The Fight to Modernize Queen Anne's Streets
A group of prominent property owners on Nob Hill are lobbying the city for a sprawling, multi-tiered parkway, signaling the first organized effort to reshape the district's public infrastructure.
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.
The recent agitation over the question of parking the streets of the city seems likely to bring forth its first fruits on Highland Drive. Property owners there are now getting up a petition to improve the street from Queen Avenue to Eighth Avenue, a distance of eight blocks. The proposed improvement will be a novel feature in this city. The plan consists of a 5-foot parkway along the housing, then a 30-foot cement auto-strip. Between this will be a small grass plot, raised about 12 inches to the curbline. There will be sidewalks on each side of the street, the center space of 12 will be used as a turn-way, and will be paved with asphaltine. Those prominent in the improvement are I. C. Crane, R. V. Miller, and C. X. Thurston. The petition has not yet been drawn up, but Mr. Crane has talked the matter over with a great many of the property owners and has found that all are favorable to the plan. It is his belief there is no doubt but that the improvement will be made. One detail of a change of this kind is that the grade of the street will have to be lowered about three feet. When the work is completed, the city will be asked to pass an ordinance prohibiting heavy traffic from passing over the asphaltine. This drive will not be allowed to form any part of the thoroughfare to Magnolia Bluff, as some had suggested. Residents down in the district of Queen Anne Drive are scanning the movements of their neighbors with much interest, and there is already talk of making a similar improvement that may soon cover the whole Queen Anne district.
“Residents down in the district of Queen Anne Drive are scanning the movements of their neighbors with much interest, and there is already talk of making a similar improvement that may soon cover the whole Queen Anne district.”
This 1899 proposal for a 'parkway' designed to exclude heavy traffic highlights an early tension in Seattle’s urban planning: the conflict between neighborhood aesthetics and the city's need for through-traffic infrastructure. Over a century later, residents of Queen Anne and other neighborhoods continue to debate 'traffic calming' and street usage, reflecting the same struggle to control the character of the streetscape.
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