The 'Educational Park' That Never Was
When Seattle’s public school superintendent proposed turning the old University of Washington site into a grand, permanent hub for the city’s schools and library, he called it his 'iridescent dream.'
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.
Hanging in the office of Mr. Frank J. Barnard, superintendent of the public schools, is a large square piece of cardboard. On the center of it is pasted a picture of a handsome building labelled 'high school.' In the four corners are pictures of a public school, a manual training school, a normal training school and a public library. 'That,' said Mr. Barnard yesterday, 'is my idea of the use to which the old state university site should be put when the university is moved to the suburbs. I think we ought to get hold of it in some way for the city, and put the high school and other buildings I have indicated there. Then we could call it 'Educational Park.' We need a high school; we need a manual training school; we need a normal school and a public library. Now where can we get a better place to put them than in this same ten-acre tract? It is centrally located, and the land lies well for the purpose. At first I thought of this with the idea that the state might appropriate money enough for a new state university site, and let the title of the present one revert to the city. But, that, as I have found, was an iridescent dream.'
“At first I thought of this with the idea that the state might appropriate money enough for a new state university site, and let the title of the present one revert to the city. But, that, as I have found, was an iridescent dream.”
Barnard’s dream for the old university tract—now the Metropolitan Tract in downtown Seattle—foreshadows the city's long-standing tug-of-war over urban space and public use. While the site eventually became a commercial center instead of a public campus, the recurring conflict over city land and how it serves the public remains a central theme in Seattle’s development.
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