Page 30 - 2024 March April Magazine

When We Had Two
TACOMA's
By David Snell
Downtown Seattle
s'AMOCAT
Old Georgetown, Seattle
What defines “place?” Going about my days and weeks and months, I often pass by
some of my old neighborhoods and stomping grounds in
North Tacoma and Seattle. I am comforted by the sights,
sounds and places I remember from childhood. I feel oddly offended by progress, such
as the gargantuan warehouse complexes atop the old pumpkin and berry farms in Fife.
Birds eye view
of Seattle & King Co.
Sketching Bunker Hills Demise,
Los Angeles
Of course, dozens of small towns have been consumed by the Greater LA urban creep. I doubt that older Anaheim residents would recognize the place in 2024; the orange groves are long gone. To some extent, this phenomenon must occur with all urbanizing areas, leaving local pioneers disoriented at best.
By the turn of the 20th Century, Bunker Hill was no longer considered elite, and the opulent Victorians and castles were gradually partitioned and converted to apartments and flop houses; the original and perfect setting for Hollywood’s film- noir phase. By the 1950s and mid 1960s, LA town leaders had had enough of the crime and decay, and dismantled Bunker Hill by evicting the resident pensioners and immigrants, demolishing the Victorian castles and shaving off the top of the hill. ‘Bunker Hill’ is now just a homogenized part of downtown L.A., where the art museum, Union Bank and semi-occupied high rise condo/office structures dominate the now-sterile landscape.
BUILDING TACOMA FROM PARTS
Our “City of Destiny,” like most modern metro areas, was formerly (at least) two towns. The districts that we affectionately describe as ‘Downtown’ and ‘Old Town’ were settled separately, for different reasons.
In 1852, Nicholas Delin built a
The ‘Twin Teepees’ restaurant near Green Lake and the
‘Hat and Boots’ gas station in Georgetown have been razed or moved. Before my time, the almost total replacement of Seattle’s gorgeous Victorians in the name of ‘50s and ‘60s ‘urban renewal’ seems like a devastating loss, especially after visiting Tacoma, Bellingham or Port Townsend which have preserved many of their 1800s archaeological gems.
I know I am not alone in these pro-vintage leanings. For context, I was born on Capitol Hill in Seattle, and have lived mostly in Tacoma and Seattle my whole life. I split the difference 20 years ago and settled in Browns Point, a space which is neither Tacoma nor Seattle.
CHANGE AND URBAN SPREAD
Seattle was initially established on Duwamish tribal land in November 1851 by the Denny Party. The Dennys camped at Alki Point in what is now known as West Seattle. It only took a year for the settlers to decide that the shelter of Elliott Bay provided a much more attractive and safe outpost, northeast
a bit, at what we now know as the Seattle Waterfront. As one might imagine, Seattle, West Seattle and smaller communities such as Georgetown and Ballard were eventually subsumed into Seattle proper. Seattle street grids are misaligned near the stadiums due to competing plotting and development disputes among pioneers Yesler, Maynard and Denny. Several decades passed, and back at Alki Point our own local Coney Island
Similarly, Los Angeles
California enjoyed a mid-19th
Century boom, as wealthy
patrons commissioned
castle-like mansions atop a
20-acre sagebrush ridge that
overlooked Broadway. The
elite of LA could thus look down on all the city.
This neighborhood eventually acquired the name “Bunker Hill” and a near-vertical railway, “Angels Flight,” was installed in the early 1900’s to ease the exhausting climb. Angels Flight was all of 320 feet long.
thrived as Luna Park from 1907-1913. sawmill near the head of what
Old City Hall
30 PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER | March/April 2024