Introduction

Until just over a century and a half ago, outskirts of Seattle were untouched land inhabited by Native Americans. The University District is one such area that once served as a backyard to the native people and transformed to become the urban metropolis it is today in a blink of an eye. The District is quite young with the first of the newcomers arriving around the 1880s, and yet it has managed to grow from small farming community to suburb to a fully established city by the mid-20th century. In attempt to discover the story of urbanization in the University District, I carefully studied a single block located in the Northern end of the District referred to as “Block 73.” Although the block is nothing more or less than a cluster of business buildings and residential homes, a single block of a city like this one has unique stories to tell of how the city came to be through its interactions with the city. From the perspective of Block 73, this series of site reports will tell a story from the beginnings of the University District and the block and through its years of existence, all the way to what it is anticipated to become of in the future.