Posted on by Benjamin Lukoff

Kelsey Lane SW

This West Seattle street was created in 1941 as part of Allan MacLean’s 1st Add’n to the City of Seattle, filed by Allan and Nellie MacLean; H.S. and Marie A. Kelsey; and, on behalf of Carroll Hillman and Hedlund Inc., J.L. Carroll and Clarence A. Hardesty. The narrow plat only had room for one newly named street, and apparently the Kelseys got that honor.

Marie Agnes Cunningham (1914–1976) and Horace Stephen Kelsey (1903–1961) appear to have gotten married the year before filing the plat. According to Mr. Kelsey’s obituary in The Seattle Times,

He was in commercial construction work until retiring in 1948.… He owned and built the Barbee Shipyard and Mill in Ballard, the Stanwood Shipyards and the Kennydale Shipyards during the war. He also constructed hundreds of houses in South Seattle.

Kelsey Lane SW begins at SW Barton Street between 21st Avenue SW and 22nd Avenue SW and goes ¼ of a mile south to the city limits at SW Roxbury Street.

Posted on by Benjamin Lukoff

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.

 

Posted on by Benjamin Lukoff

Delridge Way SW

This street runs nearly four miles from Chelan Avenue SW, SW Spokane Street, and W Marginal Way SW in the north to 16th Avenue SW and SW Roxbury Street in the south — all the way from the Duwamish Waterway to the southern city limits. It was given its current name in 1940 — before then, it had carried the names of Youngstown Place, 21st Avenue SW, 22nd Avenue SW, McKinnon Place SW, 23rd Avenue SW, and 24th Avenue SW. As The Seattle Times explained on May 14, 1940, “Delridge” came from “the dells and ridges through which the thoroughfare runs,” and had been “suggested by West Seattle community organizations.”