INTRODUCTION
Seattle. Jet City. Portal of the North Pacific. Queen City of the Pacific Northwest. “Metronatural” (to use a recent tourist slogan). The “Emerald City” (to quote a previous tourist slogan). Land of airplanes, software, coffee, fish, casual wear, and indie rock bands.
Whatever you call it, it’s a young city with a lot of history. Once a frontier settlement at the nation’s far corner, it’s now a crossroads of world trade and cultures.
And it’s a great place to walk. We’ve got lush greenery. We’ve got mountain and water views. We’ve got cozy bungalows, stately mansions, postmodern palaces, and outdoor art all over. We’ve got wide boulevards, narrow cobblestone lanes, and carless pedestrian pathways. It seldom gets too cold to go walking, and almost never gets too hot.
Seattle is a wonderful walking city. Just be careful of the hills. We’ve got some steep ones here, even after the massive pre-World War I regrading projects. When possible, I’ve devised these walks to avoid the more punishing inclines. The one exception, in Discovery Park (Walk 10), can be taken in reverse to avoid the steepest climb.
I’ve walked every foot of these trips, most of them several times, in different seasons. Each one will take you on an adventure through one of the most fascinating cityscapes in the United States.
1 PIONEER SQUARE: WHERE SEATTLE STARTED
BOUNDARIES: 3rd Ave., Cherry St., 1st Ave. S., and Qwest Field
DISTANCE: 1¾ miles
DIFFICULTY: Easy (all flat or downhill)
PARKING: Limited metered street parking; pay lots and garages
PUBLIC TRANSIT: Seattle Transit Tunnel Pioneer Square Station, 3rd Ave. south of Cherry St.; numerous Metro bus routes on 3rd
The first white settlement in present-day Seattle was established in 1851 at Alki Point (Walk 33). After one miserable winter there, the settlers built a township along a small patch of level land surrounded by forested hills, tidal flats, and Elliott Bay. This is where Henry Yesler built his lumber mill, where the logs for Yesler’s mill were skidded downhill on the original “skid road,” where the first stores, saloons, and bawdy houses opened. Those wooden buildings burned in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. They were replaced by brick and stone structures, advertisements of a town striving for greatness. These architectural classics were preserved by neglect as downtown’s core moved north. They’re now mostly intact and restored as monuments to yesterday’s hopes for a grand tomorrow.
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Start at the Doubletree Arctic Club Hotel, 700 3rd Ave. This stoic white-clad structure was built in 1916 by business leaders associated with the Alaska trade. The building notes this connection with rows of terra-cotta walrus heads, whose tusks were originally marble (since replaced with terra-cotta and plastic). The club’s meeting space was the grand Dome Room, named for its curved stained-glass ceiling. The building’s now an elegant boutique hotel, and the Dome Room
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