Don’t hearken to Grandpa: He didn’t need to stroll miles by the snow, uphill each methods, to get to high school. Seattle as soon as had a sturdy mass transit system that introduced riders to the farthest reaches of the still-growing metropolis.
Proof of how the town was formed by these streetcars, trolleys, trains, and passenger boats nonetheless dot the panorama, for many who know the place to look.
1) Greenwood Park
A prepare sculpture commemorates the Interurban trains that stopped round right here from 1910 to 1939. Cement arrows level guests north to Everett and south to Seattle, however the tracks finish just some ft away.
2) Fremont Trolley Barn
Earlier than working with chocolate as Theo or beer as Redhook, trolleys flowed by 3400 Phinney. It served as a trolley automotive barn from 1905 till the town’s closing streetcar parked there in 1941.
3) Ghost Tracks
The streetcar tracks are gone, however streets nonetheless present their paths, like the place the #16 circled as NE fifty fifth Road approaches thirty fifth Avenue NE. A swath of mismatched cement now curves right into a phantom driveway.
These of us are going to be ready a very long time for the Interurban, because the trolley cease was on the south facet of the canal. (And it stopped working in 1939.)
4) Ready for the Interurban Statue
Fremont’s well-known cast-aluminum passengers would have waited a very long time, because the trolley stopped throughout the canal, the place the unique shelter nonetheless sits at Westlake and Dexter.
5) Counterbalance Park
To get cable automobiles safely up and down Queen Anne’s 19 p.c grade in 1901, 16-ton counterbalances ran reverse the automobiles, hidden underground. The park’s creation in 2008 coated an entrance to the disused tunnels.
Earlier than floating bridges, ferries crisscrossed Lake Washington.
6) Madison Park Ferry Dock
The place Madison Road dead-ends, passengers as soon as boarded ferries throughout the lake to Kirkland, half of a bigger ferry system principally made out of date by floating bridges.
7) Yesler Trolley Viaduct
Town’s first cable automotive line ran from 1889 till 1940, up Yesler from Lake Washington to Downtown, crossing a bridge that also arches over Lake Washington Boulevard in Leschi Park.
8) Interurban Constructing
This beautiful Pioneer Sq. instance of Romanesque Revival structure from 1890 as soon as served as a station for the Interurban Railway, which ran to Tacoma and Everett. Right now, it holds Tat’s Delicatessen, amongst different companies.
9) Endolyne Joe’s
West Seattle’s Endolyne space took its identify from its place on the finish of the (streetcar) line; the restaurant took its identify from an apocryphal conductor on stated trolley.
10) Georgetown Steam Plant
In-built 1906 to energy the town’s electrical streetcars, this decommissioned industrial constructing now powers the group as an arts incubator, schooling heart, and occasion house.
11) Wildwood Shelter
The Seattle and Rainier Valley Railway stopped working in 1937, however the bus passengers nonetheless benefit from the shade of the historic shelter on the cease on Rainier Avenue S close to S Holden Road.
