Columbia City, Seattle, Washington - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Columbia City is a neighborhood in the Rainier Valley

Rainier Valley, Seattle, Washington

The Rainier Valley neighborhood in Seattle, is located east of Beacon Hill; west of Mount Baker, Seward Park, and Leschi; south of the Central District and First Hill; and north of the city line...

area of southeast Seattle, Washington, known either for being one of the "hottest" neighborhoods in Seattle, or for its rapid gentrification

Gentrification

Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...

, depending on one's perspective. It is best known for being a historic district, being one of the few parts of Seattle with genuine ethnic and income diversity (some claim that its zip code, 98118, is one of the most diverse in America ) and for being an extremely walkable (having a 92% "WalkScore") and transit-oriented "urban village."

Its main thoroughfares are Rainier Avenue S. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S. (until 1988 known as Empire Way S.) (north- and southbound) and S. Alaska Street (east- and westbound). Efforts are underway to extend bike lanes into the neighborhood and slow traffic to safer speeds on Rainier Avenue. Work has already begun on a series of sidewalk improvements. The community is served by the Columbia City Link Light Rail station (approximately 18 minutes from downtown Seattle), and several Metro bus lines, including the 7,8,9, 39, and 42.

History

The area was once dense conifer forest, inhabited by the local Salish peoples, until the arrival of the Rainier Valley Electric Railway from Downtown in 1891. A lumber mill was built soon after, and in 1891 settlement began in earnest in "Columbia," named for the Columbia River, which was considered a symbol the Northwest power and bounty, or for Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

, or for Columbia the personification of West-looking America, as in the song "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean

Columbia, Gem of the Ocean

"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" is a United States patriotic song which was popular during the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, especially during the Civil War era. It may have functioned as an unofficial national anthem in competition with "Hail, Columbia" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" until...

" (listen) which was popular at the time of the city's founding. Three streets in the neighborhood bear names of other famous explorers, a Columbia Street already existing Downtown: Ferdinand Street after Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer. He was born in Sabrosa, in northern Portugal, and served King Charles I of Spain in search of a westward route to the "Spice Islands" ....

, Hudson Street after Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson was an English sea explorer and navigator in the early 17th century. Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a prospective Northeast Passage to Cathay via a route above the Arctic Circle...

, and Americus Street after Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer. The Americas are generally believed to have derived their name from the feminized Latin version of his first name.-Expeditions:...

.

Columbia incorporated as "Columbia City" in January 1893. Annexation to the City of Seattle came May 3, 1907 following a petition by citizens to the City Council to hold a special election on the matter. Although opposition to annexation had initially been strong due to citizens' desire for local control, the March 5 vote was overwhelming: 109-3 in favor of annexation to Seattle.

In 1905, the newly-renamed Seattle, Renton and Southern Railway extended south to Renton

Renton, Washington

Renton is an Eastside edge city in King County, Washington, United States. Situated 11 miles southeast of Seattle, Washington, Renton straddles the southeast shore of Lake Washington. Founded in the 1860s, Renton became a supply town for the Newcastle coal fields...

. In 1912 the streetcar line went bankrupt and was reorganized as the Seattle and Rainier Valley Railway. Its last run was just after midnight on January 1, 1937. Meanwhile, Columbia City's ambitions to become a seaport were thwarted with the completion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal

Lake Washington Ship Canal

The Lake Washington Ship Canal, which runs through the City of Seattle, Washington, connects the fresh water body of Lake Washington with the salt water inland sea of Puget Sound. The Ship Canal includes a series of locks, modeled after the Panama Canal, to accommodate the different water levels...

in 1917, which lowered Lake Washington

Lake Washington

Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It is bordered by the cities of Seattle on the west, Bellevue and Kirkland on the east, Renton on the south and...

by nine feet and caused Wetmore Slough to dry up. The former slough was used as a dump from 1941 to 1963, and is now Genesee Park

Genesee Park (Seattle)

Genessee Park is a park in the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. A waterway, Wetmore Slough, before the lowering of Lake Washington by nine feet in 1917 as part of the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, it was purchased by the city in 1947 and used as a dump until...

Recent History

As African Americans moved to Seattle to be part of the wartime industrial boom, many settled in the area, and in the 1960s the area began to suffer the effects of redlining

Redlining

Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a...

and racism. By the 1970s, the neighborhood had fallen victim to poverty, housing stock had deteriorated, and many storefronts along Rainier Avenue S. were vacant.

The Columbia City business district was added to the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

in 1980 as the Columbia City Historic District

Columbia City Historic District (Seattle, Washington)

The Columbia City Historic District is a nationally recognized historic district located in the Columbia City neighborhood in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle, Washington. It is roughly bounded by South Hudson Street, South Alaska Street, 35th Avenue and Rainier Avenue...

, bounded on the north by S. Alaska Street, on the south by S. Hudson Street, on the east by Rainier Avenue S., and on the west by 35th Avenue S.
Beginning in the late 1980s, Columbia City saw a large influx of minority professionals, artists, gay and lesbian couples and "urban pioneers" seeking classic housing stock at low prices. By the late 1990s, Columbia City was already referred to as one of Seattle's most creative neighborhoods. In the last decade, it has seen some of the sharpest rises in property values in the entire Seattle metropolitan area. The result has been widespread gentrification, including the restoration of many of the older homes and, in the last several years, the building of numerous condos and the planned construction of several hundred more. As of 2008, Columbia City is one of Seattle's most diverse neighborhoods in terms of income and ethnicity, encompassing everything from public housing to multi-million dollar view homes.

Columbia City Today

Today, the thriving pedestrian business district along Rainier Avenue S. has become something of a citywide destination, and is home to six bars, a number of restaurants, assorted retail shops, a successful farmer's market on Wednesday evenings in the summer/fall, two art galleries, a book store, a new bakery, a Starbucks, a yoga studio, a locally-owned gym, a fraternal clubhouse, Columbia Cinema (closed 5/2011) and Columbia City Theater (a live music venue), Bike Works (a community charity that lets kids earn bikes by learning to repair them), a biodiesel coop, and several community service centers. The neighborhood hosts a bustling monthly "Beat Walk," every first Friday May–October, and many of the local businesses participate with Jazz bands, open houses and art shows.

The surrounding blocks are mostly single-family homes, in many cases older craftsman bungalows, with a handful of low-income apartment buildings and more expensive new townhouses and condos. On the ridge above the business district, where views of Lake Washington

Lake Washington

and the Cascade Mountains are common, many new expensive homes have been built, and many smaller homes expanded and updated. This area is part of what is known as the "Gold Coast"http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980903&slug=2769927, a swath of often extremely expensive homes with lake views.

Crime is very rare, by big city standards, although there is still drug-dealing in the neighborhood, and a fair number of car break-ins. Though the area has gentrified rapidly, it still contains a few pockets of real poverty, and the clashes between the needs of the area's poor and the desires of the area's better-off residents are somewhat defining of the neighborhood's politics. Despite both gentrification and class conflict, though, the neighborhood remains perhaps the most diverse in the Northwest, according to the US Census http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=149452.

The New York Times recently wrote, "Columbia City still feels like a microcosm of the city itself, a gumbo of art galleries, bike shops, yoga studios and butchers where it’s easier to find homemade tamales or good pulled pork sandwich than a macchiato."http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/travel/23hours.html?scp=1&sq=columbia%20city&st=cse Local fashion and art store Andaluz is a beloved local institution and highly rated in travel guides.

The Future

Train service at the neighborhood's Link Light Rail station began in July 2009, connecting the neighborhood to both SeaTac airport and Downtown Seattle. Rainier Vista, once a post-war suburban public housing project, has been redeveloped into a much-acclaimed mixed-use, mixed income community built around the light rail station, and will include more than 900 new homes (some subsidized, some rental, some owner-occupied) when completed. In addition, the Downtown Emergency Services Center is building an apartment building nearby, permanent supported housing for formerly homeless men and women—the project prompted considerable community debate.

Other new development projects in the neighborhood include small-scale condo conversions and townhouse developments, to four 100+ unit new condo buildings on Rainier Avenue alone. Community estimates have put the number of new homes in the planning pipeline as numbering at least 1,500. Little of this development will directly impact the single-family housing stock.

Besides the new businesses that will come along with these projects, there are quite a few new community and non-profit initiatives breaking ground, especially for children. The Boys and Girls Club has opened a new regional facility in the neighborhood, the Seward Park Audubon Society is opening an environmental learning center in nearby Seward Park and in 2008 the Brighton Playfield Science Park opened - one of the few free public science parks in the nation. The neighborhood's existing "p-patch" community garden will be joined by two new plots of gardening land. Other plans are in the works for a 2.1 million dollar renovation of the neighborhood's large Genesee park.
A local arts group, the Pomegranate Center, has facilitated an effort to use public art, infrastructure changes and street furniture to slow traffic on Rainier Avenue and better connect Columbia City with the Hillman City

Hillman City

Hillman City is a neighborhood in Seattle, King County, Washington, United States.Hillman City was settled in the 1890s and is named after the colorful Clarence Hillman, a Realtor/Con Artist that made his fortune selling real and imagined plots of land to out of state speculators...

neighborhood to the south, which has not yet seen the same level of reinvestment and renewal. Most observers seem to assume that the Hillman City business district will eventually catch on, and the two neighborhoods will be better integrated. Connections are also being strengthened to the [Seward Park] neighborhood immediately to the East, which itself has seen a retail revival, with a PCC natural foods market, a new cafe, a new gourmet pizza restaurant and other businesses.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Recent History

Columbia City Today

The Future

External links