Dear Diary,
Yeah, I was wrong. I have to do laundry tonight, which means I can't be watching the Korean drama I've started. So I decided to start looking into the history of the waterfront parks, and then faced the fact that I've been ignoring a major resource all along.
The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's web pages for individual parks routinely quote "park historian Don Sherwood". Sherwood (1916-1981, employee 1955-1977) was actually a department engineer who made park maps for his work, then started writing historical notes on them, then full-blown historical accounts when the maps ran out of room. The first few times I consulted these files, I wasn't impressed, because I couldn't get the answers I wanted from them. Well, stupid me. They're still a valuable resource, and I'm disappointed in myself to have waited so long to use them.
The Seattle Municipal Archives offers them as PDFs. Various bits and pieces go into those PDFs, reassembled in various ways, so anyone who reads the PDFs on parks close to each other is likely to see some of the same pages twice. The preceding paragraph cribs shamelessly from the introduction to the index page. The rest of this cribs shamelessly from the rest of that page. I flag the ones that are indicated as over 1000K with an asterisk *.
- 14th Ave NW Boat Ramp
- Albert Davis Park
- B. F. Day Playground
- Ballard Boulevard (apparently a plan linking the tiny parks west of Woodland Park - Sunset Place, Cascade Place, Greenwood Triangle and Rainier Place; became a Seattle Department of Transportation park that I haven't visited yet as such)
- Ballard Playground
- Ballard Pool
- Belvoir Place
- Bergen Place
- Bitter Lake Playfield
- Blue Ridge Places and Circle (confirms the locations of Blue Ridge Places asserted by Google Maps)
- Bryant Playground
- Burke-Gilman Trail* (3500K)
- Carkeek Park* (1006K)
- Cascade Place (described as "overgrown, undefinable" and not really mapped)
- Christie Park (pre-expansion)
- Corliss Place
- Cowen Park
- Dahl Playfield
- Fremont Canal Park
- Froula Playground
- Gas Works Park
- Gilman Playground
- Golden Gardens Park
- Green Lake Park* (2420K), plus Bathhouse Theatre and Evans Pool
- Greenwood Triangle
- Inverness Ravine Park
- Jackson Park
- Keystone Place
- Laurelhurst Playfield and Community Center
- Laurelhurst Triangle (another park now owned by SDOT that I haven't visited as such yet)
- Licton Springs Park
- Loyal Heights Playfield and Community Center
- Magnuson Park* (1400K; already shows the enlisted men's bathhouse replaced by the tower restrooms, shows the central restrooms, omits the boat launch ones)
- Maple Leaf Playground (now Maple Leaf Reservoir Park)
- Matthews Beach
- Meadowbrook Playfield and Community Center
- Meridian Playground
- Mineral Springs Park
- Northacres Park
- North Beach Park
- North Passage Point* (1140K)
- Park Home Circle
- Pinehurst Playground
- Rainier Place
- Ravenna Boulevard
- Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center
- Ravenna Park* (1570K)
- Ross Playground
- Sacajawea Playground
- Salmon Bay Park
- Sandel Playground
- Soundview Playfield
- Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp
- Sunset Hill Park
- Sunset Place
- Thornton Creek Parks
- University Circle
- University Lake Shore Place
- University Playground
- University of Washington (a map of the campus, but not noticeably a claim to city ownership)
- Victory Heights Playground
- View Ridge Playfield
- Wallingford Playfield
- Wedgwood Square
- Woodland Park* (1570K)
From what I've looked at so far, I'm not sure how consistently he paid attention to restrooms, but he certainly sometimes mapped them (e.g. Magnuson). I haven't found water fountains indicated on the maps I've looked at yet.
I hope you enjoy reading these and finding my mistakes over the next few days, dear Diary. Now, really, good night.
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