Site Report #2: Environmental History by Loren Pickard
Before the 1900’s, my block consisted mainly of trees. The ground was relatively flat, as you can see on the 1893 map to the left (Historical Topographic Map Explorer, 1983). The red plus sign is where my block was. When reading topographical maps, its important to know what the lines represent different levels of elevation, and the closer the lines are, the steeper the incline. As you can see, the lines are relatively far apart where my block is, relative to the rest of the area. It was not yet developed since there was no need for it to be. The only development in the area was a few roads and a rail way, in order to get lumber out of lake union and transport it elsewhere. For this reason, the main development is near lake union at Latona, with only a few houses for the men who worked at the shipyard. At this time, everything is still underdeveloped and calm because UW has not been established in this area yet.
When 1895 rolls around and UW is relocated to the area, we see the growth start to happen as student enrollment grows rapidly. According to University District Historic Survey Report , “the University Commercial Club was established in 1901 to promote business development”, which helped bring in new shops to the area (Tobin, 10). As you can see in the 1909 map, just 15 years after the first map, development exploded (Historical Topographic Map Explorer, 1909). When the University was put into place, there was a residential and commercial need much greater than the old shipping town could provide. Now there were thousands of students, professors, misc. university workers, shop keepers, their families, etc., that needed housing, shops and amenities. As you can see by the red plus sign, my block went from being home to a few trees, to a block surrounded by streets with 8 homes on it. It’s incredible to see how fast and efficient humans can work and create cities when it is needed.
Over the next 100+ years we see the area, especially my block, become more and more urban. This urbanization virtually destroyed the natural area, as you can see in the map of 1983. Across from my block in the 1909 map, there is a decently large park where some of the natural terrain from the 1800’s lived on. Yet, in the 1983 map you see this natural park area cut substantially and now only fills half a block, labeled PK (Historical Topographic Map Explorer, 1983). Despite the fact development of this area happened so rapidly, we see the developers in the early 1900’s try and preserve some of the natural environment, but eventually even that area was urbanized. I thought the picture of the car wreck in 1943 at the corner of my block on at 50th and Roosevelt tied together everything I am trying to get across (Seattle Municipal Archives, Photograph Collection). Where there was once peace and serenity in the natural environment, was quickly taken over by man. People came in with their a disruptive and intrusive nature, crashing their CO2 emitting death traps into each other on my block once filled with meadows and trees.
Despite the overwhelming urbanization on my block, it is heartening to see nature live on. most of the nature on my block was clearly just put in with the new construction, as it was organized and placed in a way that was color coordinated and pleasing to the eye, but I did find one tree that was an exception to this. The tree I took a picture of on Roosevelt had clearly been there for quite some time. It was old, worn, and had vines all along it. Another sign I saw was some weeds that were coming up in the cracks in an old parking lot near the Seven Gables Thearte. These signs just showed me that despite all the development and construction, nature perseveres and will always find a way to break through and show itself.