Street Ends: North Lake Union

Dear Diary,

This is the first page in this series whose street ends are all publicly accessible. Unfortunately, they aren't much to look at - in this area, the waterways beat the street ends hands down for enjoyment of the shore - but anyway here they are.

This page covers two to four street ends, depending how you count.  I introduced one of them, which is an official Seattle park, way back in June in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?", two more in "Lake Union's North Shore" in October (which is also the page anyone curious about the waterways should see), and one, the least impressive of all, is new.

These photos may not be good, but at least they're better than those in the other pages.

Latona Ave NE Street End

Photo 1 - The street that ends, photographed October 14

Photo 2 - The land the city appears to claim, photographed October 13

Photos 3 - Two views over the water, photographed October 13 (first) and 14

Sunnyside Ave N Street End, aka Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

Photos 1 - photographed October 13

So wait a minute - the street that ends ends right at the shoreline!  There is no street end here!  I think there really isn't, but let's first finish with the photos, because there certainly is a view.

Photo 3 - photographed October 14

OK, now for the mystery.  The city's GIS tool says this is the Sunnyside Ave N street end, but the appendices to the Cheshiahud Loop plans tell (p. 90) a different story.  (For links to both see "Lake Union's North Shore".)  They correctly note that the boat ramp is a waterway (a place for boats to enter and leave the water), and since Lake Union waterways are owned by the state, they infer that this one is too.

Well, this would just be a weird fantasy on the part of the trail planners except that they offer as corroboration another location for the Sunnyside Ave N street end.

Sunnyside Ave N Street End

Photo 1 - photographed October 14

Yes, this is where the instance of Sunnyside north of the boat ramp ends, at N Pacific St.

Photos 2 - photographed October 14

The Cheshiahud Loop people say that compensation for the actual street end was made in the form of a "planted median".  Now, you can see there's no planted median in Sunnyside or Pacific here.  But the Burke-Gilman Trail runs south of Pacific, it's split between pedestrians and cyclists there, and as it happens there are plantings between the two.  Those plantings extend well beyond any reasonable size for the compensation, I basically think this theory is as lunatic as the boat ramp one, but I took photos just in case.

The Burke-Gilman Trail and the Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp both exist, and both are public parks.  Both appear, from the city's real property report, to have title complexities, but unless there's some legal need to involve the street end laws in resolving those, I don't see any point in calling anything near Sunnyside Ave N a street end.

Fremont Bridge (Fremont Ave N) Street End

I'm pretty sure I did the street end research that underlies the introduction to this series on October 15, before setting out for Ballard.  On the way there, I saw another bridge split above me:

And I took pictures of the Fremont Bridge street end.  There's no street that ends - nothing analogous to Eastlake Place here for me to fantasise about - so no photo 1.

The GIS tool says this street end is incorporated into the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Photo 2 - photographed October 16

Photo 3 - photographed October 16

Well, the Fremont Bridge is at the far northwest corner of Lake Union, and this street end faces west, so that's actually a view of the ship canal.

Next stop Salmon Bay, but it's raining so hard where I am that I'm going to wait before trying to write it.  Until then, dear Diary.