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Par Place NE

This street was created in 1928 as part of the Golfcrest addition, named for the adjacent Jackson Park golf course that had opened earlier that year. Other named streets in the subdivision included Golfcrest Drive, Fairway Place, Bogey Place, and Tee Place. None of these streets exist any longer — Lakeside School moved to the neighborhood in 1930 and had the north portion of the plat vacated for its new campus, and the construction of Interstate 5 took out Golfcrest Drive in the mid 1960s.

Lakeside School campus and Jackson Park
This northeast-looking aerial photo shows, from left to right (west to east), the Lakeside School campus (north portion of Golfcrest addition); Interstate 5; 5th Avenue NE; and the Jackson Park golf course. The overpass crossing I-5 is NE 145th Street (Washington State Route 523), which forms the boundary between Seattle to the south and Shoreline to the north. The Shoreline South/148th light rail station can be seen under construction just north of the overpass. Par Place itself is out of frame, to the south. Photograph by Flickr user Atomic Taco, September 26, 2021, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

Par Place NE begins at NE 139th Street and goes ⅕ of a mile north to NE 140th Street, at the south end of the Lakeside campus.

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Marginal Place SW

This street, created in 1919 by Ordinance 39638, is named for W Marginal Way SW. It begins there and goes just under 800 feet northwest to a dead end underneath the West Seattle Bridge. The Duwamish Trail continues on from there to the West Seattle Bridge Trail, while the 18th Avenue SW stairway heads south up the hill to SW Charlestown Street in Pigeon Point.

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W Pleasant Place

This street was created in 1890 as part of the Queen Anne 3rd Addition to the City of Seattle, platted by Frank Morrell Jordan (1863–1931) of F.M. Jordan & Co. According to Clarence Bagley’s History of Seattle from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, he had been “connected with Seattle throughout the entire period of its development since the fire of 1889 and has been in hearty sympathy with the movement for the building of the city upon broader and more beautiful municipal lines.”

As the street is less than 150 feet south of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, I assume that is the origin of its name.

W Pleasant Place exists in two short segments not much longer than 150 feet each. Both head east: one from 7th Avenue W and the other from 6th Avenue W, neither making it a whole block.

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SW Maryland Place

This short West Seattle street was created along with Elm Place SW as part of the 1888 First Plat of West Seattle by the West Seattle Land and Improvement Company. Originally Courtland Street, it became joined to Maryland Street when the latter was created as part of the 1895 Seattle Tide Lands plat. When West Seattle was annexed to Seattle in 1907, both were renamed Maryland Place.

(The tideland streets in West Seattle were, with a few exceptions, named after states: Illinois, [New] Hampshire, Arkansas, [New] Jersey, Rhode Island, [New] Mexico, Maryland, Louisiana, Georgia, [North and South] Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Oregon, [North and South] Dakota, and Idaho. Of the ones confined to West Seattle, only Maryland remains [Florida, Oregon, Dakota, and Idaho also, or only, appear east of the West Duwamish Waterway].)

Today, SW Maryland Place begins at Elm Place SW and goes around 130 feet northeast to Harbor Avenue SW.

The West Seattle Stone Cottage, corner of SW Maryland Place and Harbor Avenue SW, December 31, 2020
The Stone Cottage, corner of SW Maryland Place and Harbor Avenue SW, December 31, 2020. The campaign to save the building succeeded, and it was moved into storage on August 18, 2021. Photograph by Flickr user Mark Ahlness, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic
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Elm Place SW

This short West Seattle street was created as part of the 1888 First Plat of West Seattle by the West Seattle Land and Improvement Company. Originally Elm Street, it had companions in Oak, Maple, and Laurel Streets, none of which survive.

Elm Place SW begins at SW California Place and goes 300 feet southeast to SW Maryland Place, paralleling Harbor Avenue SW just over 100 feet to its northeast.

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Whitney Place NW

This street, originally W 93rd Street in the 1907 plat of Loyal Heights, filed by Edward B. Cox, Harry Whitney Treat (1865–1922), and Treat’s wife, Olive Marion Graef Treat (1869–1945), appears to honor Harry’s middle name, which was also part of his mother’s name and was his grandmother’s maiden name. It begins at View Avenue NW and 32nd Avenue NW and goes just under 300 feet northeast to NW 95th Street.

Cartoon drawing of Harry Whitney Treat riding horse, by John Ross "Dok" Hager, circa 1910
Harry Whitney Treat riding a horse, by John Ross “Dok” Hager, circa 1910
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Wickstrom Place SW

This street is named for Peter Wickstrom (1837–1915), who immigrated to the United States from Sweden in the late 1860s. According to Thomas Ostenson Stine’s Scandinavians on the Pacific, Puget Sound, he lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Portland, Oregon, before coming to Seattle. His obituary, which ran in The Seattle Times on January 15, 1915, the day after his death, reads in part:

Peter Wickstrom, well-known pioneer of Seattle and an extensive realty holder, died unexpectedly yesterday afternoon after leaving the dinner table at his residence near Alki Point.… The deceased made his home at “The Old Homestead,” a tract of land not far from Alki Point.… Wickstrom came to this city in 1873 and conducted a hotel prior to the fire of 1889. Subsequent to that time he had not engaged actively in business.

Peter Wickstrom, from his Seattle Times obituary, January 15, 1915
Peter Wickstrom, from his Seattle Times obituary

Wickstrom Place SW begins at 54th Place SW just south of Alki Avenue SW and goes around 500 feet south to a dead end.

  • The Peter Wickstrom tract in Baist's 1912 atlas of Seattle
    The Peter Wickstrom tract in Baist’s 1912 atlas of Seattle
  • The Peter Wickstrom tract in Kroll's 1920 atlas of Seattle
    The Peter Wickstrom tract in Kroll’s 1920 atlas of Seattle
Peter Wickstrom’s 7.18-acre tract before and after his death.

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Boyd Place SW

This West Seattle street was created in 1920 as part of Sarah M. Boyd’s First Addition to the City of Seattle. I believe Sarah Maria Loudenback Boyd (1853–1932) to be the Sarah M. Boyd in question here.

Boyd Place SW begins at 59th Avenue SW and SW Charlestown Street and goes around 425 feet southeast to Chilberg Place SW and Aikins Avenue SW.

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Clarmar Place SW

This West Seattle street is really more of a footpath, being narrow, unpaved, and closed to motor vehicles. The public right-of-way runs about 450 feet northwest from Bonair Drive SW as it descends through the Duwamish Head Greenbelt from Sunset Avenue SW to Alki Avenue SW, and the path continues for some 1,150 feet more through property owned by the parks department.

Clarmar Place SW was created in 1941 as part of the plat of Clarmar Crags, which name appears to be a combination of Clara Coumbe (died 1975?), landowner, and mar, for its location above Elliott Bay and Puget Sound.

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S Delappe Place

This street originates in the 1908 plat of De Lappe’s Addition to the City of Seattle, filed by Emanuel Marcellus DeLappe (1854–1928) and his wife, Catherine E. McGeehan DeLappe (1856–1934). According to the North Rainier Valley Context Statement, “[he] was a saddler and harnessmaker who came to Seattle in about 1890”; in the September 1900 issue of The Leather Workers Journal, it was reported that he had recently been elected president of Branch № 66 of the United Brotherhood of Leatherworkers on Horse Goods.

S Delappe Place begins at the end of 27th Avenue S, south of S Horton Street, and goes around 175 feet west to a dead end at the Cheasty Boulevard greenspace.

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Anthony Place S

This street originates in the 1907 plat of Cascade View Addition to the City of Seattle, King County, Washington. Originally Della Street, it appears to have been renamed for William Gordon Anthony and his wife, C. Nana Anthony, who filed the plat. William, who died June 8, 1925, at the age of 64, had been working in insurance and real estate since 1910, according to his obituary in the June 10 issue of The Seattle Times. In it, his wife’s name is given as Canana, not C. Nana, as the plat has it. (Curiously, her own death certificate [she died November 6 of the same year at the age of 57] gives her name as C. Nanny!)

Anthony Place S begins at 27th Avenue S just south of S Walden Street and S Della Street and goes less than 100 feet southwest before turning into a private driveway, which turns into an alley, which turns into another private driveway that connects to Cheasty Boulevard S. The undeveloped right-of-way continues southwest for another ⅐ of a mile.

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Short Place S

This, well, short street in the Leschi neighborhood originates in Wood’s Supplemental Plat of Blocks 16 and 17, Burke’s 2nd Addition to Seattle, filed in 1887 by, among others, William D. Wood (1858−1917) and his wife, Emma Wallingford Wood (1859−1949). William, who was later mayor of Seattle from 1896 to 1897, was one of the principal developers of the Green Lake neighborhood; Emma was the daughter of John Noble Wallingford (1833–1913), after whom the Wallingford neighborhood and Wallingford Avenue N are named.

Short Place S begins at S Jackson Street and goes about 425 feet south to S King Street.

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NE Brockman Place

This street appears to have been named for Charles Carl Brockman (1869–1954), proprietor of the unrecorded plat of Brockman’s Tracts. According to the obituary of his son, Charles Clark Brockman (1915–2010), the elder Brockman was “a Seattle pioneer who owned a grocery store [and] various real estate interests in the Denny Regrade and Lake City area.”

NE Brockman Place begins at 19th Avenue NE just north of NE 127th Street and goes ¼ mile northwest to just west of 14th Place NE.

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Frazier Place NW

This street, originally Sound View Place, was created in 1920 as part of Frazier’s Addition to King County, Washington, filed by Raymond Robert Frazier (1873–1955) and his wife, Augusta Wood Frazier (1874–1969). Raymond was president of Washington Mutual from 1915 to 1933 and its chairman from 1933 to 1941.

Frazier Place NW begins at NW 132nd Street and goes just over 300 feet north to NW 134th Street.

Raymond R. Frazier, circa 1931
Raymond R. Frazier, from The Town Crier, September 26, 1931
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E Olin Place

This street was created in 1925 as part of the O.W. Harris Addition, filed by Olin Whitney Harris (a car dealer) and his wife, Lily Georgine Robson Harris. (Their son, Whitney Robson Harris, a University of Washington graduate, was one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials as an aide to Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Harris was the last Nuremberg prosecutor to die, in 2010. The Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law are named in his honor.)

E Olin Place, which is shaped like a 7, begins at 15th Avenue E north of E Garfield Street and heads 1⁄10 of a mile northeast, then west, to 15th Avenue E south of E Howe Street. Louisa Boren Park is to its east, and features a grand view of Montlake, Union Bay, Laurelhurst, Lake Washington, the Eastside, and the Cascade mountains.

View of Union Bay and Lake Washington from Louisa Boren Park, March 2013
View of Union Bay and Lake Washington from Louisa Boren Park, March 2013. Photograph by Orange Suede Sofa, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
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Haraden Place S

This street, created in 1910 as part of the Beacon Hill View Addition to the City of Seattle, was named after Colin B. Haraden (1864–1950), secretary of the Elliott Bay Investment Company.

Haraden Place S begins at Carkeek Drive S between 39th Avenue S and 40th Avenue S and goes around 450 feet north to S Cambridge Street.

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Patten Place W

This street was established in 1906 as part of the plat of Patten’s Addition to the City of Seattle, filed by Robert James Patten (1859–1919) and his wife, Harriet (Hattie) Flynn Patten (1866–1959).

According to an article in the October 29, 1905, issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Robert bought the tract from H.M. Haller for $9,000. According to the obituary reproduced below, he was a “lumberman, contractor, and real estate man,” originally from Wisconsin, who had come to Seattle that very year, though he had been living in Washington since 1900.

Obituary of Robert James Patten, The Seattle Times, October 6, 1919
Obituary of Robert James Patten, The Seattle Times, October 6, 1919

Patten Place W begins at W Armour Street just north of Bayview Playground and goes about 420 feet north to a dead end, though the undeveloped right-of-way continues on for about 250 feet more to the likewise undeveloped right-of-way of W Barrett Street.

Street sign at corner of Patten Place W and W Armour Street, October 17, 2021
Street sign at corner of Patten Place W and W Armour Street. Photograph by Benjamin Lukoff, October 17, 2021. Copyright © 2021 Benjamin Lukoff. All rights reserved.
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Point Place SW

This street, which was created in 1936, was named after Alki Point. Alki Avenue SW runs southwest from Duwamish Head to about 450 feet northeast of the point, where it turns south for a block and then becomes Beach Drive SW; Point Place continues another 200 or so feet toward Alki Point.

Alki Point Lighthouse, May 4, 2011. The first light here was supposedly hung in the 1870s; the U.S. Lighthouse Board installed an official one in 1887. The present lighthouse was built in 1913 and automated in 1984. Access is from Alki Avenue SW rather than Point Place SW. Public domain photograph by U.S. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Robert Lanier.
Arthur Armstrong Denny (1822–1899), the leader of the Denny Party that landed at Alki Point on November 13, 1851, helped build this cabin. Most of the party moved to what is now Pioneer Square the next spring. Photograph by Frank LaRoche, no date (though no later than 1891, when the cabin, shown here in ruins, was demolished).
Aerial view of West Seattle, March 17, 2009. Alki Point is in the lower-left-hand (west) corner; Duwamish Head is in the upper-left-hand (north) corner. The green spaces in the foreground, from left to right (north to south), are the Duwamish Head Greenbelt, Schmitz Preserve Park, and Mee-Kwa-Mooks Park. Elliott Bay lies north and east of Alki Point; the rest of the water is Puget Sound. Public domain photograph by Dcoetzee, Wikimedia Commons.
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Clise Place W

This street is named for James William Clise (1855–1938), who is said to have come to Seattle with his wife, Anna Herr Clise (1866–1936), on June 7, 1889, the day after the Great Seattle Fire. Anna is best known for founding Children’s Orthopedic Hospital (today known as Seattle Children’s) in 1907. In 1890, James founded what is now Clise Properties. Over the years he, among other things:

  • Helped the University of Washington relocate from Downtown to its current campus
  • Helped establish Fort Lawton (now Discovery Park) in Magnolia
  • Helped Lyman Smith build the Smith Tower
  • Helped kickstart the agricultural industry in Eastern Washington
  • Founded the Washington Trust Company, which after a series of mergers is now part of Bank of America
  • Helped organize the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition 
  • Helped fund the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Ballard Locks

Clise Place W originates in the 1928 plat of Magnolia View Addition to the City of Seattle, filed by the Clise Investment Company. It originally only went from W Howe Street at Magnolia Boulevard W to W Crockett Street, but the name replaced that of Rucker Place between there and W Lynn Street and 33rd Avenue W, giving it a total length of just under ¼ mile.

JW Clise
J.W. Clise, from The Ranch and Range, June 26, 1902 issue
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Albert Place W

Our first paper street, W Semple Street, was in Magnolia, and so is our second!

In 1907, Anna Sophia Brygger (1852–1940) (NW Brygger Place, Brygger Drive W) filed the plat of Lawton Heights in Magnolia. Because a good portion of it was taken up by what is now known as Kiwanis Ravine, many of the streets were only partially built (Fort Place, 35th Avenue W, 34th Avenue W, Brygger Drive) or never built at all (Northview Place, Albert Street [Alberta is a typo], Byers Place). For some reason, they have never been vacated, making them all paper streets, and unlike W Semple Street, they don’t even have any buildings with addresses.

Brygger had seven children, one of whom was named Albert (1887–1977). According to Paul Dorpat, he was at one point president of Peoples National Bank (now part of U.S. Bank). It seems a fair bet that she named Albert Street after him.

Map of Lawton Heights Addition, Magnolia, 1912 Baist Atlas
Map of Lawton Heights Addition, Magnolia, 1912 Baist Atlas