Before the Railroads Cut Through Seattle, One Man Proposed a Saner Street Grid
A letter to the editor calls for wider avenues, a logical naming and numbering system, and railroad tracks that follow the platted streets—not slice across them at will.
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.
Editor Post-Intelligencer: Is it not time our streets were systematically widened? Let Commercial street be widened fifteen feet on each side and extended northerly parallel with Front or First street, and southerly across the flats, making it our most westerly business avenue. Every alternate north and south street commencing with Front street (should be First street) ought to be widened at least ten feet on each side through to Lake Washington. Mill street and every alternate street north or south should be at least ten feet wider on each side through to the lakes. Most of the buildings now built could remain until removal back to these new lines is advisable, or new buildings are constructed.
Regarding the systematic naming of streets, commencing next south of Mill street with the letter A, and retaining old names where now named for individuals, as Andrews street, Burke, Coulter, Dearborn, Elliston, Freeman, Gatzert, Horton, Isaacs, Jackson, Kinnear, Lawton, Miller, Nelson, Osborn, Plummer, Quinn, Rasin, Stetson, Turner, Ulin, Van Buren, Whitworth, Yesler, Zinn, and thereafter the names of other citizens or property owners, commencing at the letter A. The names of most streets north and parallel with Mill street could be systematized thus: First Avenue, Second Avenue, etc. Names of streets parallel with Commercial street, south of Mill, remaining as at present, and those designated as North First, North Second, etc.
By then numbering these streets, commencing with number one and allowing one hundred numbers to each block, odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right, from Commercial street east and from Mill street both north and south, strangers could readily find any desired place of business or residence.
Why should not railroads approaching this city enter parallel with the streets as platted, instead of crossing and recrossing at pleasure? If the Tacoma and Green River roads would enter from the south over the flats, if need be occupying the whole of Second and Third streets, including the intervening blocks, for one I am willing to grant them my right and title to the right of way for their tracks, over three additions in South Seattle, and doubtless others will do the same.
H. H. Dunning. Seattle, Aug. 7, 1883.
“Is it not time our streets were systematically widened?”
In 1883 Seattle was just beginning to imagine itself as a railroad metropolis, and this letter reads like a modern planning op-ed: street widths, address systems, and who gets the right-of-way. The same questions—how to make a fast-growing city legible and how to route rail through it—still shape Seattle’s fights over transit, bike lanes, and the waterfront.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.