“Official Inspection Tour of the City Council” — 1900 (Image: Seattle Municipal Archives Photograph Collection)
Sunday afternoon, present-day Seattleites will gather on the lawn of Volunteer Park to play at games and celebrate in styles from when the city’s grand open space was completed with the addition of its conservatory one hundred years ago this year. The Victorian Day celebration and benefit for the Volunteer Park Conservatory is a thoroughly modern phenomenon — in 1912, Seattle used bonds to pay for the Olmstead creation it wanted to enhance. The space had been a park since the 1880s when the last of the burials from the cemetery it replaced were disinterred and moved to Lake View. in 1901, City Park became Volunteer. But it wasn’t until the Conservatory was completed in 1912 that the municipal asset we enjoy today was wholly in place.
Below, a few notes from the CHS archives about Volunteer Park’s past and, more importantly, what’s next. We’ve also embedded a fantastic document created during the park’s successful run for recognition as an official Seattle landmark. There is undoubtedly plenty to learn from the past to help its future. The links and pictures add up to a special, sometimes fantastical public space for wandering and enjoying Capitol Hill. We suppose this Sunday is as good as any other this year to say: Volunteer Park, we’re glad you’re here.
Volunteer Park from the CHS archives
- Capitol Hill landmark Volunteer Park Conservatory now official Seattle landmark
- Volunteer Park’s busy 100th year: Playground overhaul, Conservatory’s $3 ticket and weddings plan
- Volunteer Park up for historical landmark nomination
- The architectural argument for saving Capitol Hill’s Conservatory
- 3,000 mark 25 years of the Seattle AIDS Walk
- Warning: Volunteer Park to be infested by giant knitted snails
- 17 pictures of 2011 Volunteer Park dahlias (+1 before they bloomed)
- CHS Re:Take | Seward’s Foliage in Volunteer Park, 1912 and 2011
- CHS Pics: Happy Eritrean Independence Day, Volunteer Park
- CHS Pics: Marijuana rally in Volunteer Park in a spring of dispensaries and pot bills
- Emptied Volunteer Park reservoir getting a solid scrubbing
- Volunteer Park tree #98 has fallen taking a chunk of the amphitheater wall with it
- CHS Pics: Volunteer Park’s good Vibrations (daylight edition)
- CHS Pics: Volunteer Park gets medieval
- CHS Pics: A Volunteer Park tradition
- Mystery plaque found in Volunteer Park: Can you help find its home?
- Pride on Capitol Hill adds new fun: Pride Picnic complete with SOaP box derby
- Wild Capitol Hill: ‘Dekoi’ heron stalks Volunteer Park pond
- Wild Capitol Hill: 7 Volunteer Park baby ducks edition
- 16 seconds of glory in Volunteer Park
- CHS Pics: A sunny Scottish play with Shakespeare in Volunteer Park
- $9,000 panel stolen from Volunteer Park water tower last summer found in flower bed
- CHS Pics: Fast bikes going round and round in Volunteer Park
- MOMS Pharmacy helps bring Seattle AIDS Walk to Volunteer Park
- Hula in Volunteer Park as Conservatory group holds community luau, seeks budget support
- Volunteer Park “Western Loop” closure starting June 12th
