The Parks of Seattle's Downtown, part VB: Northwest (northern group)

Dear Diary,

Well, I've had to stay up too late to do it, but here's this page, right on schedule.  So let's get started.  I said that the parks of northwestern downtown in Seattle fell into two groups, because they're different kinds of parks in different environments, because tonight's group are much larger and more photogenic, and because they have different common elements.

Well, tonight's parks' common element is actually the first thing listed, which is arguably not exactly a park at all:  the Elliott Bay Trail.

The parks of downtown Seattle's north waterfront have something else in common, to varying extents.  They're hemmed in by an actual, operating railroad line.  (I was stopped by an 81-car train today, in fact.)  So they're seriously deficient in exits.

The Elliott Bay Trail

The Elliott Bay Trail is a sort of virtual trail kind of like the Cheshiahud Loop, as opposed to a purpose-built trail like the Burke-Gilman Trail (both those comparanda, of course, existing in North Seattle, unlike the Elliott Bay Trail).  The bay it's named after, Elliott Bay, is defined as stretching between Magnolia and West Seattle; which means Seattle's downtown waterfront is entirely on Elliott Bay, not on Puget Sound proper.  The trail is reputed to run from the stadium which is called Lumen Field for however many weeks it is until the next re-branding, north along the downtown waterfront, and then through a series of parks described in this page and in a future page, to the Magnolia Bridge, then further north, away from the shore, to Halladay St, where it crosses from 20th Ave W, which is about as far as the eastern coast of the bay gets, to 21st Ave W, which is about as far as the northwestern coast gets.  It then goes south, with few glimpses of the water, to Smith Cove Park.

It's definitely an actual trail, reasonably well marked, from Alaskan Way and Broad St north and then south to Smith Cove Park, and I've walked all of that.  However, I haven't noticed what becomes of the trail south of Broad St.  If it's basically a lane of Alaskan Way, well, I've walked Alaskan Way from Spring St to Broad St; but if it's somewhere else, I don't know where.

In these pages about the downtown parks from Dearborn to Mercer, and the waterfront to I-5, the Seattle Department of Transportation park that is at least some of that southern part of the Elliott Bay Trail should appear.  I'm already planning a clean-up page for parks I've ignored, and that should go there.  But here I'm just noting that from Broad St to the Magnolia Bridge the trail goes through four substantially more parklike parks.  Two are entirely south of Mercer, one partly; those I'll tell you about, dear Diary, in this page.  The one that's partly south of Mercer is definitely appearing in a future page, and there I'll tell you about the fourth park too, Smith Cove Park, and the rest of the trail in that direction.

The Elliott Bay Trail from Broad St to the Magnolia Bridge is usually physically divided, with a trail to the west (toward the shore) for pedestrians, and one to the east (toward the land) for cyclists.  The pedestrians' trail is considerably longer, because it more or less follows the shore.  On the other hand, it's actually higher up, despite being closer to the shore, so it's better drained, and of course it has much better views, by most standards.

Alaskan Way Boulevard

I've only seen this name for the part of the trail from Broad St to Bay St used in two places:  the Seattle Art Museum's website and Seattle's 2020 Real Property Report.  The name "Boulevard" is kind of a property report joke:  a boulevard is normally a street with islands in it, those islands planted, usually in grass and/or trees.  In this case, the two sides of the "street" are the pedestrian trail and the bike trail.  But the islands in between are certainly planted islands:

The part of the Elliott Bay Trail called, by few people, Alaskan Way Boulevard, is controlled by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, not by SDOT.  It has as amenities benches and stairways between the trails:

Perhaps, dear Diary, you've noticed a sculpture in the fountain in the top photo.  That's there because, for the past fourteen years, Alaskan Way Boulevard has been leased by the Seattle Art Museum as part of a sculpture park which I'll introduce to you further down this page.  I'm not at all clear on whether the benches were SAM's work (though their style in the park is usually quite different), but they definitely do take credit for the plantings.

Alaskan Way Boulevard can be exited to the north and south, and also to the east, through the rest of the sculpture park, which includes a bridge over the railroad tracks.

Myrtle Edwards Park

Myrtle Edwards Park, which goes from Bay St to about halfway between W Thomas St and W John St, is by far the most relaxed of these parks.  Instead of SAM's studiously planned plantings, it's got grass, man:

(Speaking of grass, Wikipedia says it hosts Hempfest, too.)

It hasn't allowed its neighbour to the south to intimidate it from hosting art:

(That's the most accessible-from-pavement part of a much larger installation.  It's become clear to me, dear Diary, that in order to meet my usual standards, I'll have to do another kind of catch-up page at the end of this series, to credit all the artists.  It's just that the downtown parks caught me by surprise with so much art - in many cases a park can't be photographed at all without including some of the art.  Ah well.  Anyway, although in this case I actually did look for the artist's name, because I chose this from at least three works in this park just as I've chosen other art I like to show you in North Seattle parks, I'd rather credit them all at once in that catch-up page.)

Unlike the parks to its north and south, Myrtle Edwards Park has several shoreline accesses, with the kind of gritty sand one doesn't want to walk on in sandals.  I regret to inform you, dear Diary, that the most picturesque of these is in fact the one the Seattle Art Museum pretentiously takes credit for, in a sign I didn't photograph:

Myrtle Edwards Park can be exited to the north, to the south, or via a bridge that is entirely without stairs, and whose other end is on 3rd Ave W between W Thomas St and W Harrison St.  A bit of that very long bridge is visible in the top photo above.  Wikipedia confirms what a cornerstone told me, that this bridge opened in 2012.  Hempfest must have been something of a drag to get to before that.  Myrtle Edwards Park wasn't city land before 1968, and was definitely open by 1976, but I don't know when in that span it did open.

(Seattle Art Museum) Olympic Sculpture Park

OK, dear Diary, how shall I describe museums to you?

They're earnestly pretentious:

They're academic, informed and informative:

(And to be fair, there are three more of the first type of sign in the park, and several dozen more of the second.  Museums can get away with their pretensions because they're earnest about them, but mainly because they provide great value of information per minor bit of puffery.)

They're bossy:

There are so many "don't touch" signs scattered around the park, most people I saw were scared to walk on the grass, too.  Oh yes - for all their pomposity about their plantings, SAM used grass as well:

Anyway, as to bossiness.  For some reason SAM thought people in a park would want the kind of seating they might get in a lecture hall:

And then they put into this park, out of 20 sculptures listed in their Map and Guide (PDF), no fewer than four that are more or less furniture suitable for sitting on.  (Mary's Invitation by Ginny Ruffner, Untitled by Roy McMakin, Eye Benches by Louise Bourgeois, and Love & Loss by McMakin.)  Unsurprisingly, I found each of these being touched, more precisely being used as a seat, by people I didn't know, during my visit to this park today.  Basically, this cluelessness about park furniture is why I don't think SAM put up the benches along Alaskan Way Boulevard.

The park does offer several neat and unusual things, of very different kinds.  Triple trash:

On a loftier plane, a small amphitheatre:

And a grove which, like the amphitheatre, appears to be devoid of sculpture.  (In fairness, this grove has the best-preserved of the four signs about areas, the one I showed you above as an example of pretension, dear Diary.)

I went there today with the goal of not photographing any of the works of art.  Turned out I didn't much like most of them (Beverly Pepper's Persephone Unbound was the only one to win immediate assent from me, of the 17 I actually saw), but even before I knew that, I wanted to focus on this park as a park, not as a site for artworks.  And as a park, it has pluses and minuses:  silly furniture, mostly gravel paths, but triple trash, a lot of interesting plants, and a few places which were obviously created for the joy of parks rather than for the joy of art.

Olympic Sculpture Park, which runs from Broad St to Bay St and from, ahem, Western Ave to the waterfront, and opened in 2007, is only partly a waterfront park, although most of those chairs are so placed that people can watch the western sky over the water.  It also has bridges over both the railroad and Elliott Ave, the former bridge incorporating Teresita Fernández's Seattle Cloud Cover.  So it has quite a few exits, perhaps its biggest advantage, as a park, over Myrtle Edwards Park and this next one.

(Port of Seattle) Centennial Park

Seattle Center, to come in the next page of this series, at 74 acres, is much larger than Centennial Park, but Seattle Center is by no stretch of the imagination really a park.  So Centennial Park is secure as the largest park (partly) in downtown Seattle, at eleven acres, at least until the plans for Waterfront Park move a great deal further along.  However, all of Olympic Sculpture Park, nine acres, is in downtown Seattle, and not all of Centennial Park is, in the sense that much of it, probably more than half, is actually north of the line of W Mercer St.

Don Sherwood's history file (PDF) says the Port was unenthusiastic about a park getting in the way of its planned and then built grain terminal at pier 86, but the then-Port Commissioners - that group two members of which lost re-election not long ago - liked the idea a lot better.  At any rate, in 1976 the city's Elliott Bay Park was renamed Myrtle Edwards Park (evidence that it existed earlier), and probably not coincidentally, the port's Elliott Bay Park opened.  In 2011 it was renamed Centennial Park in honour of the port's centennial.  Google Maps is simply wrong these days when it claims that Elliott Bay Park still exists somewhere along this waterfront.

Centennial Park is a much less relaxing park than Myrtle Edwards.  It's as if, stuck with the job of building a park, the port's people decided to pull out all the stops. Every twenty feet or so along the Elliott Bay Trail - ok, maybe every hundred feet - there's something new, and the two paths converge enough that both pedestrians and cyclists can approach it.  Also, all sorts of things are named after upper managers of the port in the third quarter or so of the 20th century.  (The park itself is dedicated to the memory of, but never named after, Howard M. Burke, port head 1953-1964.)

As I said, I think more than half the park's area, so more than half of its stuff, is north of the line of W Mercer St.  (Also, that's where the grain terminal, which became the park's focal point, is.)  Its exit to the east is north of there too.  But I think two things worth showing you, dear Diary, are further south.  First, a harbour light.  I first visited these parks at night, twice, but don't remember whether it was lit.

Second, a rose garden.  I liked the topiary-like tree at its north end even in the dark; it took me longer to notice that a few of the plants were still blooming in late November (these photos are from my first daytime visit, yesterday), and I don't know whether my phone's camera actually noticed the flowers itself.

Still, roses in November!  On which hopeful note, dear Diary, I must take your leave for a while.  I hope to write my review of Lezlie Lowe's No Place to Go this week, and then hope to finish this particular series of pages - park appreciations of the downtown parks - over the long weekend.  But we'll see.  Happy days and nights, then, until we meet again.