Freeway Park

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The park winds its way down First Hill, offering both a staircase and wheelchair-accessible ramps.

Brutalist fountain, Freeway Park.

Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington, United States, extends from Downtown Seattle, where it adjoins the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, to First Hill. The park bridges over Interstate 5 and a large city-owned parking lot; 8th Avenue bridges over the park. An unusual mixture of brutalist architecture and greenery, the 5.2 acre park, designed by Lawrence Halprin's office under the supervision of Angela Danadjieva, opened to the public July 4, 1976. A later addition to the park winds several blocks up First Hill, with a staircase and wheelchair ramp.

A series of crimes, notably a January 18, 2002 murder, briefly gave the park a reputation as a haven for crime and led to calls for a radical redesign. Many at first attributed the dangers to the design of the park. A neighborhood group formed under the name Freeway Park Neighborhood Association (FPNA) and collaborated with the city's parks and recreation department to produce an "activation plan" for the park, published in 2005 as "A New Vision for Freeway Park". The report concluded that the park's problems could be remedied by numerous small changes: increased security patrols, better lighting, pruning back of certain plants, and above all increased use, both in terms of organized events and simply encouraging more convention center visitors to use the park. The strategy, only partly implemented as of summer 2005, seems to be succeeding: according to David Brewster of the FPNA, crime in the park is down 90% compared to three years ago. (KUOW interview, August 2005)

The park is also a significant cultural landscape as a masterwork of a modernist master and a precedent setting park that single-handedly defined a new land-use typology for American cities. The Cultural Landscape Foundation has an article covering this aspect of the park.