The Parks of Seattle's Downtown, part VIIA: Northeast (southern group)

Dear Diary,

Well, I'm more or less done.

Today I visited sixteen park-like places in northeastern Downtown Seattle, having set out knowing of twelve.  Turns out I missed at least one more.

Since this series is about park appreciation, not the restrooms and water fountains on which most of your pages have focused, dear Diary, and I found lots to appreciate in these places, I took lots of photos.  Various people speak of the northeastern part of downtown as three separate neighbourhoods - South Lake Union (which obviously exists), Cascade (which a significant number of residents insist exists), and the Denny Triangle (which I'm much less sure about).  This page concerns the parks and similar places near or along Westlake Ave, of which I found six; by some definitions but not all, these are at least some of the parks of the Denny Triangle.

Westlake Square

The smallest park in northeast downtown Seattle, opened in 1964, the triangle between Westlake and 6th Avenues and Stewart St, is a sad little place with no distinctions.  I've mocked the tendency to put sculptures and bus stops into these triangles as a way of keeping the homeless out, but some of the triangles in northeastern downtown omit these precautions, this is one, and boy, does it make a difference here.

Westlake Square basically consists of sidewalk, with a few planters, and a couple of table-and-chair arrangements of that flimsy-looking metal furniture I called kitschy at Freeway Park, as the only testimony that it's actually a park.  The first time I walked through it for this project, someone was sleeping in it, but downtown, that's common both on sidewalks and in parks, so it doesn't prove anything.

(Vulcan) Unnamed park

The triangle between 9th and Westlake Avenues and Denny Way is the northernmost of these parklets, and the other one that obviously forgot the bus stop plus art recipe.  It basically consists of benches:

which look comfortable, and a few of which are close enough together that if I were foolish enough, I might figure out a way to sleep on them.  On the whole, I was pretty happy with this unpretentious parklet actually offering rest to the weary on Denny, which is exactly what the point was:

I don't know when it opened.

McGraw Square

McGraw Square, which opened in 1911, forgot neither bus stop nor art; it's the southern terminus of the South Lake Union streetcar, and it has a boring statue of the former Seattle police chief and Washington governor it's named after:

Its main claim to fame, though, is that it's a kind of museum of park seating.  I found no fewer than five kinds of places to sit, and had to group them to photograph them.

The top photo shows wooden and concrete benches; the bottom one the kitschy furniture, weird cocoon-like seats under the bus shelter, and one of several blobbish stone seats.

For its centenary, in 2011 McGraw Square was passed from the management of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation (which still owns it) to that of the Seattle Department of Transportation.  It's the triangle between 5th Ave, the line of Westlake Ave, and Stewart St, kitty-corner from Westlake Square.

Urban Triangle Park

This is the newest park in this page, opened this year, and still without its mini-playground.  It's the triangle between Lenora St, Westlake Ave (more precisely, the streetcar tracks), and the line of an alley that exists on some blocks between 8th and 9th Avenues.

It's a strikingly parkish park for downtown, as witness that play equipment still to come.  It has actual grass, and actual picnic tables, as well as hybrid benches (stone seats, but wooden backs).

I think it's a fine addition to downtown's parks.

(Amazon) Unnamed park

On the block between 6th and 7th Avenues and Blanchard and Lenora Streets, Amazon has two buildings, one of which is famous, the Amazon Spheres.  Since they opened in 2018, I assume the park to their north did too.  OpenStreetMap calls the northeastern part "Day 1 Field" (Amazon Day 1 is the other building, north of the park), the southwestern "Rufus Dog Park".  I think the whole thing is obviously a single park, and so consider it, at least as far as I know, unnamed.  (I also wonder whether it's meant to be continuous with areas across 7th Ave, between Lenora and Blanchard and again between Blanchard and Bell, that are somewhat parkish, but not enough so to stand on their own.)

I'll speak in praise of Amazon's park-making in the next page, but this is actually a much more successful Amazon park, at least to judge by attendance on what's probably the last nice weekend day of the year.  I could take only the scantiest of photos, because there were so many, many people around.  The dog park had some visitors:

as did the 6th Ave entrance, where the benches are, and where I found triple trash:

But it was a lost cause from getgo to photograph the field, on which, at present, are installed a set of see-saws that produce music when they're used.  I could hear the results.  These see-saws were, this afternoon, wildly popular with children and adults alike; there were actual crowds there, dear Diary.

So I'm not sure how heavily used the park would be in their absence, but for all I actually know, maybe those see-saws have been there for years.  (A quick search, though, suggests that they're pretty new.)

The areas across 7th Ave didn't share in this park's bounty of people this afternoon, an argument against including them in this park.

Westlake Park

Speaking of popular...

Westlake Park is far enough south that I could have put it into my central downtown area.  This would've crystallised in your pages, dear Diary, an opposition Charles Mudede set up in his attack on Freeway Park.  He quoted the then-director of the Freeway Park Association as saying that his favourite park was actually Westlake Park.

And really, in many ways they are opposites.  Westlake is a concrete plaza, like the northern area Freeway disputes with the Convention Center, but Freeway proper has lots of grass and trees.  Freeway is complex; Westlake is simple.  In Freeway, short sight lines and plentiful hiding places have aided violent crimes; insecurity in Westlake is a matter of pickpockets and homeless people.  (Ahem.)

(On the other hand, they were built relatively close together in time, as well as space - Freeway in 1976, with additions in the 1980s; Westlake in 1988.  They both use lots of concrete.  They've both been popular.  This is an endless game.)

Anyway, Westlake Park is the triangle between 4th Ave, Pine St, and the line of Westlake Ave, which actually used to be Westlake Ave until sometime in the 1960s.  It's a concrete plaza, and as far back as I remember (2006) there've been attempts to enliven it, attract housed people, basically.  (Compare Ballard Commons.)   It's always, that I remember, had a bandstand on its wider north side.  And it's always, that I remember, had these weird seemingly structural blocks without actual structures, near its narrow south end:

But the Downtown Seattle Association takes Westlake Park pretty personally, and in 2015 (according to them) or 2016 (according to the parks department) took over the park's management.  They kicked events in the park into high gear; for example, today, when I visited, the park was so crowded partly because it was the last nice weekend day to be expected this year, but partly because there'd been a concert two hours earlier.  And although the crowd I saw included all races known to me, many of them looking quite happy (I imagined them telling each other "Told you it'd be exciting to come downtown today!"), I find the DSA's idea of programming, and the park they put it into, rather too ... white bread, for my own personal tastes.

Now, some things, people who prefer white bread do better than my sort.  Holiday lights, for example:

My camera doesn't do any kind of lights well, but the sight of them as I walked west on the north side of Pine just about took my breath away, so I can recommend that vantage point to any of your readers who are interested, dear Diary.

And anyway, lots of people do prefer white bread.  I want a parks department that has room for both Freeway and Westlake Parks, even if I personally prefer the former.

All for now, dear Diary.  Next:  the parks of South Lake Union proper.  Life isn't fair; several of the parks there and in Cascade strike me as really neat, but these last two parks are the only ones I found crowded today.  Anyway, please expect the pages with those neat parks further north tomorrow night; I can't afford to keep getting to work at 10 A.M.  So good night, and good times until then.