The Man Who Would Make Seattle Beautiful
A landscape architect from Cleveland arrives in the Pacific Northwest with a radical proposal: tear down the ugly retaining walls and let nature take over.
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.
At the meeting of the city school board last night, Mr. O. Schwagerl, a distinguished landscape architect recently from Cleveland, Ohio, was present by invitation and made some important suggestions respecting the ornamentation of the immediate surroundings of the two new brick school buildings.
The suggestions offered were in very general terms based upon superficial impressions rather than a survey which has not yet been made. The plan of retaining walls, the common method here of dealing with embankments abutting upon the street, Mr. Schwagerl declared to be obsolete and unsightly. At best he declared they were nothing more than monuments to the grade of the streets and besides being very costly, were a positive blemish to buildings which are really an ornament to the city.
A method of improvement by which the slopes could be brought down in diversified and graceful lines to the level of the sidewalks would, he said, be cheaper and infinitely better than any artificial means of holding the grade walls in place. The board seem favorably impressed with the suggestions and invited Mr. Schwagerl to visit the grounds in company with themselves and the architect on Wednesday of next week to examine and further discuss the matter.
It is certainly to be hoped that some plan will be adopted by which these really magnificent buildings will be given proper settings and which will add to rather than diminish their value as ornaments to the city. Mr. Schwagerl's presence here is most fortunate at this time. He is by no means a novice in his profession. The general plan by which Cleveland has been made one of the most beautiful cities in America was of his devising and its execution was under his personal direction.
The time has come when we should do something for the beautification of the city. Its surroundings are notably picturesque and attractive and its site splendidly elevated and diversified; and a little harmonious art and taste expended now while everything is in the making, will have a wonderful effect upon its future appearance. It is none too soon to begin.
In an era before zoning laws or strict preservation codes, Seattle’s growth was often dictated by immediate utility rather than aesthetic vision. This article captures a pivotal moment where civic leaders were actively seeking external expertise to define the city's character, prioritizing 'graceful lines' over the functional but brutalist retaining walls that defined early 20th-century urban infrastructure. It mirrors modern debates about green infrastructure and public space design in Seattle today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.