The Birth of Woodland Park
How a private visionary’s 'enchanter's wand' turned a rugged, logged-over wilderness into Seattle’s premier public escape.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A reporter, like the melancholy, moralizing Jaques in the Forest of Arden, has been doing some thinking. The day will surely come when the city of Seattle will have to turn its attention to a duty hitherto neglected: providing adequate public parks for the health and recreation of its thousands of inhabitants. If the city is to fulfill the future that is confidently anticipated for it, this matter must be attended to. Public parks are the 'lungs of great cities,' the breathing places without which life in large towns would become unbearable.
Mr. Guy C. Phinney is taking hold of this work with the earnest and indomitable purpose to show the public what can be done with a little foresight. Woodland Park is the fruit of his efforts to improve the wilderness. It is a tract of 180 acres of charmingly located land, partly level, but for the most part agreeably diversified in natural features. Situated on the south end of Green Lake, the topography adapts it to the purposes of a park. On the west side, it is a high, touchy ridge, which forms the divide between the waters of Shilshole Bay and the lakes. It is dotted here and there with a noble fir or cedar that has withstood the storms of years and the purgatorial fires of thirty years ago that swept this gravelly ridge almost bare. Mr. Phinney has taken hold of this site with the purpose to spare no money to prove what can be done to create a beautiful pleasure ground. He has already begun the clearing up of 60 acres for which the contract is let. Driving roads have been laid out in artistic curves, and a boulevard will lead to the lake at a point suitable for a bathhouse and boating crafts. It is safe to say that Mr. Phinney has formed and placed a natural park surpassing in all elements of beauty and delightfulness the fairest of those ancient parks of old Europe.
“Public parks are the 'lungs of great cities.' They are indeed the sanitariums—the breathing places without which life in large towns would become unbearable.”
Guy C. Phinney’s private land-banking and landscaping project eventually became the crown jewel of the Seattle park system. This 1887 editorial captures a pivotal moment when the city was first waking up to the reality that rapid urban growth would destroy public access to nature unless leaders intervened—a struggle that remains central to Seattle's current debates over density, green space, and the 'livability' of a growing metropolis.
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