- Seattle’s Portage Bay-Roanoke-North Capitol Hill neighborhood is located at the far northern end of the north-south ridge that forms Seattle’s Capitol, Renton, First, and Beacon hills. For the purposes of this essay, the distinct but closely related Portage Bay, Roanoke Park, and North Capitol Hill neighborhoods have been combined and their boundary is defined as the area east of Interstate 5, west of Portage Bay, and north of Volunteer Park. Development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was spurred by the area’s convenient location: close enough – but not too close – to downtown Seattle. Initially somewhat challenging to access, by 1906 the area had streetcar service. The neighborhood encompasses Interlaken Park, Roanoke Park, and Boren Park. It has been challenged by – and in many ways defined by – the incursion of the Seattle Freeway (later I-5) beginning in the late 1950s and by SR 520 in the early 1960s.
- Seattle — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
Seattle is the largest city in Washington state and its economic capital. Settled in 1851, its deep harbor and acquisition of Puget Sound’s first steam-powered sawmill quickly established it as a center of trade and industry. It gained the Territorial University (now University of Washington) in 1861, but was snubbed by the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1874 when it picked Tacoma as its western terminus. Despite this, the town prospered thanks to independent railroad development fueled by local coal deposits…
