Seattle Neighborhoods: Brighton Beach — Thumbnail History (historylink.org) Brighton Beach is a neighborhood on Lake Washington in southeast Seattle. It is just south of the Bailey Peninsula (home to Seward Park) and extends from the lake over Graham Hill, across the Rainier Valley, and up the side of Beacon Hill, generally between S Othello Street on the south and S Orcas Street on the north. English immigrants who purchased lots there in the 1880s named the neighborhood for a resort town in England. Before that the area had been home to Duwamish Indians who had a village called hah-HAO-hlch (“forbidden place”) just south of Bailey Peninsula, and then to settlers who logged the huge trees, built farms, orchards, and a schoolhouse, and platted house lots.