- Freeway Park, officially known as Jim Ellis Freeway Park, is an urban park in Seattle, Washington, United States, connecting the city’s downtown to the Washington State Convention Center and First Hill. The park sits atop a section of Interstate 5 and a large city-owned parking lot; 8th Avenue also bridges over the park. An unusual mixture of brutalist architecture and greenery, the 5.2-acre (21,000 m2) park, designed by Lawrence Halprin’s office under the supervision of Angela Danadjieva, opened to the public on July 4, 1976, at a cost of $23.5 million. A later addition to the park opened in 1982 winds several blocks up First Hill, with a staircase and wheelchair ramp.
- Seattle Neighborhoods: South Park — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
The neighborhood of South Park, on the west bank of the Duwamish River, was once a small town of Italian and Japanese farmers who supplied fresh produce to Seattle’s Pike Place Market. South Park annexed to Seattle in 1907. After World War II, the tiny community struggled to keep from being overwhelmed by industrial development.