Seward Park, Seattle

Seward Park

Seward Park is a neighborhood in southeast Seattle, Washington just west of the park of the same name. The park itself occupies all of Bailey Peninsula, a prominent, forested peninsula that juts into Lake Washington.

The neighborhood is bounded on the east by the lake, on the north by S Genesee Street, on the south by S Kenyon Street, and on the west by Rainier Avenue S.

The 300 acres (121 ha) of Seward Park has about a 120 acre (48.6 ha) surviving remnant of old growth forest, providing a glimpse of what some of the lake shore looked like before the city of Seattle. With trees older than 250 years and many less than 200, the Seward Park forest is relatively young (the forests of Seattle before the city were fully mature, up through 1,000–2,000 years old).^[1][2]

One of the earliest White settlers, E. A. Clark, was influential in the life of Cheshiahud, a young man at the time, the mid 1850s.^[3]

Seward Park, which was first settled by Whites in great numbers in the 1880s, is built on the largest residential hill in Seattle.^{[citation needed]} In a series of annexations, the neighborhood joined the town of Southeast Seattle, which then joined the City of Seattle in 1907.^[4]

Around a quarter of the residents are African American, and another quarter Asian American, most of the remainder being White. The neighborhood has been a hub of Orthodox Jewish life for nearly 40 years. The oldest synagogue in Washington state, Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath, is located there, as are Sephardic Congregation Ezra Bessaroth and Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation. 90% of Orthodox Jews in Seattle are said to live within a mile of one of the synagogues, though more recent arrivals have been settling north of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in View Ridge, Wedgwood, Hawthorne Hills, and Ravenna and in nearby communities such as Mercer Island.^{[citation needed]}

Seward Park is home to Whitworth and Graham Hill elementary schools.

See also

• Seattle before the city
• Seward Park

Notes

References

• Dailey, Tom (n.d.). ""Duwamish-Seattle"". "Coast Salish Villages of Puget Sound". http://coastsalishmap.org/new_page_6.htm. Retrieved 2006-04-21. . Page links to Village Descriptions Duwamish-Seattle section.
• Wilma, David (2001-03-31). ""Seattle Neighborhoods: Seward Park -- Thumbnail History"". HistoryLink.org Essay 3143. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=3143. Retrieved 2006-08-06. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Seward Park, Seattle, Washington

• Friends of Seward Park
• David Wilma, Seattle Neighborhoods: Seward Park at HistoryLink