This street runs nearly 6 miles from the north end of the University Bridge in the south (at Eastlake Avenue NE and NE Campus Parkway) to Aurora Avenue N in the north, just shy of Seattle city limits at N 145th Street. It runs north–south for most of its length, but starting at NE 125th Street, its last 1½ miles cut a northwest–southeast diagonal across the street grid, making it Roosevelt Way N once it crosses 1st Avenue NE between N 133rd and N 135th Streets.
Originally 10th Avenue NE south of NE 125th Street, Roosevelt received its current name in 1933. According to local historian Feliks Banel, this was first proposed in 1927 by businesses in the Roosevelt district, itself having taken that name earlier in the decade in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt, who died in 1919. Nothing came of it for six years, but in 1933 they tried again and asked that 10th Avenue be renamed after both Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had been elected president the previous November. As Banel notes in his piece, The Seattle Times had this to say:
This change, we assume, must be pleasing to local Democrats of all sorts and shades. At the same time, due to the incidence of somewhat tenuous family ties, it cannot be at all displeasing to Republicans. The name of Roosevelt has high standing in both political parties, as indeed it has throughout the world. Even now it is quite certain that those who may traverse our Roosevelt Way in years to come will neither know nor particularly care whether it was named for Teddy or for Frank.
As for its diagonal stretch, it appears on old King County maps as M. Roy Sayles Road (County Road 2240), Golf Way, and State Highway 1J (predecessor of today’s SR 513). It ceased to be a state highway in 1991. As for when it, too, became Roosevelt Way, it’s difficult to tell as King County doesn’t have as good a system for looking up ordinances online as Seattle’s. It appears as Roosevelt Way on a 1966 map in local historian Rob Ketcherside’s maps album on Flickr, but as Golf Way in another one from 1947. As the area in question wasn’t annexed into Seattle until 1953, the name must have been changed by the county sometime between 1947 and 1953 in anticipation. (The 1933 Seattle ordinance is the only one on file relating to Roosevelt Way’s name, so this must have been a county change.)
As for M. Roy Sayles, The International Confectioner’s January 1915 issue reports that he, along with Annie B. Sayles, C.M. Sayles, and W.H. Rogers, founded the Rogers Candy Co. in Seattle in 1915; and Golf Way almost certainly comes from the road’s proximity to the public course at Jackson Park, which opened in 1928.
Born and raised in Seattle, Benjamin Donguk Lukoff had his interest in local history kindled at the age of six, when his father bought him settler granddaughter Sophie Frye Bass’s Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle at the gift shop of the Museum of History and Industry. He studied English, Russian, and linguistics at the University of Washington, and went on to earn his master’s in English linguistics from University College London. His book of rephotography, Seattle Then and Now, was published in 2010. An updated version came out in 2015.
I’ve lived in Pinehurst for years now and never understood why there are two separate streets named Roosevelt Way NE (the one that continues below 10th Ave NE, and the one that is part of the physical road called 125th/Roosevelt Way/130th). I’m sure it’s something to do with Seattle’s strange quirk of trying to fit street names to the grid even when that means one physical road has multiple names, and completely separate roads share a name.
See NE 125th St as an example, where the physical road continues as Roosevelt Way/130th but the name carries on on a separate street that happens to be at the same latitude in the grid. Though the division between the two parts of 125th will be less stark with the new roundabout at that intersection, you’ll still have a complete change in direction to continue on “Roosevelt” from “Roosevelt.”
It’s confusing to even write about. I don’t know how anyone gave directions around here before GPS.
It was definitely different before GPS! I grew up near 34th Avenue E in Washington Park and remember someone driving by once asking how to get to an address on 34th Avenue NE… which would have been at least 2½ miles to the north, across the Ship Canal. At least I think it was NE! If it had been NW they’d have been in even more trouble.
That said, I’m not sure I’d call it Seattle’s strange quirk. It’s really just another example of the Philadelphia grid system. Completely separate roads sharing a name doesn’t faze me. It took a while to get used to when I went to grad school in London!
One physical road having multiple names, though… I’m more with you there. Elliott Avenue to 15th Avenue to Holman Road really is one thoroughfare. Same with Westlake Avenue to Fremont Avenue (and in fact both used to be Lake Avenue). The Roosevelt situation made sense when it was one uninterrupted highway, but when the construction of I-5 caused the arterial to continue onto 130th instead of staying on Roosevelt, it really would have made sense to change the name of Roosevelt west of I-5.
Then again, I kind of like it, in a way, when formerly mighty thoroughfares end up as minor arterials, or regular old neighborhood streets. Besides Roosevelt (seen here at the corner of NE 133rd Street), I’m thinking of E Marginal Way S (at its southern end), Beacon Avenue S (also at its southern end), and Sand Point Way NE (at its northern end).
Thanks for your comment and I hope you keep reading!