• E Olive Street between Melrose Avenue and Bellevue Avenue was renamed E Olive Place sometime between 1912, when it was recorded in the Baist Atlas as E Olive Street, and 1919, the first time it…

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  • E Olive Street continues the original name of Olive Way east of Bellevue Avenue. As noted in that article, it was named for Olive Julia Bell Stewart (1846–1921), who was five when the Denny Party arrived at…

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  • I haven’t posted in two weeks because I recently had the good fortune to visit, and the sad duty to return from, Maui, “the Valley Isle,” second largest of the Hawaiian Islands. That made me…

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  • This street is named for David Thomas Denny (1832–1903). He was one of the members of the Denny Party that landed at Alki Point in 1851, led by his older brother, Arthur Armstrong Denny (1822–1899).…

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  • This street is said to have been named for Jefferson Davis Howell (1846–1875), the youngest of 11 children of William Burr Howell and Margaret Louisa Kemp. He was himself named after Jefferson Davis, future president…

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  • Benjamin LukoffBorn and raised in Seattle, Benjamin 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…

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  • This street is named for Thomas Dickerson Mercer (1813–1898), who came to Seattle in 1853 and homesteaded 160 acres in what is now Lower Queen Anne, living at what is now Roy Street and Taylor…

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  • This street is named for Catharine V. Paine Blaine (1829–1908) and her husband, David Edwards Blaine (1824–1900). Methodist missionaries from Seneca Falls, New York, where, in 1848, Catharine signed the Declaration of Sentiments at the…

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  • Benjamin LukoffBorn and raised in Seattle, Benjamin 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…

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  • This street, platted in 1889 as part of D.T. Denny’s Home Addition to the City of Seattle, was named for the Republican Party, of which David Thomas Denny (1832–1903), a member of the Denny Party…

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  • Benjamin LukoffBorn and raised in Seattle, Benjamin 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…

    Read more

  • Benjamin LukoffBorn and raised in Seattle, Benjamin 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…

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  • Pike Street first appears in the Plat of an Addition to the Town of Seattle as Laid Out by Arthur A. Denny, filed on April 5, 1869. It was named by Denny for John Henry…

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  • Madison Street — another of Seattle’s “first streets” — was named for James Madison, president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. It is the only street in town that stretches, uninterrupted, from the…

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  • As of this writing, Seattle’s newest street name is E Barbara Bailey Way — formerly the block of E Denny Way between Broadway and 10th Avenue E. Barbara Bailey, who died on September 1, 2018,…

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Writes of Way © 2019 Benjamin Lukoff. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from Benjamin Lukoff is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Benjamin Lukoff and Writes of Way with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.