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CHS Special: Where is Capitol Hill?

by Dotty DeCoster
Dotty originally wrote this piece for next week’s issue of the Capitol Hill Times. With the Times overhauling its business, that issue won’t make it to the printing press. Thanks Dotty for sharing your work here on CHS.

Aside from the weather, one of the perennial conversational topics in Seattle continues to be the question: “Where is Capitol Hill?” The geographic answer is that there isn’t a Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill, originally a sub-division developed by James A. Moore beginning in 1901, is located along a north-south ridge that once extended south all the way to Renton and ends to the north overlooking what is now the Lake Washington Ship Canal.

This is not to say that Capitol Hill isn’t high above sea level. The most spectacular of our current built structures are the three communications towers clustered near 17th and 18th Avenues just south of E. Madison Street that rise to nearly 1,000 feet above mean sea level. Located at the southern edge of what we call Capitol Hill, people from out of town tend to see the towers, point to them, and say, “There is Capitol Hill.” After all, the other three tall towers are on Queen Anne Hill, which is a hill. At something close to 410 feet above mean sea level, the “Capitol Hill” towers stand on ground only about 39 feet shorter than the ones on Queen Anne. But the ridge they stand on extends northward and includes the highest point in Volunteer Park at 453 feet. For comparison, the highest point in Seattle is at High Point at 35th Ave SW and SW Myrtle Street (near the water tower, in West Seattle) at 520 feet.


The Television Towers
The KCTS-TV tower, on the corner of 18th and E. Madison went on the air in 1965. Channel 9 is Seattle’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) channel (Channel 41 digital) and began as an experiment at the University of Washington in 1954. (KCTS = Community Television Service, with the K for west of the Mississippi River.) It was founded with a gift from Mrs. Dorothy Bullitt, president of KING Broadcasting Company, and the station’s license was held in trust for the community by the U.W. Board of Regents. The station was located at the U.W., but the transmitter was at Edison Technical College, now part of Seattle Central Community College, until the current tower was built.  During the mid-1980s, KCTS ended its official relationship with the UW and built it’s current broadcast facility near the Seattle Center in 1986. The tower continues to belong to the U.W., and, in addition to KCTS transmission, provides for transmission of radio stations KUOW-FM (94.9) and KEXP-FM (90.3) which also began at the U.W. The WA7ARC Radio Club has part of their Repeater System mounted on this tower.

The KSTW-TV tower was built in Seattle in 1979, on the same block but south west a bit. This is Channel 11 (digital 36), originally in Tacoma (KSTW = Seattle Tacoma Washington). First known as KTNT-TV, the station began broadcasting in Tacoma in 1953. It was sold to Gaylord Entertainment in 1974 and they changed the call letters and built the transmitting tower in Seattle. The analog channel has been VHF, which means that we all needed to use a round antenna rather than rabbit ears to catch it. Now owned by CBS, the tower includes antennas used by the Coast Guard. The KSTW building is right next to the KCTS building on Madison Street. Across 18th Avenue is the newest of the towers, built in 1985 as KTZZ-TV. Currently, it is KMYQ 22 (digital 25), a My Network outlet.

The towers as art

All three of the towers have television stations currently transmitting in analog, but ready to transmit in digital when the federal government tells them. Currently, the date has been extended from February 14 to June 12, 2009: an historic moment in television history.

The Renton Addition
The television towers are located in the old Renton’s Addition, first platted for real estate sales in 1899, two years before the Capitol Hill Addition was named. It was owned by Sarah and Captain William Renton and was the area between 15th and 19th Avenues from Howell to Union Streets. Extended in 1892 as the Renton Hill Addition, the boundaries went east to 24th between Olive and Union. Historically speaking, the towers are located on Renton Hill.

It has been a long time since anyone spoke of Renton Hill, and the neighborhood has been without a name – part of Capitol Hill on the north side of Madison, part of the Central Area on the south side of Madison – anchored by T.T. Minor Elementary School (1890-1940, 1941-2009). Today, it hosts shopping destinations Madison Market (the Co-op) and Trader Joe’s, along with the towers, and at 17th is the place one changes buses along Madison Street to go through. CHS has been attempting to come up with a name that actually would work for this neighborhood – Radio Point, anyone? In the meantime, Seattle artist Christopher Martin Hoff has been painting the towers from a seat right outside Madison Market.

photos by seadevi

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