Magnuson Park: Things We've Lost, Part I

Dear Diary,

I was embarrassed enough by all of yesterday's bloviation to want to do better today, and I didn't have much to do on campus anyway, so why not?  This led to a day of excruciating personal embarassments but a lot of material for you, dear Diary.

I started north early enough that I thought nothing of it on finding Burke-Gilman Playground Park's restrooms locked.  It was just past 7 A.M.; of course they were.  Unfortunately, I needed to be thinking more personally.  Not much later, just south of the intersection between Sand Point Way and 50th Ave, I had to turn onto a trail to do, um, Number One.  And a woman jogged past while I was doing it!  Dear Diary, I don't think I've failed the mayor's challenge quite so badly ever before.

All the same, this made a really thorough exploration of Magnuson Park doable.  Near the men's room I posted about before, the one with a warm-water sink, there's an old map of the park.  Someone with a better camera should photograph that map before it's torn down, but here's what I could do:

Notice that it shows seven restrooms.  A newer map near the entrance:

only knows of three, and the city today knows of two (PDF).  So what became of the seven restrooms of Magnuson Park?  Four near the shore, two near the city side, and one in between.  Let's start there.  There is today a restroom on the Cross Park Trail, as indicated on both maps, and I found it open:

Unfortunately it doesn't have any soap - looks like someone vandalised the dispenser to steal it:

But you see those two taps?  Looks like it's meant to give cold or warm water, though I didn't get any warm on a quick try.

This restroom isn't reachable from pavement, only from gravel, so probably won't mean much to me with my cart.

The most obvious path away leads to the place I told you, dear Diary, about before:

The open door is the dark spot behind a sign; note the lifeguard station visible between the two halves of the building.  This area was hopping by now, about 8 A.M., so it's unfortunate the dryer doesn't work; waving my cheese knife around trying to dry it was much more epatering les bourgeoises than I really like to do.

Anyway, that's the end of the good news.  The next restroom south should be there according to both maps, and the building is, but there's a fence around it:

You can hear water flowing, and maybe the rusty pavement on one side is thanks to an irremediable plumbing problem, or to too-hasty removal of the appliances.  Notice also the broken water fountain:

From here, it's mostly a guessing game.  Many of the "sanicans" scattered like confetti around the park are at present or former restroom sites; two occupy what I think is the visible scar of the old restroom site at the boat launch:

But there are none near what I suspect is the old parking lot site:

The hardest one to find is the one that used to be near 70th St.  I think its former site is now occupied by Sportsfield Drive, but maybe one of these road edge segments shows part of the scar:

Finally we get to a restroom that still exists even though it isn't on the newer map, the one on the east side of the Brig:

Unfortunately, it's apparently only open seasonally, meaning "not yet".

So that's what we've kept and what we've lost of the astonishing abundance of restrooms that used to be available in Magnuson Park.  Much of you, dear Diary, can be read by evil-minded sorts as critical of our wonderful mayor, but in this case it's obvious that this wastage of our inheritance happened over decades; I'd be mildly surprised to learn that any of the three missing buildings were torn down on the current mayor's watch.  Roanoke Park used to have a restroom, but not since I came here in 2006.  Who knows how much else we've abandoned along the way?

The rest of today's story hasn't happened yet, so comes in the next post.