A century ago, Capitol Hill’s cobblestone streets eased transportation woes — Now, their purpose is preservation

Sometimes green and a little Pacific Northwest mossy, sometimes just bumpy, there are still stretches of cobblestone streets around Capitol Hill in 2024.

Seattle is home to about 100 blocks of cobblestone streets, including east of 23rd Ave and on Mercer, Roy, Valley and Ward streets. Similarly to other cities across the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the cobblestones replaced dirt or plank roads — the original roads of Seattle — but as the city turned to asphalt and became more concretely paved, some historically stoned streets have survived.

“Many people who live near or travel on these streets appreciate their aesthetic quality and historic significance, and the city has generally attempted to preserve these cobblestone streets to the extent possible,” a Seattle Department of Transportation representative told CHS.

Formerly known as the Seattle Engineering Department, SDOT and the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods signed an agreement that set out guidelines for the preservation and maintenance of cobblestone streets in 1996. Continue reading

This week in CHS history | Jonathan Caradonna murder, 2020 COVID ‘stay home’ restrictions, the Canterbury’s end


Here are the top stories from this week in CHS history:

2023

 

‘DO NOT BLOCK BIKE LANE’ — Latest Seattle guerilla street safety project finds signs alone no match for drivers looking for a place to park on Capitol Hill


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CHS Classic | There is a stairway to nowhere at Broadway and Harvard

(Image: University of Washington: Special Collections)

There’s a triangle where Broadway and Harvard meet just north of Madison that has been fenced for years. The last time we wrote about it in 2010, the lot was fenced and full of weeds. Fourteen years later, the lot is still fenced and still full of weeds.

Behind the fence is a concrete stairway with a railing — but whatever building it led to is no longer there. It’s a stairway to nowhere.

How could a patch of land along a street like Broadway remain so unused?

We know what happened tot he building.

This was the old Scottish Rite Cathedral, which opened in 1911 and remained in use by the Scottish Rite until the late 1950s. The building was actually built in the old Spring right-of-way which was vacated by the city in March of 1891, long before the Masonic Temple Association bought the land in August of 1910.

Flash forward 114 years and find a fenced empty lot full of surprisingly hearty weeds and an ambitious clutch of trees. The Polyclinic, the owner of this strange patch of Capitol Hill, has been ambitious with the rest of its properties. But this lot is a conundrum. Continue reading

This week in CHS history | Amazon Go arrives on Capitol Hill, King County’s first ‘presumptive positive’ COVID-19 case, St. Joe’s ‘community fridge’

(Images: CHS)

Here are the top stories from this week in CHS history:

2023

 

Capitol Hill church adds front lawn ‘community fridge’ to provide fresh food for those in need


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This week in CHS history | Nacho Borracho debuts, Cal Anderson and Volunteer ‘de facto’ dog parks, Seven Hills Park sweep

Here are the top stories from this week in CHS history:

2023

 

With Cal Anderson and Volunteer ‘de facto’ dog parks, Seattle taking its doggone time creating new off-leash areas

Seattle breaks ground on street, bike, and sidewalk project to make Pike and Pine one-way between Pike Place Market and Bellevue Ave — But no time table for changes on Capitol Hill, yet

Hot Mama’s Pizza mourns passing of owner Krista Nelson — ‘the glue that held us all together’

Legislation to create caste protections passes in Seattle as Sawant calls for supporters to build movement ‘to spread this victory around the country’

2022

 

Man shot and killed on Summit Ave

Where the people from the Seven Hills Park sweep went

Capitol Hill’s Sam Hill mansion is back on the market for $16M but this time its new story rivals its history

What Capitol Hill’s new eight-story, mass timber City Market building — with corrugated steel and Japanese climbing vines — will look like

2021

 

QFC says will lay off 109 workers in Seattle hazard pay closures including 15th Ave E store

Surrounded by taller buildings with room for more people on all sides, two 1906-built houses set to finally make way for development on Bellevue Ave E

One struck and killed, driver to hospital in 10th Ave E crash

2020

 

A chain that lasted 10 years on Capitol Hill, Panera Bread set to close on Broadway

After a bitter 2019, Caffe Vita’s new owner wants to give employees voice

One of Broadway’s ‘earliest extant buildings’ the next facing demolition plans in wave of redevelopment — UPDATE

The Cuff mourns after ‘longtime patron’ passes away at club

2019

 

With planned closure of Roy Street Coffee, Starbucks experiment on Capitol Hill will end — UPDATE

Good news for Capitol Hill Station riders as Metro buses prepare to exit Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel for good

Yarce suspends Seattle City Council campaign, won’t challenge Sawant for District 3

CHS Pics | The new ‘selfie’-checkouts at the Broadway Market QFC

2014

 

First look: Nacho Borracho brings margaritas and queso to Broadway bar rejuvenation

Work begins on Broadway’s Hollywood Lofts

Capitol Hill gets its own web series from the minds of Wes Hurley and Waxie Moon

‘Visionary’ 11th/Pine office and preservation project ready to move forward

 

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As we drink to Linda’s 30th, raise a glass to 97 years and counting at 707 E Pine

Capitol Hill at Pine and Boylston, looking southwest at downtown, Seattle, Washington, July 22, 1991. 707 E Pine is in the foreground and Linda’s was about to be born. (Image: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collection)

So, you know the secret of how Linda’s has survived and thrived on Capitol Hill for 30 years Linda Derschang isn’t wrong when she says it is about people.

But the 1927-built store turned Middle Eastern restaurant with belly dancing turned grunge-era bar is also a key component.

Somehow over its three decades at 707 E Pine, Linda’s hasn’t directly faced the challenges that come with new landlords and new development plans.

King County records show the same family who gave Linda’s its first lease 30 years ago continues to hold the property. Continue reading

CHS Classic | The Cayton-Revels House: a landmark to Seattle’s Black history on 14th Ave E

Susie Revels Cayton and Horace Cayton Sr. with family in 1904 (Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature/Chicago Public Library)

Take a walk this Black History Month to visit Capitol Hill’s Cayton-Revels House.

Built in 1902, the Queen Anne Victorian-style house was once the home of Horace Roscoe Cayton, publisher of Seattle Black-owned newspaper the Seattle Republican, and his wife and associate editor Susie Sumner Revels Cayton. The 2021 landmark designation was a significant and necessary acknowledgement of Seattle’s Black history.

CHS reported here on the efforts of the 14th and Mercer structure’s owners to achieve landmark status and protections for the 1902-built house, honor the Cayton-Revels family, and recognize the legacy of the racial covenants that shaped Capitol Hill. According to the landmarks nomination, “the Caytons were one of only three Black American families living in today’s definition of Capitol Hill​ before racial restrictive covenants barred non-white residents in 1927.”

The news business
The Seattle Republican was one of the most widely-read newspapers in the region at that time. In print from 1894 to 1913, the Republican appealed to national and local audiences of all races, but primarily focused on local politics and the Black experience. Horace Cayton, born a slave on a Mississippi cotton plantation and educated at Alcorn University, made his way to the Pacific Northwest in pursuit of greater freedoms in the frontier-era West. As Seattle changed from a frontier town to a growing city with increasingly racist power structures and property covenants, Black families were pushed into the Central District, where the Cayton-Revels eventually relocated.

“The Caytons were one of the most well-known Black American families in Seattle at the turn of the 20th century because of their business and political involvements,” said Taha Ebrahimi, a Capitol Hill resident who researched and wrote the 142-page landmark proposal for the Cayton-Revels house. Continue reading