Seattle Parks and Boulevards

In 1903, the Olmsted Brothers firm, under the leadership of John Charles Olmsted, developed "A Comprehensive System of Parks and Parkways” for Seattle's Board of Park Commissioners, beginning a professional relationship that would span three decades. Over the years connections between parks and residential enclaves, once purposefully linked by twenty miles of tree lined boulevards, has been severed, threatening the carefully choreographed landscape experience.

History

Quick to become the largest urban center in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle was established in November 1851 on land now designated as West Seattle. The following year, the beginnings of the city were relocated to a site near an Indigenous community of the Duwamish peoples, led by their chief Seattle, from whence the city derived its name. Since its inception, Seattle’s development has been woven into its spectacular surroundings—the bordering dense woodlands, Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges, lowland waterways, and coastal vistas over the Puget Sound.

In 1903 the Olmsted Brothers firm, under the leadership of John Charles Olmsted, was hired to survey Seattle’s natural landscapes and prepare the report, A Comprehensive System of Parks and Parkways, for the city’s newly re-established and expanded Board of Park Commissioners. So began a relationship between the city and the Olmsted firm that would span more than three decades, including the involvement of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and firm associates James Dawson and Percy Reginald Jones. John Charles Olmsted’s vision was to produce a network of boulevards and parkways connecting parks across the city, with the assurance that every home in Seattle would be within a half mile of parkland. The initial plan was adopted in October of that year, with a subsequent plan adopted in 1908 for the growing city (Seattle’s population had ballooned from approximately 80,000 to 250,000 in the first decade of the twentieth century alone). A distinguishing feature of Seattle’s system of boulevards is that its initial construction occurred concurrently with the city’s accelerating development. Thus, to a great extent, neighborhoods formed around the Olmsted plan, with urban fabric and natural features of the landscape inextricably linked.

Parks, Boulevards, and Playgrounds of Seattle, 1909 (left); Olmsted System Parks, Boulevards, and Playgrounds of the City of Seattle, 1908 (right).

John Charles Olmsted recognized the city’s “extraordinary landscape advantages” from lakefront to mountaintop, endeavoring to “secure and preserve for the use of the people as much as possible of these advantages of water and mountain views and woodlands, well distributed and conveniently located.” The goal of the original plan was to locate a park or playground in close proximity to every home, with a twenty-mile landscaped boulevard as both the system’s dominant feature and its primary connective tissue. Parkways and boulevards (distinct in the Olmsted report, but now all referred to colloquially as ‘boulevards’) connected the series of parks and were located and shaped to maximize views of the spectacular features of a topographically complex landscape—snow-covered mountains, water vistas, and abundantly vegetated hollows.

Olmsted firm employees at Lake Washington Boulevard site, Seattle, Washington.

As testimony to the public support the plan generated, within ten years of its submission, most of the land was secured. In all, the firm designed 37 parks and playgrounds and 23 miles of boulevards and parkways, culminating with their final contribution, Washington Park and Arboretum, in 1936. Each park took advantage of the existing topography, borrowed views, and features distinct to its particular location. The boulevards responded to the topography as well, winding from the shore to the crest of bluffs to capture views, incorporate woodland areas and stream corridors, and connect parks throughout. This movement through the landscape heightens the visitor’s overall understanding of Seattle’s dynamic natural setting, and how the city fits within that setting.

Scene on Lake Washington Parkway, Seattle, Washington, 1909.

Today, the Friends of Seattle’s Olmsted Parks, a group founded in 1981 to promote awareness, enjoyment, and care of the city’s Olmsted parks and landscapes, plays a key partnership role with the city. Lake Washington Boulevard, as a component of the Seattle Parks and Boulevard System, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.