Arts The Invisible District of Brooklyn In Seattle
posted by on November 9 at 15:10 PM
In today’s paper, I write about The East River Project by the artists Gretchen Bennett and Yann Novak, a walking tour of Seattle’s International District set to a progression of neon orange street stencils and the downloaded sounds of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I called the story The Invisible District of Brooklyn and Seattle.
What I didn’t realize is that the neighborhood now known as the University District was once the town of Brooklyn.
In 1890, when Seattle’s super-developer James Moore laid out part of the Brownfield farm for a townsite, there was no assurance that it would become a satellite to a school (Territorial University, later University of Washington). The then still primeval land of section 16, east of 15th Avenue, was reserved first as a resource for the University. It might have been sold to support the building of the school elsewhere. The easterner Moore called his new addition Brooklyn. It was a stretch for although this Brooklyn like the one in New York was situated “across the water” from the larger community, Lake Union was a much wider water than the East River in New York.
(Thanks, Jack Straw arts manager Van Diep!)
Brooklyn Avenue Northeast, bitches!
Represent!!
Legend has it when the early white settlers started envisioning a city in West Seattle, they named the place "New York Alki", and that Alki is Chinook for "eventually", or "by and by". Hence Brooklyn to continue the theme.
Central Park and Seattle!
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/parkspaces/olmsted.htm
Maybe they should have started work on a subway back then, too.
Heck, they built an elevated rail system and a monorail, but you Big Talk No Action people killed those ...
Oh, and it's not well known, but after my dad got out of the USAF, I was a New Yorker until I was 2.
When Moore laid out his plat, Brooklyn was not a "district" of New York but a separate city, the third-largest in the United States.
Many cities have a neighborhood named Brooklyn east across a body of water, including in Los Angeles (east over the L.A. river) and Oakland (east over Lake Merritt.)
Many cities have a neighborhood named Brooklyn east across a body of water, including in Los Angeles (east over the L.A. river) and Oakland (east over Lake Merritt.)
Hm.
Anyway, when I read the above mentioned article and two other really great ones in this week's Stranger by a certain writer, I noticed myself saying a little prayer I'd mumbled before on a few Wednesdays:
"Jen Graves, please don't ever leave The Stranger."
I like authors and columnists who are thoughtful and invested in seemingly every paragraph and subject. Don't stop writing about art. Art needs the dialogue. You make your world better.
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