Gas Works Park
Gas Works Park is a park located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It has a public park on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant, located on the north shore of Lake Union at the south end of the Wallingford neighborhood. The park was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 2, 2013, over a decade after being nominated.
Gas Works Park contains remnants of the sole remaining coal gasification plant in the United States. The plant operated from 1906 to 1956 and was bought by the city of Seattle for use as a park in 1962. The park opened to the public in 1975. It was designed by Seattle landscape architect Richard Haag, who won the American Society of Landscape Architects Presidents Award of Design Excellence for the project. The plant's conversion into a park was completed by Daviscourt Construction Company of Seattle. It was originally named Myrtle Edwards Park, after the city councilwoman who had spearheaded the drive to acquire the site, who died in a car crash in 1969. In 1972, the Edwards family requested that her name be removed from that of the park because the design called for the retention of the plant. In 1976, Elliott Bay Park was renamed Myrtle Edwards Park.
Since 2008, the park's industrial towers have been the site of at least 14 documented fall-related incidents resulting in three deaths and numerous life-threatening injuries, prompting an ongoing legal and preservation dispute over whether to remove the structures' ladders, catwalks, and platforms.
Overview
Gas Works Park incorporates numerous pieces of the old plant. Some stand as ruins, while others have been reconditioned, painted, and incorporated into a children's "play barn" structure, constructed in part from what was the plant's exhauster-compressor building. A web site affiliated with the Seattle Times newspaper said, "Gas Works Park is easily the strangest park in Seattle and may rank among the strangest in the world."Gas Works Park also features an artificial kite-flying hill with a sculptured sundial built into its summit. The park was for many years the exclusive site of a summer series of "Peace Concerts". These concerts are now rotated among several Seattle parks. The park also has for many years hosted one of Seattle's two major Independence Day fireworks events; in 2009, it was the sole such event. The park is the traditional end point of the Solstice Cyclists and the starting point for Seattle's World Naked Bike Ride.
The park originally constituted one end of the Burke–Gilman Trail, laid out along the abandoned right-of-way of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway. However, the trail has now been extended several miles northwest, past the Fremont neighborhood toward Ballard.
The soil and groundwater of the site was contaminated during its operation as a gasification plant. The 1971 Master Plan called for "cleaning and greening" the park through bio-phytoremediation. Although the presence of organic pollutants had been substantially reduced by the mid-1980s, the US Environmental Protection Agency and Washington State Department of Ecology required additional measures, including removing and capping wastes, and air sparging in the southeast portion of the site to try to remove benzene that was a theoretical source of pollutants reaching Lake Union via ground water. There are no known areas of surface soil contamination remaining on the site today, although tar occasionally still oozes from some locations within the site and is isolated and removed.
Despite its somewhat isolated location, the park has been the site of numerous political rallies. These included a seven-month continuous vigil under the name PeaceWorks Park, in opposition to the Gulf War. The vigil began at a peace concert in August 1990 and continued until after the end of the shooting war. Among the people who participated in the vigil were former congressman and future governor Mike Lowry, then-city-councilperson Sue Donaldson, 1960s icon Timothy Leary, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
Gas Works Park has been a setting for films such as Singles and 10 Things I Hate About You. It has been featured twice on the travel-based television reality show The Amazing Race: once as the Finish Line for Season 3 and another time as the starting line for Season 10. The park was the site of the 2021 NHL expansion draft for the Seattle Kraken.
The building is a Seattle city landmark and a Washington State landmark. In October of 2025, the parents of Mattheis Johnson filed a lawsuit to have the plant's towers declared a public nuisance. Earlier that year, 15-year old Johnson attempted to climb the towers and fell 50 feet to his death.
According to a letter submitted to the Seattle Landmark Review Committee by the Johnson family's attorney, the Seattle Fire Department and news reports document at least 14 fall-related injuries or deaths at the towers since 2008, far exceeding figures previously circulated by city officials. These include three fatalities, multiple incidents resulting in life-threatening head and internal injuries, brain injury, and numerous cases of multiple fractures. The letter argues that the ladders, catwalks, and platforms constitute a "nuisance per se" under Washington law and notes that the City Parks Department had recommended their removal with detailed renderings, stating "public safety is paramount," but the Landmarks Preservation Board rejected the proposal in fall 2025, calling for further study despite the pattern of injuries spanning nearly two decades.
History
Gas Works Park occupies a promontory between the northwest and northeast arms of Lake Union. Little is known of pre–Euro-American site history, but there were Native American settlements around Lake Union. Native names for Lake Union include Kah-chug, Tenas Chuck, and Xa'ten. In the mid-19th century Thomas Mercer named it "Lake Union" in expectation of future canals linking it to Puget Sound and to Lake Washington. Dense forests came to the water's edge and the lake drained into Salmon Bay through a stream "full of windfalls and brush, impassable even for a canoe". Lake Union in the 1860–70s was a popular vacation spot with Seattleites for summer house-boating and picnicking.Several sawmills were operating on Lake Union's shore by the 1850s, taking advantage of the dense forests. Beginning in 1872, Seattle Coal and Transportation Company ferried coal from its Renton Hill mines across the lake for portage across to Puget Sound. In the 1880s came the Denny sawmill at the south end of Lake Union, brick manufacturing, ship building, a tannery, and iron works. Canals with small locks were cut in 1885 from Lake Washington to Lake Union, and from Lake Union to Salmon Bay. These were suitable for transporting logs, but not for shipping. The arrival of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway in 1887 ensured that Lake Union would continue to be a focus for industrial development. In 1900 the Seattle Gas Light Company began to purchase lots on this promontory and its coal gas plant went into operation in 1906. At the time the neighborhood was known as Edgewater
Seattle Gas Light Company purchased lots on the north shore promontory from 1900 to 1909. Despite the fact that the land was being acquired by the gas company, the Olmsted Brothers in 1903 recommended that "...the point of land between the northeast and northwest arms of Lake Union and the railroad should be secured as a local park, because of its advantages for commanding views over the lake and for boating, and for a playground."
In 1911, Virgil Bogue produced a civic master plan for Seattle's Municipal Plans Commission in which he promoted the idea of Lake Union as an industrial area: "The fact that is located in the very heart of the city indicates that if properly developed it will become a most important factor in the commercial and business activities of the city." Completion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Ballard Locks in 1917 guaranteed the success of shipping and shipbuilding industries on Lake Union and thus of the Bogue vision, despite the fact that his plan was defeated by voters.
The Lake Station gas manufacturing plant on Lake Union was the largest private utility then existing in Seattle. It operated as "Seattle Lighting Company" until 1930, when the name was changed to "Seattle Gas Company". Its primary product was illuminating gas manufactured from coal. The gas was later also used for cooking, refrigeration, and heating homes and water. It was also called city gas to distinguish it from natural gas. The gas was made from coal up to 1937 when the high cost of operating the old coke oven and coal-gas generating sets forced a change-over to oil. A pair of oil-to-gas generators was built in 1937 and the old coal-gas facilities were disassembled. In 1946–47, two more oil gas generator pairs were constructed to keep up with demand for gas. Since by-products from gas manufacturing had strong markets of their own, new equipment was installed at the same time to produce "Gasco charcoal briquets", toluene, solvent naphtha, sulfur, xylene, and resin tar.
Primary manufacturing and support facilities consisted of storage tanks, boiler house, pump and compressors house, offices, and laboratories. Onsite support included electrical, carpentry, machine, blacksmith, and welding shops. Additional facilities included a stable, first aid stations, and a fire-safe house for storing fire control materials. Running through the north portion of the site was Burlington Northern Railroad's -wide right-of-way. Train trestles from the coal days were still in place in front of the laboratories and offices building.
By 1954, the Lake Station plant used of gas main to serve Seattle, Renton, Kent and Tukwila. The plant served approximately 43,198 customers in 1940, decreasing to 36,200 in 1954. The company averaged about 130 employees, with four crews of 23 men per shift, rotating 24 hours a day on a 7-day run. Production of city gas ended in 1956 when Seattle converted to natural gas.
Though gas production ceased in 1956, the buildings and manufacturing structures were still intact in 1962 when the city of Seattle began purchasing the abandoned gas works. The $1.34 million purchase price was provided by Forward Thrust bonds, HUD payments were made from 1962 to 1972, and the debt was retired.
The abandoned gas-production plant and its land were deeded to the city of Seattle in 1975 and Gas Works Park was opened to the public that same year.