Beacon Hill, Seattle

Beacon Hill is a hill and neighborhood in southeast Seattle, Washington. The municipal government subdivides it into North Beacon Hill, Mid-Beacon Hill, Holly Park, and South Beacon Hill,^[1] though most people who live there simply call it "Beacon Hill." Home to the world headquarters of Amazon.com and the Seattle Division of the Department of Veterans Affairs' Puget Sound Health Care System, the hill offers views of downtown, the Industrial District, Elliott Bay, First Hill, Rainier Valley, and, when the weather is good, Mount Rainier and the Olympic Mountains. It is roughly bounded on the west by Interstate 5, on the north by Interstate 90, on the east by Rainier Avenue South, Cheasty Boulevard South, and Martin Luther King Junior Way South, and on the south by the Seattle city boundary. Homes on the northern part of the hill were mostly built in the early 1900s; thus, North Beacon Hill contains many excellent examples of Craftsman bungalows and "Seattle box houses" (a local variant of the Foursquare style).

History and demographics

The Duwamish called the hill "Greenish-Yellow Spine" (Lushootseed: qWátSéécH), probably referring to the color of the deciduous trees that once grew thickly on the hill.^[2] Early settlers named it Holgate and Hanford Hill after two early settlers, John Holgate and Edward Hanford, who settled in the area in the 1850s^[3] and are commemorated to this day by South Holgate and Hanford Streets on North Beacon Hill. A later arrival, M. Harwood Young, named the hill after the Beacon Hill in his hometown, Boston, Massachusetts.

It was nicknamed "Boeing Hill" in the 1950s and 60s due to the number of residents who worked in the nearby [Boeing] airplane factory. The term fell out of use when many Boeing employees joined the general exodus to the suburbs, and Asian immigrants took their place. Today the neighborhood is majority Asian, as can be seen by the many Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino businesses along Beacon Avenue South. However, the area remains racially diverse, as shown by the United States 2000 Census: 51% Asian, 20% white, 13% black, 9% Hispanic/Latino and 7% other. ^[4] The census also showed the total Beacon Hill population to be 22,300. Neighboring Rainier Valley also shows a similar diversity, with the area's 98118 zip code named the most diverse in the country in the 2010 US Census.

Landmarks and institutions

• Pacific Medical Center (PacMed) located at the northern tip of Beacon Hill. Formerly a marine hospital, the building served as headquarters to Amazon.com for ten years
• Jefferson Park: Golf, lawn bowling, open space. Golf professional Fred Couples was raised in the neighborhood and Jefferson Park was his home course as a teen.
• Comet Lodge Cemetery (1895)
• Dr. Jose Rizal Park: views west overlooking downtown, Elliott Bay and Olympic Mountains; start of bike path to I-90 bridge, Lake Washington, Mercer Island, Eastgate^[5]
• El Centro de la Raza, a civil rights and community service organization, in the former Beacon Hill School^[6]

• Beacon Hill First Baptist Church^[7]: a designated historic landmark Tudor Revival building built in 1910, designed by notable architect Ellsworth Storey
• The Frank D. Black property ^[8]: designated landmark river rock structures built in 1914
• Cheasty Greenbelt/Cheasty Boulevard Trail
• Sound Transit Light Rail station, located at Beacon Avenue South and South Lander Street
• Beacon Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library, reopened in a new building and location in 2005

Nearby neighborhoods

• Columbia City
• Downtown Seattle
• First Hill
• Georgetown
• Industrial District (see also SoDo)
• International District/Chinatown
• Judkins Park
• Mount Baker
• Rainier Valley
• SoDo

Notes

References

• Merrell, Frederica and Mira Latoszek (2004). Seattle's Beacon Hill (Images of America). Charleston: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0-7385-2861-7.

External links

• North Beacon Hill neighborhood website
• Northwest Beacon Hill / Beacon Alliance of Neighbors website
• Seattle City Neighborhood Map of Beacon Hill
• Seattle Post-Intelligencer Beacon Hill Webtown
• South Beacon Hill Neighborhood Council