The Dream of Ravenna Park: A Victorian Utopia in the Pines
Promoted as a 'city of churches' and culture, W.W. Beck’s ambitious Ravenna development sought to mirror an Italian paradise on the shores of Lake Washington.
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.
Of all the charming suburbs surrounding Seattle, none excels in natural loveliness like Ravenna Park. Platted about one year ago by W.W. Beck, it occupies about 70 acres of land lying around the head of Union Bay on Lake Washington. Beck's primary object has been to make for himself a beautiful home in the neighborhood of cultured society. As the Italian Ravenna was situated four miles from the Adriatic, so our Ravenna—a city of churches and beautiful homes—is located about four miles from the American Adriatic, or Admiralty Inlet. The landscape here presents a charming combination of mountain, lake, and forest grandeur. About seventy acres of the heaviest woodland have been reserved for a park, containing a deep canyon, numerous falls, a sulphur spring, and trees forty-two feet in diameter. Mr. Beck, an educated Kentuckian and former minister, has alone and unaided founded the Seattle Female College here, providing his own home for the accommodation of the institution. A beautiful $10,000 church edifice has also been erected to house the college until dedicated buildings are finished. With the new grist mill and the proximity of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern railway, this forest primeval is being transformed into a grand suburban feature of the metropolis on Elliott Bay.
“When Lake Washington has been connected with the Sound by a ship canal and has become a great fresh water harbor decked with shipping, a home at Ravenna Park... will possess all the charms that variety of scene can give.”
Ravenna Park, once envisioned as a private enclave for the 'cultured society' and a speculative college town, is now one of Seattle’s most beloved public park systems. The dream of the 'ship canal' connecting the lakes to the Sound did eventually come true, though the grist mills and female colleges have long since vanished into the city’s residential sprawl.
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