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Benjamin Lukoff

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.

Latest posts by Benjamin Lukoff (see all)

• Marginal Place SW – January 27, 2022
• W Pleasant Place – January 27, 2022
• Birch Avenue N – January 25, 2022

This short loop connects Lake Washington Boulevard E to 40th Avenue E and Denny Blaine Park on the Lake Washington waterfront. Street, park, and neighborhood — for the neighborhood is called Denny-Blaine too, though this time with a hyphen — are named for Charles Latimer Denny (1861–1919) and Elbert F. Blaine (1857–1942).

Denny was the youngest son of Arthur Armstrong Denny, leader of the Denny Party that landed at Alki Point in 1851; Blaine was a lawyer and parks commissioner from 1902 to 1908, and does not appear to be related to Catherine and David Blaine, after whom Blaine Street is named. Together, they operated the Denny-Blaine Land Company, and in 1901 filed the plat of Denny-Blaine-Lake Park to the City of Seattle (curiously, “Addition” seems to be missing before “to”). The street was originally named Whitman Place, and the park was unnamed; according to Seattle parks historian Don Sherwood, the street was renamed in 1918 to avoid confusion with Whitman Avenue N, and the park soon came to be known as Denny Blaine as well.

Incidentally, both portraits come from scans of newspapers; Blaine’s is from The Seattle Republican, September 27, 1912, and Denny’s is from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 14, 1919 (his obituary). The original caption reads, in part:

The above photograph of Charles L. Denny was the last one he ever had taken. It was taken in the early nineties… and shows Mr. Denny, in the crude photography of that time, as he appeared when starting out on his successful business career.