• 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…

    Read more

  • 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…

    Read more

  • This street, created in 1905 as part of the plat of Interlaken, is so named because of its shape. Beginning at the intersection of Interlaken Drive E, 19th Avenue E, and E Galer Street, it…

    Read more

  • This street was created in 1925 as part of the O.W. Harris Addition, filed by Olin Whitney Harris (a car dealer) and his wife, Lily Georgine Robson Harris. (Their son, Whitney Robson Harris, a University…

    Read more

  • 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).…

    Read more

  • 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…

    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…

    Read more

  • 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…

    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…

    Read more

  • 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…

    Read more

  • This 275-foot-long diagonal street connects 23rd Avenue E to 24th Avenue E between E Ward Street and E Helen Street, allowing the arterial that begins at Jefferson Park on Beacon Hill to have “an easy…

    Read more

  • 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…

    Read more

  • When I saw that E Jansen Court fell within Jansen’s Addition to the City of Seattle, filed in 1889 by Mary Jansen, I thought “Ah, another case of a landowner naming a street after themselves,”…

    Read more

  • The establishment of E Interlaken Boulevard — the first of Seattle’s Olmsted parks and boulevards we’re covering — was first proposed, according to Seattle parks historian Don Sherwood, in 1903 as Volunteer Hill Parkway. Two…

    Read more

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.