Central Waterfront, Seattle
The Central Waterfront is a neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is the most urbanized portion of the Elliott Bay shore. It runs from the Pioneer Square shore roughly northwest past Downtown Seattle and Belltown, ending at the Broad Street site of the Olympic Sculpture Park.
The Central Waterfront was once the hub of Seattle's maritime activity. Since the construction of a container port to its south in the 1960s, the area has increasingly been converted to recreational and retail uses. As of 2008, several century-old piers are devoted to shops and restaurants. There are several parks, a Ferris wheel, an aquarium, and one over-water hotel.
Some docks remain on the Central Waterfront, under the authority of the Port of Seattle, including a cruise ship dock, ferry terminals, and a fireboat dock. There are many architectural vestiges of the area's past status as the heart of a port, and a handful of businesses have remained in operation since that time.
Location and extent
As with most Seattle neighborhoods, the Central Waterfront has no defined and agreed-upon boundaries. According to the Seattle Waterfront Plan, the Central Waterfront runs roughly from Jackson Street in the Pioneer Square neighborhood, north along the Elliott Bay shore through Downtown to Broad Street, near the north end of Belltown. To its south is the Port of Seattle's container port; to its north is the Olympic Sculpture Park. That plan makes no clear statement as to how far inland the "waterfront" neighborhood might extend.Real estate and consulting firm Wronsky, Gibbons & Riely PLLC describe the Central Waterfront as a "predominately linear district running north-south along Alaskan Way" from Pier 48 to Pier 70. Pier 48 is at the foot of Yesler Way, three blocks north of Jackson Street ; Pier 70 is at the foot of Broad Street.
A 2006 study by the Department of Neighborhoods agrees on where to place the north end of the district, but puts its southern boundary at Columbia Street. Below Battery Street, this study considers the neighborhood to extend inland to First Avenue. Above Battery Street, they consider the neighborhood to extend only to Elliott Avenue, taking in facilities such as the World Trade Center. The southern cutoff at Columbia Street completely excludes the Pioneer Square neighborhood, while the extension inland to First Avenue means that they consider the former warehouse district along Western Avenue and the entire Pike Place Market Historical District as part of the Central Waterfront.
In its southern portion, the waterfront is separated from inland Seattle by Alaskan Way, which continues northward through downtown. As one continues north, the land rises more rapidly away from the water, creating a sharper distinction between waterfront and uplands. There are several distinct passages between the Central Waterfront and the uplands: the Harbor Steps at University Street, leading to the Seattle Art Museum; the Pike Street Hill Climb from the Seattle Aquarium to the Pike Place Market; and, farther north, the Lenora Street and Bell Street Bridges. The last two are not heavily used, because they do not connect to any major upland destination.
Historically, Seattle's Central Waterfront continued farther south, with a similar character. Since the mid-1960s, the area to the south has been a container port.
Seattle's current pier numbering scheme dates from World War II; prior to that era, for example, the present Pier 55 was Pier 4 and Pier 57 was Pier 6.
Roads
As of 2020, the main route along the Central Waterfront is Alaskan Way. Alaskan Way follows the route of the earlier railway line and one-time Railroad Avenue along the "Ram's Horn" from just north of S. Holgate Street in the Industrial District to Broad Street at the north end of the Central Waterfront.The original Railroad Avenue was built as a planked roadway on pilings over the waters of Elliott Bay. The chaos of horses and buggies, pedestrians, rail cars, multiple railroad tracks and multiple sidings was somewhat relieved when the Great Northern built a rail tunnel under Downtown. From that time, only rail traffic that actually needed to access the waterfront had to use Railroad Avenue; other trains could bypass the busy corridor. Still, there continued to be problems with the structural integrity of the planked roadway. Between 1911 and 1916, a concrete seawall strengthened the portion of the waterfront between S. Washington Street and Madison Street. By 1936 the seawall extended northward to Bay Street, its current extent as of 2008, and Railroad Avenue officially became Alaskan Way. Still, it was not properly paved until 1940, during the administration of mayor Arthur B. Langlie. In the early 1950s, the Alaskan Way Viaduct was built, paralleling Alaskan Way for much of its distance. It was demolished in late 2019 after its replacement by the State Route 99 tunnel.
From May 29, 1982 to November 19, 2005, the George Benson Waterfront Streetcar Line ran parallel to Alaskan Way on the land side. The trolley barn was demolished to build the Olympic Sculpture Park, and since 2005 a roughly equivalent route has been served by a bus.
Piers and buildings
The piers of Seattle's Central Waterfront are numbered from Pier 46, at the south end of the area, to Pier 70 at the northern end.Piers 46–48
Pier 46, and land filled, is the southernmost pier on the Central Waterfront and the northernmost pier of the Port of Seattle's container port. For two years in the early 2000s part of it was operated by the Church Council as a homeless shelter. South Korean container shipping company Hanjin Shipping has a lease at the pier through 2015 with a 10-year renewal option. Nonetheless, there has been much discussion about the future of Pier 46. Proposals have included a sports arena, mixed-income or low-income housing, condos and a shopping center, or continued use as part of the port.Pier 48, at the foot of Main Street, also incorporates the former Pier 47. Nirvana, Cypress Hill and the Breeders performed a concert at Pier 48 on December 13, 1993, which was recorded for MTV. Until 1999, the pier was the Seattle terminal for a ferry service to Victoria, British Columbia using the ship Princess Marguerite. After the final departure of the Princess Marguerite, Pier 48 became home to a museum ship, the Soviet-era Foxtrot class submarine Cobra. The Washington State Department of Transportation purchased the pier from the Port of Seattle in 2008. Citing safety and the expense of maintaining the buildings on the worm-eaten pier, WSDOT demolished the warehouse on the pier in July 2010 in order to use the space as a staging area for the coming demolition of the nearby Alaskan Way Viaduct.
Piers 46–48 are roughly in the area once occupied by Ballast Island. Pier 48 began life in 1901 as Pier B of the Pacific Coast Company's Ocean Dock, which also had two other piers. In the early 20th century, there was a terminal here for the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad.
Harbor Entrance Pergola
As of 2008 there is no Pier 49 as such; the site used to be the Washington Street Boat Landing, but is closed off and unused. This was roughly the site of both the pre-fire and post-fire Yesler's Wharf and of Piers 1 and 2, built by the Northern Pacific some time between 1901 and 1904. The one prominent remaining feature of the crumbling wharf is the Harbor Entrance Pergola, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally it functioned as a landing point for boats bringing passengers from ships. Over the years since the boat landing was closed, various uses have been proposed, including a terminal for the King County Water Taxi route to West Seattle or a mooring point for the historic tugboat Arthur Foss.On September 26, 2010, a water taxi carrying 78 passengers failed to reverse its engines and slammed into the pier. 7 were injured.
As of 2013, the site hosts the maintenance and moorage barge for the King County Metro water taxi.
The Harbor Entrance Pergola was the last-constructed of the historic structures associated with Seattle's Pioneer Square district, and is the district's only important landmark on the west side of Alaskan Way. It was designed by Seattle City Architect Daniel Riggs Huntington and built in 1920. Huntington was also co-architect of the nearby Morrison Hotel and was responsible for the 1912 repairs to Colman Dock on the site of the present ferry terminal. Huntington also designed the Lake Union Steam Plant, built in 1914. The pergola was restored in the 1970s by the Committee of 33, a local Seattle philanthropic organization.
Washington State Ferry Terminal
Pier 50 and Pier 52 are used as operating ferry terminals for Washington State Ferries and the King County Water Taxi. As of 2008, there is no longer a Pier 51. Pier 50 has two passenger-only water taxis running to Vashon Island and West Seattle, while ferries carrying both vehicles and passengers run from Pier 52 to Bainbridge Island and Bremerton in Kitsap County.Pier 52 was historically known as Colman Dock. The original Colman Dock was built by Scottish engineer James Colman in 1882. It burned with most of the rest of the city in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, but was quickly rebuilt. In 1908, Colman extended the dock to a total length of and added a domed waiting room and a clocktower. Calamity hit four years later. On the night of April 25, 1912, the steel-hulled ship Alameda accidentally set its engines "full speed ahead" instead of reversing, and slammed into the dock. The dock tower fell into the bay and the sternwheeler Telegraph was sunk. The clock was salvaged, as was the Telegraph, and the dock was reconstructed with a new tower. No one died in the Alameda accident, but a less dramatic accident the following month proved fatal. On May 19, 1912, a gangplank collapsed as passengers were boarding the Black Ball steamer Flyer. At least 60 people fell into the water. One woman and one child died.
In 1912, Puget Sound was still served by the "Mosquito Fleet", an assortment of boats plying a variety of routes. The following year, Joshua Green founded the Puget Sound Navigation Company. Within about a decade, they had consolidated control of regional ferries. In the mid-1930s they modernized Colman Dock, using an Art Deco style that matched their streamlined signature ferry MV Kalakala.
In 1951, Washington State bought out PSNC and took over the ferry system. Work on the present terminal began a decade later; there have been several reconfigurations and modernizations since. The very month that the state ferry terminal opened, it was the subject of another accident. The Kalakala, which had recently been voted Seattle's second biggest attraction after the then-new Space Needle, rammed the terminal February 21, 1966. Though dramatic, the damage proved not to be severe. The ferry needed only minor repairs and was back in service the next day. Repairs to the slip cost $80,000 and took two months to complete.
The clock from the old Colman Dock tower, dunked into the bay in the 1912 Alameda accident and removed in the 1936 renovation, was rediscovered in 1976, purchased by the Port of Seattle in 1985, restored, given as a gift to the Washington State Department of Transportation, and reinstalled on the present Colman Dock May 18, 1985.
The Grand Trunk Pacific dock stood just north of Colman Dock at the foot of Marion Street. The original dock was built in 1910 as the largest wooden pier on the West Coast. It was not there for long. On July 30, 1914, it was swept away by an explosion and massive fire. The cause has never been determined. Five people died and 29 more were injured. The flames were hot enough to scorch several parts of Colman Dock, but the fire department managed to contain the fire largely to the one pier. A replacement dock was promptly built, and survived until 1964, when it was replaced by waiting area for automobiles boarding ferries at the new ferry terminal.