Map of land claims in what is now Laurelhurst, Seattle
Map of land claims in what is now Laurelhurst, from A History of Laurelhurst by Christine Barrett, published 1981.
Photograph of Joseph and Frances Nicklas, The Seattle Star, June 26, 1924
Joseph and Frances Nicklas featured in The Seattle Star, June 26, 1924. Joseph was the son of John and Magdalena, and was 17 when the family made their claim in 1878. The caption reads: “Just down the lane, over the stile,” you will find it — bowered in trees — the abode of peace and good-will, the “old homestead” of Joseph and Frances Nicklas. They settled there in ’78 — and there they are today, within the limits of a great city — happy and blessed with life’s greatest gift — serenity of soul. To them in their simple life is vouchsafed that which kings of the earth and their royal consorts would perhaps barter for, even unto the half of their kingdoms. But “kings of the earth” literally, indeed, are the homekeeping hearts at 50th and East 55th — Seattle, Washington. (That location is today where NE 55th Street, Ivanhoe Place NE, 50th Avenue NE, and NE Sand Point Way meet.)

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NW Elford Drive

This narrow street, which begins at 8th Avenue NW, snakes ⅔ of a mile west through a hilly, forested tract overlooking Puget Sound just north of Broadview Creek. It was established in 1940 as part of the Elford Park addition by Albert Sydney Elford (1867–1956) and his wife, Mae Caniff Elford (1877–1968), both originally from Ontario, Canada.

In Seattle and Environs, 1852–1924, by Cornelius Holgate Hanford, Albert S. Elford is described as “among the foremost representatives of insurance interests in the west,” having been transferred to Seattle in 1911 by the New York Life Insurance Company. He was also a director of the Dexter Horton National Bank; vice president, treasurer and a director of the Best Universal Lock Company; and a member of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, the Rainier Club, the Seattle Golf Club, the Rainier Golf and Country Club, the Elks, the Odd Fellows, and the Masons.

Unfortunately, Elford Park was among the far too many Seattle subdivisions that were created with racial restrictive covenants:

Tracts or parcels of land in this plat shall be used or occupied only by members of the white or Caucasian race, excluding Semites, and no other persons shall be permitted to use or occupy said tracts or parcels, except employees may occupy the premises where their employer resides. 

Albert S. Elford
Albert S. Elford
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Lorentz Place N

This Queen Anne street runs a mere tenth of a mile north from McGraw Place alongside the Wolf Creek Ravine. As Michael Herschensohn, president of the Queen Anne Historical Society, writes, it was named in 1921 by and for builder John A. Lorentz (né Johan Amandus Lorentzson, 1879–1958), who came to the United States from Sweden in 1903.

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S Fairbanks Street

This street runs not quite 300 feet from Martin Luther King Jr. Way S in the east to 42nd Avenue S in the west, just south of S Henderson Street. Like nearby Valdez Avenue S and Yukon Avenue S, it was established in 1905 as part of Dunlap’s Supplemental to the City of Seattle, and, in keeping with the Alaska theme, was named after the city of Fairbanks, which had been founded just four years earlier. (Fairbanks itself was named after Indiana Senator Charles Warren Fairbanks [1897–1905], who was vice president under Theodore Roosevelt from 1905 to 1909.) 

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Yukon Avenue S

This very short street (375 feet long) in the Dunlap neighborhood runs from Spear Place S in the south to S Henderson Street in the north. Like Valdez Avenue S, which it intersects, it was established in 1905 as part of Dunlap’s Supplemental to the City of Seattle, and was named after the Yukon River, likely due to the recent Klondike Gold Rush (ended 1899).

Yukon Avenue S, incidentally, holds the distinction of being the at the very end of the list of Seattle streets taken in alphabetical order — hence the tagline for Streets of Seattle, a blog from 2012 that sadly never seems to have gotten off the ground: “Seattle street names, from Adams to Yukon.”

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Valdez Avenue S

This short street (just ⅛ of a mile long) connects Martin Luther King Jr. Way S to Yukon Avenue S in Seattle’s Dunlap neighborhood. Established in 1905 as part of Dunlap’s Supplemental to the City of Seattle, it was named after Valdez, Alaska, which was itself named after Spanish naval officer Antonio Valdés y Fernández Bazán. (Other streets in the plat include the above-mentioned Yukon Avenue as well as Tanana Drive, Fairbanks Drive, and Rampart Drive. Tanana Drive is now part of S Henderson Street; Fairbanks Drive is now S Fairbanks Street; and Rampart Drive is now part of S Director Street.)

I haven’t been able to find a specific connection the Hulbert or Dunlap families might have with Alaska, but 1905 was just six years after the Klondike Gold Rush ended, and just four years before the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition. Seattle’s population went from 42,837 in 1890 to 80,671 in 1900 — an increase of 88% — and much of this was due to its central role in the gold rush as “the premier supply centre and the departure point for the gold fields.”

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Boyer Avenue E

This street, which runs just over 1⅓ miles from Lake Washington Boulevard E northwest to Fuhrman Avenue E, was established in 1905 as part of Interlaken, an Addition to the City of Seattle, platted by the Interlaken Land Company, whose president was John E. Boyer (1866–1961).

Advertisement for Interlaken in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 30, 1906
Advertisement for Interlaken in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 30, 1906
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California Avenue SW

This West Seattle street was established in 1888 as part of the First Plat of West Seattle by the West Seattle Land and Improvement Company. As “most of [its] capital came from San Francisco,” I would assume that is why California Avenue was given its name.

California Avenue SW — a major West Seattle arterial connecting the Admiral, Alaska, and Morgan Junctions (three commercial hubs named after long-gone streetcar line intersections) — runs 4½ miles from California Lane SW in the north, past which it turns into California Way SW on its way down the hill to the waterfront, to SW Sullivan Street in the south. Beyond there it exists as a few short segments, then briefly as part of the SW Brace Point Drive–SW Barton Street arterial, and lastly as a nearly mile-long residential street that ends at Marine View Drive SW.

Sign at corner of SW Donald Street and California Avenue SW, July 4, 2011
Sign at corner of SW Donald Street and California Avenue SW, July 4, 2011. Photograph by Benjamin Lukoff. Copyright © 2011 Benjamin Lukoff. All rights reserved.
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S King Street

King Street is another of the first streets platted in Seattle by David Swinson “Doc” Maynard in May 1853. It was named after William Rufus DeVane King, a slaveholding Unionist Democratic politician who founded and named Selma, Alabama; was a senator from Alabama from 1819 to 1844 and from 1848 to 1852 (he was ambassador to France in the interim); and was vice president under Franklin Pierce for 45 days in 1853 (he died two days after he returned to the U.S. from Cuba, where he had been convalescing from tuberculosis; King Street was named in his honor 35 days after that).

King County, of which Seattle is the county seat, was named after him in 1852, though it was “renamed” after Martin Luther King, Jr., in 2005. No such action has yet been proposed for King Street.

King Street Station, Seattle
King Street Station. Photograph by Steven Pavlov, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

S King Street begins on the Elliott Bay waterfront at Alaskan Way S and runs ¼ of a mile to King Street Station just past 2nd Avenue S. It resumes at at 5th Avenue S, where it is spanned by the Historic Chinatown Gate, then makes it a full mile to 20th Avenue S, passing through Chinatown and Little Saigon along the way. East of there it exists in various segments, none of which is longer than ⅓ of a mile, and it finally ends at Lakeside Avenue S, where it is one of the String of Pearls shoreline street ends.

Historic Chinatown Gate, S King Street and 5th Avenue S
Historic Chinatown Gate. Photograph by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
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S Jackson Street

Jackson Street was another one of the first streets platted in Seattle by David Swinson “Doc” Maynard in May 1853. It, like King, Lane, and Weller Streets, was named after a prominent Democratic politician — in this case Andrew Jackson, president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Because of his history as a slaveholder and a proponent of Indian removal, there have been calls to at least symbolically change the street’s namesake to another Jackson, if not change the name outright.

S Jackson Street begins today at Alaskan Way S on the Elliott Bay waterfront and has an uninterrupted 2-mile run as an arterial to 31st Avenue S in Leschi. On the other side of Frink Park, it makes its way the few remaining blocks to Lake Washington as a minor arterial, then a staircase, then a minor street, and finally a shoreline street end, part of the String of Pearls.

Bilingual (Japanese and English) street sign at corner of 6th Avenue S and S Jackson Street
Bilingual (Japanese and English) street sign at corner of 6th Avenue S and S Jackson Street. Photograph by Stephen Fesler, The Urbanist, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
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S Weller Street

Weller Street was among the first streets platted in Seattle by David Swinson “Doc” Maynard in May 1853. It was named after John B. Weller, Democratic senator from California from 1852 to 1857 (Maynard named four streets in his plat after prominent Democratic politicians). Though he wasn’t a slaveowner like President Andrew Jackson or Vice President William R. King, or a future secessionist like Joseph Lane, who was the Southern Democrats’ nominee for vice president in 1860, he was a pro-slavery “Lecompton Democrat” who planned to have California become independent in case of civil war.

S Weller Street begins today at 5th Avenue S and runs ¼ of a mile through the Chinatown–International District to just east of 8th Avenue S, where it, like S Lane Street, is blocked by Interstate 5. It resumes at 10th Avenue S and runs ¾ of a mile to its end at 20th Place S and Washington Middle School.

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Maynard Avenue S

Maynard Avenue S, which was 8th Street in David Swinson “Doc” Maynard’s first plat of Seattle in May 1853, was given its current name as part of the 1895 Great Renaming. It begins today at S Main Street* and goes about ⅖ of a mile south to Airport Way S just past S Charles Street. There is another block-long segment in the Industrial District and then one of 2½ blocks in Georgetown. Maynard is generally credited with naming the town of Seattle, after his friend siʔaɫ, or Chief Seattle, and he was its “first physician, merchant, Indian agent, and justice of the peace.”

* As a card-carrying address nerd, I feel compelled to mention that the driveway for the Nippon Kan Theatre/Kobe Park Building at the dead end of S Washington Street is, technically, the northernmost segment of Maynard Avenue S, at least for its first hundred feet.

David Swinson Maynard, ca 1868, photographer unknown
David Swinson Maynard, ca 1868, photographer unknown

Maynard — unlike Republican Arthur Armstrong Denny, who platted the tract to the north — was a Democrat, and named a number of streets in his plat after prominent Democratic politicians, including the slaveholders President Andrew Jackson and Vice President William Rufus DeVane King; Oregon Territorial Governor Joseph Lane, who went on to be the pro-slavery Southern Democratic candidate for vice president in 1860; and pro-slavery California Senator John B. Weller. I haven’t seen much online about Maynard’s personal racial views, but he was known to have had good relations (given the era) with the local Native Americans, at least. Junius Rochester writes for HistoryLink:

Perhaps one of Doc Maynard’s most enduring qualities, besides his amiability, was his high regard for the local Indians. Chief Seattle was a particular friend, having stated: “My heart is very good toward Dr. Maynard.” Maynard, who knew tribulations in his own life, understood that besides the tools, medicines, guns, and other wonders that the white men had brought to Puget Sound, they also introduced disease, intolerant religions, and the inhospitable idea of private property.

But, as Clay Eals notes,

There can be no avoiding his privileged promotion of white settlers at Native Americans’ expense. “They will fight,” he writes on Nov. 4, 1855. “There is no reason why they (sho)uld not, but we must conquer them.”

One hopes that, if Maynard were alive today, he would choose worthier men (and women) to honor than Jackson, King, Lane, and Weller.

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S Lane Street

Lane Street was another one of Seattle’s first streets, platted on May 23, 1853 by David Swinson “Doc” Maynard. It was named after Joseph Lane, governor of Oregon Territory (which then included what is now Washington) from March 1849 to June 1850. Ten years later, he was the pro-slavery, pro-secession Southern Democratic nominee for vice president, with John C. Breckenridge at the head of the ticket.

S Lane Street begins today at 6th Avenue S just east of the flagship Uwajimaya grocery store, and runs ⅕ of a mile through the Chinatown–International District to just east of 8th Avenue S, where it is blocked by Interstate 5. East of there, it is a path and stairway from 10th to 13th Avenues S, past which it appears in segments of varying lengths until it ends for good at Lakeside Avenue S.

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S Washington Street

Washington Street was one of Seattle’s first streets, platted on May 23, 1853 by David Swinson “Doc” Maynard and named after President George Washington. Its initial segment begins at Alaskan Way S on the Elliott Bay waterfront and ends half a mile to the east at Kobe Terrace Park. East of Interstate 5 it exists in a number of segments interrupted by schools and parks and finally ends at S Frink Place and Frink Park.

Washington Street Boat Landing, September 2007, by Joe Mabel
Washington Street Public Boat Landing, September 2007. Photograph by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported