A Street to Lake Union
Property owners push a $7,500 grading of Lake Avenue to link Elliott Bay and Lake Union and drain the flooded Denny meadow.
There is now pending in the board of aldermen a petition signed by a majority of the property owners on Lake Avenue asking that the city grade, under the bond system, the avenue from Bay Street to Mercer Street. If this is done, the city will have its first short and direct route from Elliott Bay to Lake Union. In other words, the street will be from the city to Lake Union what Madison Street is from the city to Lake Washington. The improvement will cost in the neighborhood of $7,500 and is of particular importance at this time, owing to the fact that with the proposed commencement of the government canal the city must have and will secure a direct route to the lake. At present it is necessary to travel eighteen squares along the territory involved to reach the lake, but the improvement will reduce the number to twelve. The improvement will also give drainage to what is now known as the Denny meadow, which at certain times in the year is flooded with water, which has no outlet once it gets into the meadow.
Lake Avenue is now graded from the bay to a point near Bay Street. For a time there was talk among some property owners and city officials of shutting up the street from Bay Street to the lake, but persons who are up to date on municipal improvements realize, it is said, the absurdity of such a movement.
The advantages of a street by which one can travel direct from one place to another are well known. It was the great William Penn who inaugurated the 'checkerboard' system of laying out cities, but while modern authorities on such matters have a great deal of respect for William Penn, they have no hesitancy in saying that diagonal streets are the proper thing for the cities of today. Philadelphia was laid out on the checkerboard plan, but of late years that city has spent many thousands of dollars introducing diagonal streets. Washington City has diagonal streets leading to one common center, with side streets fashioned after Penn's idea.
The persons who are urging the Lake Avenue improvement cite these facts as a few of the many advantages of having the work go on, and they believe that the city council will authorize it.
“The improvement will also give drainage to what is now known as the Denny meadow, which at certain times in the year is flooded with water, which has no outlet once it gets in the meadow.”
The Lake Avenue route was an early attempt to knit Elliott Bay to Lake Union; the ship canal, Westlake Avenue and the Mercer Street corridor later carried the idea forward. Seattle still argues over the same ground: how to move people, water and traffic through a narrow neck of the city.
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