Mercer Street

This street is named for Thomas Dickerson Mercer (1813–1898), who came to Seattle in 1853 and homesteaded 160 acres in what is now Lower Queen Anne, living at what is now Roy Street and Taylor Avenue N. He became a King County commissioner and probate judge, and named Lake Washington and Lake Union, whose Lushootseed names are x̌ačuʔ and xáx̌əʔčuʔ (‘lake’ and its diminutive, respectively). Mercer Island is named for him, as are three of its main streets, W Mercer Way, N Mercer Way, and E Mercer Way. Mercer Slough in Bellevue is named for his brother Aaron (1826-1902), and his brother Asa (1839–1917) is known for being the first instructor at, and first president of, the Territorial University of Washington (being the only college graduate in Seattle in 1861); and for bringing the “Mercer Girls” to Seattle to address the settlement’s severe gender imbalance (thereby inspiring the 1960s TV show Here Come the Brides).

Thomas Mercer
Thomas Dickerson Mercer

Today, W Mercer Street begins at Elliott Avenue W and goes a block east to 6th Avenue W, where it becomes a stairway. At the top of the stairway, the street becomes a major arterial (connecting directly to Elliott via W Mercer Place) and goes 1⅔ miles east to Eastlake Avenue E and Lakeview Boulevard E, where it is blocked by Interstate 5. (It is, incidentally, laid out on the boundary between the donation land claims of Mercer and David Thomas Denny. Mercer’s claim is today bounded by Queen Anne Avenue N on the west, Lake Union on the east, Highland Drive on the north, and Mercer Street on the south.) Connecting Interbay, Lower Queen Anne, Seattle Center, State Route 99, South Lake Union, Interstate 5, and Capitol Hill, Mercer Street is a linchpin of Seattle’s transportation system — but not a beloved one, having earned the name “Mercer Mess” decades ago.

East of Interstate 5, E Mercer Street begins again at Melrose Avenue E and goes nearly 1½ miles to 28th Avenue E, interrupted only once, at 17th Avenue E, where it is pedestrian-only for half a block. Mercer resumes briefly at Dewey Place E but after a couple hundred feet becomes a stairway connecting to Lake Washington Boulevard E and 31st Avenue E. A block east of that, at 32nd Avenue E, E Mercer Street resumes as another stairway, and becomes a street again just west of 33rd Avenue E. This segment goes about ⅛ of a mile to 36th Avenue E. There is one final 200-foot-long segment of E Mercer Street east of 39th Avenue E. Platted into Lake Washington, this is a shoreline street end, but not, unfortunately, one open to the public. (It was this particular street end that first got me involved with Friends of Street Ends, as I grew up just ¼ of a mile up the hill.)

Street sign at corner of Lake Washington Boulevard E, 31st Avenue E, and E Mercer Street, October 11, 2009
Street sign at corner of Lake Washington Boulevard E, 31st Avenue E, and E Mercer Street. Both 31st and Mercer are pathways leading to stairways here, as noted by the🚶 icon. Photograph by Benjamin Lukoff, October 11, 2009. Copyright © 2009 Benjamin Lukoff. All rights reserved.

Ward Street

This street is named for Dillis B. Ward (1838-1922). In Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle, Sophie Frye Bass writes:

Dillis Ward, when a young man, did his part in building the old University for he drove a team that hauled stone and lime for the foundation. After the building was finished, he entered as a pupil into the first class. He taught school later on, and many an old-timer can recall the genial, kindly school teacher.

According to this biography, Ward, who came to Seattle in 1859, also had a hand in founding both The Post (a predecessor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) and The Seattle Daily Chronicle (a predecessor of The Seattle Times). However, his name does not appear in Professor Edmond S. Meany’s Newspapers of Washington Territory, in this article on the Post Building from the Pacific Coast Architecture Database, or in this HistoryLink article on the history of the P-I. All of them do mention brothers Kirk C. and Mark Ward, but Dillis’s entry at FamilySearch mentions no siblings, and Mark and Kirk’s entries do not mention Dillis. However, they do appear to have the same father, Jesse Ward. It looks as if Dillis was Jesse’s son from his first marriage, to Elizabeth Raley. As she died the same year Dillis was born, it may have been in childbirth. Kirk and Mark appear to be Jesse’s sons from his subsequent marriage to Exeline Cason. Exactly what part he may have played in the founding of the papers, and why this is missing from the articles above (and, incidentally, from Pig-Tail Days, which one would think might have mentioned this fact) is unclear.

Ward Street begins at Queen Anne Avenue N and goes ⅗ of a mile east to Aurora Avenue N. There is a short segment of E Ward Street on Capitol Hill between 14th Avenue E and 15th Avenue E, followed by another one, ⅓ of a mile long, from 23rd Avenue E and Turner Way E down the hill to 29th Avenue E and E Aloha Street, at the west end of Washington Park Playfield. There follows another one-block segment on the other side of the park, between 31st Avenue E and 32nd Avenue E, and a final segment from 34th Avenue E to 37th Avenue E.

Dillis B. Ward
Dillis B. Ward

Republican Street

This street, platted in 1889 as part of D.T. Denny’s Home Addition to the City of Seattle, was named for the Republican Party, of which David Thomas Denny (1832–1903), a member of the Denny Party that landed at Alki Point in 1851, was a member. The plat was so named because Denny and his wife, Louisa Boren Denny (1827–1916), lived at what is now Dexter Avenue N and Republican Street from 1871 until 1890. (Adam S. Alsobrook considers it instead “a nod to [their earlier] homestead” of 1860–1871, located on what is now the Seattle Center campus, which is also plausible. [He gives a different date and location on his blog, but the Seattle Times article he cites gives the information above.])

E Republican Street Stairway, looking west, January 2008
E Republican Street Stairway, looking west from above Melrose Avenue E, January 2008. When built in 1910, it went all the way down to Eastlake Avenue E, but its lower two-thirds were removed in the 1960s to make way for Interstate 5. Photograph by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

Today, W Republican Street begins a block west of 4th Avenue W and goes ⅖ of a mile east to Warren Avenue N, where it becomes Seattle Center’s pedestrian August Wilson Way. On the east side of Seattle Center, there is a one-block segment of Republican Street between 4th Avenue N and 5th Avenue N; the street then resumes at Dexter Avenue N at the northbound exit from the State Route 99 Tunnel. From there, it runs ⅔ of a mile east to Eastlake Avenue E, where it is blocked by Interstate 5. Resuming east of I-5 as a stairway at Melrose Avenue E, it becomes a street again after half a block and goes another 1⅕ miles from Bellevue Avenue E to 23rd Avenue E, interrupted only once at 17th Avenue E, which can only be crossed by pedestrians and bicycles. After a substantial gap, E Republican Street begins again at 29th Avenue E and E Arthur Place in Madison Valley, and goes ⅖ east to its end at Lake Washington Boulevard E.

(From 33rd Avenue E to Lake Washington Boulevard E, it forms the northern boundary of the Bush School campus; when I went there in the 1980s and 1990s, people from out of town thought I was joking when I told them I went to Bush School on Republican Street. The school, of course, wasn’t named for a member of the Bush political dynasty, but rather for its founder, Helen Taylor Bush.)

Street sign at corner of Lake Washington Boulevard E and E Republican Street, July 30, 2010
Street sign at corner of Lake Washington Boulevard E and E Republican Street, just north of the Bush School campus. Photograph by Benjamin Lukoff, July 30, 2010. Copyright © 2010 Benjamin Lukoff. All rights reserved.

E Remington Court

This street, which goes 600 feet from 12th Avenue in the west to 14th Avenue in the east, a block south of E Jefferson Street, was named as part of Greene’s Replat of Block 10, Squire Park Addition to the City of Seattle in 1903 by William Kimball Greene (1869–1940), transferring the Remington name a block south from Jefferson, the street it was originally applied to in 1890 by Watson Carvosso Squire (1838–1926), who had been territorial governor of Washington from 1884 to 1887 and Washington’s senator from statehood in 1889 to 1897.

Squire married Ida Remington in 1868; the next year, William Kimball Greene was born to Ida’s younger sister, Catherine, and her husband, Elijah Priest Greene. Ida and Catherine’s father, Philo, was the son of Eliphalet, who in 1816 had founded what became E. Remington and Sons, predecessor of Remington Arms and, via Remington Typewriter Company, Remington Rand and its successor, IT company Unisys.

Because Squire was the first to apply the name to a street, I count E Remington Court as ultimately being named after his wife, Ida, though one could say Greene’s preservation of the name, after the E Jefferson Street name had been extended by ordinance in 1895 from First Hill to Lake Washington, might also have been to honor his mother, Catherine.

Watson C. Squire and his wife, Ida Remington, circa 1910.
Watson Carvosso Squire and his wife, Ida Remington, circa 1910

McGilvra Boulevard E

This street, which appears to have been established as part of the 1906 Replat of McGilvra’s Addition and Second Addition to the City of Seattle (an abbreviation of its much longer name), was named for John J. McGilvra (1827–1903). Born in Livingston County, New York, McGilvra moved to Illinois at the age of 17, and became a lawyer nine years later. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln, who McGilvra reportedly knew as a fellow Illinois lawyer, appointed him United States Attorney for the Territory of Washington. In 1864, he moved to Seattle. That same year, he and his wife, Elizabeth, bought 420 acres of land in what is now Madison Park and became the area’s first settlers. McGilvra had Madison Street extended to the lakefront — it is still the only street to extend from Elliott Bay to Lake Washington without interruption — and later helped establish the Madison Street Cable Railway Company and Madison Park at its eastern terminus. In 1865 he relinquished the post of U.S. attorney. He was a member of the Territorial Legislature in 1866 and 1867, and Seattle city attorney in 1876 and 1877. He retired in 1890.

John J. McGilvra, circa 1890
John J. McGilvra, circa 1890

Today, McGilvra Boulevard E begins in the south at 39th Avenue E and Lake Washington Boulevard E and goes 1⅖ miles north to E McGilvra Street. Unlike most other boulevards in the city, it is not an Olmsted boulevard — McGilvra was reportedly opposed to the movement that resulted in the hiring of the Olmsted Brothers in 1903 (the year of his death) to design a system of parks and boulevards for Seattle, though there is no evidence the two are directly related.

E Spruce Street

This street, like Alder Street and Fir Street — all, of course, named for trees — originates in the 1872 plat of Terry’s Second Addition to the Town of Seattle, filed by Arthur Armstrong Denny, Henry Leiter Yesler, Erasmus Smithers, and Franklin Matthias, the last two as executors of the estate of Charles Carroll Terry, who was part of the Denny Party of settlers in 1851, and died in 1867. However, it was originally named Cedar Street (duplicative of another in Belltown). It received its current name as part of the Great Renaming of 1895, when Cedar Street, Prince William Street, and Erie Street were all changed to Spruce.

Today, E Spruce Street begins at Broadway and goes nearly a mile east to 25th Avenue, only interrupted once, at Boren Avenue, which it connects to as a pair of stairways. It resumes at 28th Avenue and goes just over ¼ of a mile to Lake Dell Avenue (the portion from Peppi’s Playground through Peppi’s Woods as a stairway). Farther east, there is a couple-hundred-foot-long section at the west end of Euclid Avenue, and then a longer one — almost ⅒ of a mile — from near the east end of Euclid Avenue to E Alder Street. (Its complicated end is the result of platted streets not always matching up with topography, or with where people actually ended up building roads.)

Portion of King County Parcel Viewer showing E Spruce Street right-of-way from Lake Dell Avenue to E Alder Street along with Euclid Avenue
King County Parcel Viewer showing E Spruce Street right-of-way from Lake Dell Avenue in the west to E Alder Street in the east. Instead of the eastern portion of Spruce connecting directly to the western portion, there is a gap; instead, the western portion connects to Euclid Avenue by going through private property.

Fir Street

This street, like nearby Alder Street — both, obviously, named for trees — originates in the 1872 plat of Terry’s Second Addition to the Town of Seattle, filed by Arthur Armstrong Denny, Henry Leiter Yesler, Erasmus Smithers, and Franklin Matthias, the last two as executors of the estate of Charles Carroll Terry, who was part of the Denny Party of settlers in 1851, and died in 1867.

Today, Fir Street begins where 8th Avenue and 9th Avenue meet, a block south of Harborview Medical Center. From there to its end at Martin Luther King Jr. Way 1⅕ miles to the east, it is almost completely uninterrupted, except for the portion west of 11th Avenue being blocked by a retaining wall at Boren Avenue.

Alder Street

This street originates in the 1872 plat of Terry’s Second Addition to the Town of Seattle, filed by Arthur Armstrong Denny, Henry Leiter Yesler, Erasmus Smithers, and Franklin Matthias, the last two as executors of the estate of Charles Carroll Terry, who was part of the Denny Party of settlers in 1851, and died in 1867. (In 1857, Matthias was listed as being a carpenter, originally from Indiana, Pennsylvania; not too long thereafter, he apparently married and had a child with the daughter of Shilshole Curley [native name Saxkla’xid{?}], “head-man” of the shill-shohl-AHBSH village at šilšul on Salmon Bay. This child, Rebecca Lena Graham, later had to sue Matthias’s relatives to be recognized as his rightful heir. You can read more about her on the Yale University Press blog, at Fitz-Henry Family History, and in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly.)

Today, Alder Street begins at the south entrance to the Harborview Medical Center parking garage, its original first few blocks having been obliterated by Interstate 5, and goes ⅓ of a mile northeast and then east to the Children and Family Justice Center at 12th Avenue.* It resumes at 14th Avenue and goes just over a mile to 32nd Avenue. Finally, just west of 35th Avenue, the Lake Dell Avenue arterial becomes E Alder Street, which snakes ⅕ of a mile down the hill to end at Lake Washington Boulevard. It was originally part of a group of streets named after trees — Pine, Alder, Cedar, and Fir — though Pine and Cedar have since become Terrace and Spruce, since they duplicated street names in other parts of Downtown.

* The Alder Street right-of-way technically begins at Yesler Way just west of 6th Avenue, but is unimproved and indistinguishable from the adjacent open space, and the Interstate 5 right-of-way begins on the east side of 6th.

S Charles Street

Charles Street originates in the 1876 plat of Plummer’s Addition to the City of Seattle, filed by George Washington Harris (late 1840s–1914).* How did Harris end up with the land, and why would he name the addition after Charles Plummer (who, it appears from the text of the plat description, bought the tract from David Swinson “Doc” Maynard in 1860)?

* I write “late 1840s” because Harris’s birth year is given variously as 1848 (death certificate, historical journal article, Tacoma Public Library), 1847 (Genealogy.com, The Seattle Times), and 1846 (Geni, FamilySearch). 

As it turns out: Plummer married Ellender Smith (sister of Dr. Henry A. Smith, namesake of Smith Cove and Smith Street) in 1855. Harris’s mother, Sarah Jane Crossman, was widowed the next year. Plummer himself became a widower when his wife died giving birth to twins Edward and Frank in 1859, and he married Harris’s mother in 1860, apparently at Maynard’s own Alki Point house. Harris then became Plummer’s stepson (and a daughter, Ida, was born to the newlyweds the next year). When Plummer died in 1866, Harris apparently inherited at least this much of his stepfather’s estate. (It’s unclear just what Edward and Ida may have received; Frank is reported to have inherited $60,000.)

Charles Plummer
Charles Plummer

Today, S Charles Street begins at Airport Way S and 6th Avenue S and is stopped a block and a half to the east at 7th Avenue S by the city’s Charles Street Service Center. (Its twin to the south, S Plummer Street, also ends at the service center, never to return.) It briefly reappears at the northern lip of Beacon Hill between 12th Avenue S and Sturgus Avenue S, and then east of Interstate 90 runs for about ⅓ of a mile between Poplar Place S and 20th Place S at Judkins Park. The right-of-way, which continues through the park, becomes an improved street again at 22nd Avenue S, and ends just east of 26th Avenue S. East of here, S Charles runs three blocks from 28th Avenue S to 30th Avenue S, and then around ¼ mile made up of alternating roadway and stairways from the alley west of 32nd Avenue S to a shoreline street end on Lake Washington — one of Leschi’s String of Pearls.

Note added October 23, 2023: S Charles Street now begins at 1st Avenue S and goes a block east to Occidental Avenue S, before resuming on the other side of Lumen Field at Airport Way S.

S Judkins Street

S Judkins Street, like S Norman Street, S Addition Street, and SW Seattle Street, was named in the 1869 plat of Judkin’s (sic) Addition to the Town of Seattle, whose street names were, from north to south, Norman, B, Judkins, Addition, Town, and Seattle.

Plat of Judkin's Addition to the Town of Seattle

Because its original location is covered by King County Metro’s Atlantic Base and Interstate 5, Judkins Street now starts on Beacon Hill just west of 12th Avenue S and goes around 850 feet east to just east of 14th Avenue S, where it becomes a stairway to 15th Avenue S. The unimproved right-of-way continues through a greenbelt to 16th Avenue S, where there exists a 100-foot stretch of Judkins before it is stopped by Sturgus Avenue S, Daejon Park, and Interstate 90. On the other side of I-90, it resumes at 20th Avenue S and goes ⅘ of a mile east to Lake Washington Boulevard S, the last 50 or so feet being a stairway. Between Lake Washington Boulevard S and Lakeside Avenue S, only the first 150 feet is improved, mainly serving as a driveway for two houses. And east of Lakeside Avenue S there is a very short stretch that, like its neighbor to the north, S Norman Street, turns into a shoreline street end on Lake Washington — one of Leschi’s String of Pearls.

Judkins Street gives its name to Judkins Park and Playfield, which stretches for a number of blocks north of S Judkins Street and 22nd Avenue S, as far as Washington Middle School. The land between S Judkins Street and Interstate 90 through which the I-90 Trail winds (part of the Mountains to Sound Greenway) is also sometimes considered to be part of Judkins Park. The park, in turn, gives its name to the neighborhood of Judkins Park, and to the future Judkins Park station of Sound Transit’s Line 2 extension to the Eastside.

Built on the site of a former ravine landfill that was used for about four decades, Judkins Park was transferred to the parks department in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and opened to the public on October 8, 1977, according to a story in the October 6 issue of The Seattle Times.

Aerial view of Judkins Park and Playground, 1965
Aerial view of Judkins Park and Playfield, 1965. Courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives, Identifier 29470. S Judkins Street is at bottom center and right, below the park. Washington Middle School is at the north end of the park and 23rd Avenue S is the arterial to its east. Lake Washington and the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (Washington State Route 520) are visible in the distance.

S Norman Street

For the origin of S Norman Street, we go back to our first street name post, SW Seattle Street, which read in part:

On August 4, 1869, Ike M. Hall — the executor of the estate of Norman B. Judkins — filed the Judkin’s (sic) Addition to the Town of Seattle, located just southwest of where the interchange between I-5 and I-90 is today. From north to south, the east–west streets are named Norman, B, Judkins, Addition, Town, and Seattle.

Plat of Judkin's Addition to the Town of Seattle

Today, S Norman Street begins on the other side of Beacon Hill, the portion shown above having been obliterated by King County Metro’s Atlantic Base and Interstate 5. (In fact, S Addition Street is the only one remaining in its original location, Judkins Street now starting on Beacon Hill and Seattle Street only existing in West Seattle.) Beginning at Poplar Place S just east of Interstate 90, it goes for a block northeast to Rainier Avenue S. It picks up again at Davis Place S and S Bush Place and goes a block east to 21st Avenue S. Resuming at 22nd Avenue S, just east of Judkins Park (also named for Norman B. Judkins), it goes ⅗ of a mile east to 33rd Avenue S, with only two short interruptions:

  • An unimproved stretch south of St. Gebriel Ethiopian Orthodox Church between 26th Avenue S and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S: what looks to be a bramble patch followed by a driveway for some townhouses; and
  • A stairway from 31st Avenue S to half a block west of 32nd Avenue S.

There appears to be a privately maintained stairway from 33rd Avenue S down to Lake Washington Boulevard S, and the next block is completely unimproved, though in both cases neighbors appear to be incorporating the right-of-way into their yards and driveways. Finally, there is a short stretch of Norman Street east of Lakeside Avenue S that turns into a shoreline street end on Lake Washington — one of Leschi’s String of Pearls

King County Parcel Viewer showing S Norman Street at Martin Luther King Jr. Way S
King County Parcel Viewer showing S Norman Street between 26th Avenue S and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S. What appears to be a private driveway from Martin Luther King is actually public right-of-way.
King County Parcel Viewer showing S Norman Street from 33rd Avenue S to Lake Washington
King County Parcel Viewer showing S Norman Street from 33rd Avenue S to Lake Washington. The private driveway in the public right-of-way east of Lake Washington Boulevard S (center of image) is easily visible, as is the shoreline street end east of Lakeside Avenue S.

Hillside Drive E

This street in the Washington Park neighborhood runs ⅖ of a mile from Lake Washington Boulevard E and E Harrison Street in the south to 39th Avenue E in the north, about where E Ward Street would be if it extended that far east. It was created in 1906 as part of the (I’m going to use its full name!) Replat of John J. McGilvra’s Addition to the City of Seattle and Blocks 13, 14, 18, 20 to 29 Inclusive, and South Half of 19 of John J. McGilvra’s Second Addition to the City of Seattle. It once began farther south, at 39th Avenue E and McGilvra Boulevard E, but this portion is now part of Lake Washington Boulevard E.

The street was so named for running along the eastern side of the unnamed hill at the center of the Washington Park neighborhood.

Section of The National Map showing topography of Washington Park
Section of The National Map showing topography of Washington Park

Pike Street

Pike Street first appears in the Plat of an Addition to the Town of Seattle as Laid Out by Arthur A. Denny, filed on April 5, 1869. It was named by Denny for John Henry Pike (1814–1903), best known for being the architect and builder of the original Territorial University of Washington in 1861. This article by Rob Ketcherside is the most comprehensive information available online about Pike. “Early Pikes in Seattle,” by Stuart Pike, is also worth a read. (Also of note: Pike’s son, Harvey Lake Pike [1842–1897], was the first person to try to connect Lake Washington’s Union Bay to Lake Union’s Portage Bay by a canal. This was unsuccessful, but he did end up platting the land in 1869 as Union City. His E North Street [north of the proposed canal] survives to this day.)

John Pike, from his obituary in the November 22, 1903, issue of The Seattle Times
John Pike, from his obituary in the November 22, 1903, issue of The Seattle Times

In the original plat, Pike Street (as well as Union and Pine Streets) begins at Front Street — today’s 1st Avenue — but today it begins on the Elliott Bay waterfront at Alaskan Way as the Pike Street Hillclimb. Pike Street proper begins at Pike Place (home of the eponymous market) and Post Alley (underneath the Market Theater sign), both shown below, and makes it a full 1⅔ miles to just past 18th Avenue in the Central District before being interrupted. It then resurfaces at 23rd Avenue and goes another ⅘ of a mile to Grand Avenue in Madrona, a few blocks east of Lake Washington.

Pike Place Market entrance, corner of Pike Street and Pike Place, 2012
Pike Place Market entrance, corner of Pike Street and Pike Place, 2012. Photograph by kissmykumbaya, Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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.

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

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

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 ChinatownInternational 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.

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 ChinatownInternational 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.

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

Madison Street

Madison Street — another of Seattle’s “first streets” — was named for James Madison, president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. It is the only street in town that stretches, uninterrupted, from the salt water of Elliott Bay and Puget Sound to the fresh water of Lake Washington.

Originating as the McGilvra Road in 1861, Madison Street begins on the Elliott Bay waterfront at Alaskan Way and ends 3¾ miles northeast of there at a small fishing pier, just east of 43rd Avenue E and north of Madison Park Beach. Apart from a slight bend to the northeast at 22nd Avenue, it is as straight as an arrow from beginning to end.

Signs at corner of E Madison Street and 43rd Avenue E, October 11, 2009
Signs at corner of E Madison Street and 43rd Avenue E, October 11, 2009. Photograph by Benjamin Lukoff. Copyright © 2009 Benjamin Lukoff. All rights reserved.

Spring Street

Spring Street was another of Seattle’s “first streets.” Sophie Frye Bass writes in Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle:

Where springs of clear water bubbled from the earth and the beach was sandy and free from rocks, there the Indians camped. Such a choice spot was Tzee-tzee-lal-litch [dzidzəlalič], which Arthur Denny called Spring Street.

Spring Street begins at Alaskan Way and runs nearly a mile, to Harvard Avenue, before it is interrupted. A few more segments run through the Central District and Madrona. The last is from 38th Avenue to Grand Avenue, at which point it continues to Lake Washington Boulevard as a footpath and stairway.