Site Report #1 The Deep Read
Block 65: Between Brooklyn Ave NE and University Way NE and NE 52nd Ave and NE 50th St, only has one building but it is a building that serves many members of the community. The University Heights Center was once an elementary school but is now home to various children’s activities such as “Northwest Boy choir & Vocal point!”, “Broadway Bound Children’s Theater Office” and the University District Children’s Center. This block has the sole purpose of providing for this center and the surrounding community. There is a community garden, a play structure for young children and a basketball court for kids and teens alike. Something interesting I noticed was for a previous location of a school there is a lack of a park and a kid friendly environment.
The surrounding neighborhoods don’t have much stimulation for the younger generations so this place serves as a peace of mind to parents and a way to keep their children out of trouble. The center holds many activities for children, for example on Saturday the center hosted the “Reptile Man”. While observing the play structure here, I noticed that there was a lack of diversity within the children. Could it be that in year’s past this was a segregated community and while that segregation is over, one can still see evidence of it in demographic records? I hope to truly investigate this further in my other site reports.
Surrounding this block are new apartment complexes, including one currently under construction on University Way NE, and run down fast food and grocery markets. For this reason, I speculate that this was an impoverished neighborhood that the city is trying to urbanize. I wonder if the newly constructed apartment buildings, replaced run down homes and with that drove out families that could no longer afford the raising mortgage in the greater Seattle area. Or if the increase of students attending the University of Washington is driving the market towards cheaper housing that can fit mass amounts of people. As UW students progress in school, they no longer want to live in the dorms and would prefer to live off campus but at a walkable distance.
The University Heights Center itself has been proclaimed a historical landmark so the features are still roughly the same as the day it was built. The building is a faded blue with a foundation of red bricks. It also features a traditional grand arch way and intricate white molding throughout the exterior of the building. How was the landscape shaped in the 19th century, long before this landmark was built? Did it too include grand buildings or was it just homes of bricks and mud?