This Queen Anne street was established in 1923 as Lee Place and received its current name in 1924. It was likely named for the Queen Anne Standpipes, a pair of water towers nearby that were built in 1900 and 1901 and served the neighborhood until 2007. Even though they were historical landmarks, they were subsequently demolished and replaced with the current single tower.
Interestingly, though its lack of a directional designation (e.g., Tower Place N) would imply it’s an east–west street, the quarter section map appears to indicate it’s both, beginning at Lee Street just south of Observatory Courts and going 175 feet south to a dead end, and beginning halfway down the aforementioned segment and going around 100 feet east to a dead end.
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.
