This street, which was originally named Lake View Lane in the 1920 plat of Victory Heights, appears to have received its current name no later than August 1943, when it first appears in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as part of the obituary of Dr. Lewis R. Dawson, “dean of Seattle physicians and surgeons.” (Victory Heights was itself named for Victory Way, known today as Lake City Way NE within Seattle city limits and as Bothell Way NE in Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, and Bothell. The road was given this name in the wake of the Allied victory in World War I.)
My first thought was that Lake View Lane had been renamed Victory Lane to preserve the Victory Way name after the highway became Bothell Way, but it turns out that happened a number of years later, so I am unsure as to the reason for this name change.
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.
