Alaskan Way , originally Railroad Avenue , is a street in Seattle , Washington, that runs along the Elliott Bay waterfront from just north of S. Holgate Street in the Industrial District —south of which it becomes East Marginal Way S.— to Broad Street in Belltown , north of which is Myrtle Edwards Park and the Olympic Sculpture Park . The right-of-way continues northwest through the park, just west of the BNSF Railway mainline, and the roadway picks up again for a few blocks at Smith Cove . It follows a route known in the late 19th century as the "Ram's Horn" because of its shape. The street gave its name to the Alaskan Way Viaduct , which until 2019 carried Washington State Route 99 through Downtown Seattle . The northern section of Alaskan Way is also signed as its honorary name, Dzidzilalich .
168-618: The idea of building a rail corridor along Seattle's Central Waterfront goes back at least to Thomas Burke and Daniel Hunt Gilman and the construction of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway in the years before the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. Railroad Avenue was built as a planked roadway on pilings over the waters of Elliott Bay. South of Downtown, the rail line constituted the one major man-made feature in an area of tideflats . The portion of Railroad Avenue from Yesler Way in what
336-568: A Supreme Court order to stop selling low-priced ice to fishermen, stood firm on the "closed shop" policy, and opposed U.S. entry into the War to the extent that he forbade Port employees from participating in a 1916 Preparedness Parade. Up until shortly before U.S. entry into the War, he generally got his way, but in March 1917 several proposals of his were defeated at the polls. Remsberg was defeated for reelection in 1918, and Bridges found himself distinctly in
504-399: A "state of emergency" and ordering Seattle police to open port operations by force. The result was a violent and deadly confrontation known as the " Battle of Smith Cove ", followed by federal arbitration that gave the longshoremen almost everything they had initially asked for, and made Seattle a "union port", which it has remained ever since. However, this and further labor confrontations in
672-598: A "ton of gold", from the Klondike, Yukon . The ensuing Yukon Gold Rush formed strong bonds between Seattle and Alaska, and brought enormous wealth to Seattle as the "Gateway to Alaska". Pier 59 is the site of the main building of the Seattle Aquarium , built on a pier shed first constructed in 1905. In 1896 fish and grain dealers Ainsworth and Dunn ( see below ) built a pier at the location of today's designated city landmark Pier 59, originally Pier 8, also known as
840-525: A 175-foot Ferris wheel , the Seattle Great Wheel , opened. The wheel has 42 climate-controlled gondolas, each holding up to six passengers. Pier 57 is now privately owned after the city traded it for Piers 62 and 63. Pier 58 (originally Pier 7) was constructed during the same period as the renovation of Pier 57, Waterfront Park , designed by the Bumgardner Partnership and consultants,
1008-572: A 2009 study that the Port commissioned from Herbert Engineering showed a significantly lower carbon footprint for shipping from Asia through Puget Sound and then by rail to the Midwest than for shipping to other West Coast ports or through the Panama Canal. However, increased container and cruise traffic has increased community concerns, just as the new runway did. In 2012, port commissioners began outreach on
1176-507: A Booz Allen recommendation to get the Commission out of day-to-day operations, instead establishing separate, professionally-run departments for Planning and Research, Data Processing, Real Estate, Trade Development, and Public Relations. The 1960 Mechanization and Modernization Agreement (M&M) put the ports and labor unions of the West Coast of North America, including Seattle, firmly on
1344-580: A general decline in international trade, revenues declined even further, and a series of elections between 1932 and 1934 swept in an entirely new Commission whose campaign pledges of austerity ultimately amounted to smaller changes than might have been imagined: decreasing direct operations and leasing out more Port facilities. Around this time, the Port was rocked by scandal: it turned out that since 1920, Port Auditor Matt Gormley, Cotterill's brother-in-law, had been making small, informal loans of Port funds to Port employees. Gormley, who killed himself as soon as
1512-614: 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
1680-473: A high-water mark that would not be matched again until 1965. Shipbuilding boomed as well, notably the short-lived but dramatic success of Skinner & Eddy . Still, this was a period in which American politics were not moving in the direction of Progressivism. As president of the Port Commission once Chittenden stepped down in 1915, Robert Bridges staked out a series of rather radical positions: he defied
1848-406: A lack of leadership vision and several other factors to make for lackluster post-war performance by the Port, extending into the early 1960s. At best, despite the greatly expanded U.S. economy, the Port managed a level of shipping comparable to the 1920s. This led to a series of reforms. The early 1960s saw an expanded Port Commission, but in more of a policy-setting role, with day-to-day operations in
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#17328760030872016-419: A local levy to allow the city to extend the seawall northward to Bay Street, which was completed in 1936. On July 6, 1936, the city council renamed Railroad Avenue to Alaskan Way, with "Pacific Way" and "Cosmos Quay" also under consideration. A citizen's committee convened by mayor John F. Dore had chosen "The Pierway" out of 9,000 public suggestions, but it was also not considered by the council. Railroad Avenue
2184-479: A mix of straight-out public ownership of some facilities and a major facility on Harbor Island along the lines of New York City's Bush Terminal , the latter set a high bar for the Pacific Terminal Company to issue performance bonds . That organization never succeeded in raising the required US$ 310,000, and voters assented to a proposal that shifted the "Bush Terminal" money to publicly owned facilities on
2352-728: A more permanent Seattle facility; Terminal 30 reverted to use as a container terminal as a part of an expanded Terminal 28. In the wake of the September 11 attacks , security became a major priority. Besides the well-known measures at airports, there was also a major increase in seaport security, though it remains the case that the vast majority of containers ship without their contents ever being inspected. Another round of West Coast maritime labor disputes in September 2022 ultimately worked in Seattle and Tacoma's favor, when they cleared their backups from
2520-512: A museum ship, the Soviet-era Foxtrot class submarine Cobra . The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) 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 120,000-square-foot (11,000 m ) warehouse on the pier in July 2010 in order to use the space as a staging area for
2688-462: A new chief of the port police, the organization began to regain its footing, only to be thrust in the spotlight again when former CEO Mic Dinsmore claimed that a sizable severance had been authorized by the commission. The organization refused to pay and the claim was dropped, though the situation led to an attempted recall of one commissioner. In December that year, the State Auditor's Office issued
2856-402: A new grain elevator at South Hanford Street. U.S. entry into the war brought on further changes: effectively, the entire harbor on Elliott Bay became a U.S. military port for the duration. The Pacific Steamship Company piers south of Downtown were reworked into a Port of Embarkation (part of which now constitutes Coast Guard Station Seattle , the rest of which is part of Terminal 46). One of
3024-631: A political football. While it was conceived in no small part as a counterweight to powerful corporations, those very corporations have a strong interest in trying to dominate the Port and make it serve their ends. From the outset, the railroads, the city's two leading newspapers ( The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ), and the city's Chamber of Commerce, urged that the Port use its powers of taxation, bonding, and condemnation in support of what would now be called public–private partnerships . The initial three-man Port Commission
3192-469: A report critical of the Port's contracting practices (particularly those related to construction of the third runway). The audit report sparked an investigation by the Department of Justice , but the investigation was closed without action. Newly elected commissioners and CEO Yoshitani implemented a series of reforms, including increased commission oversight of port construction projects and consolidation of
3360-469: A retail operation on higher ground at Second Avenue and Pike Street, they established themselves on the waterfront at the foot of Seneca Street by 1893, expanded their business to include grain and feed, and built Pier 8 / Pier 59 (though not its current pier shed) in 1896. By that time they had canning operations in Seattle and at Blaine, Washington . Eventually they moved their entire operation to Blaine, but they owned of Pier 14 until at least 1920, taking on
3528-459: A series of legal actions. Still, Bogue continued to win allies among populists, progressives, the labor movement, and even some of the railroads (though not the Great Northern). Among the more prominent allies were City Engineer Reginald H. Thomson and his one-time assistant George F. Cotterill . Cotterill went on to serve as a state senator and later as mayor of Seattle. Even before the Port
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#17328760030873696-471: A series of reports highly critical of the Port, including two that the Port itself commissioned, one from the University of Washington's Bureau of Business Research in 1956, and another from Booz Allen Hamilton in 1958 A 1959 KIRO-TV documentary Lost Cargo put the matter squarely before the public, In a city nearly half of whose GDP came from harbor-related activities, and where the Port controlled 21 of
3864-573: A shared-use path on the east side of Alaskan Way for several blocks. The new pedestrian and cycle track on the east side of Alaskan Way is planned to be constructed in the former Waterfront Streetcar tracks and funded by a $ 45 million grant pledged by Melinda French Gates , MacKenzie Scott , the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, and the Expedia Group . Central Waterfront, Seattle The Central Waterfront
4032-719: A succession of tenants. In 1905, the main tenant was the Puget Sound Wharf and Warehouse Company, in 1912, the American and Hawaiian Steamship Company and in 1920, the Dodwell Dock and Warehouse Company, operating it as a terminal for the Northland Steamship Company and the Blue Funnel Line . The Washington State Liquor Control Board used the pier as a warehouse during World War II, after which The Coast Guard used
4200-580: A temporary cruise berths at Terminal 30. It was estimated in 2011 that each home port ship call puts US$ 2 million into the Seattle economy. However, there are significant adverse environmental effects. These have been somewhat, though not entirely, mitigated by a ban on discharge of untreated sewage by cruise ships, and by an arrangement with Seattle City Light to provide shore power to the ships so that they do not need to run their engines while in port. The Smith Cove Cruise Terminal opened at Pier 91 in 2009, providing Holland America Line and Princess Cruises with
4368-514: A trade with a private company for Pier 57), they were the venue for the Summer Nights at the Pier concert series, but the "aged and deteriorating" piers can no longer handle the weight of a stage and a crowd. In 2006, the city began plans to replace these piers. In 2017, work began to remove the pier's wooden supports replacing them with 175 steel legs. In addition, a floating dock was added alongside
4536-634: 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
4704-577: Is a public agency that is in King County, Washington . It oversees the seaport of Seattle as well as Seattle–Tacoma International Airport . With a portfolio of properties ranging from parks and waterfront real estate, to one of the largest airports and container terminals on the West Coast , the Port of Seattle is one of the Pacific Northwest 's leading economic engines. Its creation was approved by
4872-642: Is another Graham building, built in 1918 as a warehouse for the Pacific Net and Twine Company. That company merged with the Marine Supply Company to form the Pacific Marine Supply Company, which continued to use the warehouse in conjunction with its operations on the old Pier 1 at the foot of Yesler Way. More recently, the building has been associated with genetic engineering company Immunex . Port of Seattle The Port of Seattle
5040-533: Is at the foot of Yesler Way, three blocks north of Jackson Street (the city plan's southern boundary); 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 (a block north of Yesler Way at the water's edge). Below Battery Street, this study considers the neighborhood to extend inland to First Avenue. Above Battery Street, they consider
5208-597: 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
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5376-617: 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 (when the post-fire Yesler's Wharf was demolished) and 1904. The one prominent remaining feature of the crumbling wharf is the Harbor Entrance Pergola, which
5544-524: Is now the Pioneer Square neighborhood to University Street near today's Harbor Steps burned in the Great Fire, as did most of the city and most of its piers. All were soon rebuilt on a grander scale. In the case of Railroad Avenue, this was largely the work of the Northern Pacific Railroad and Great Northern Railway . The tideflats were steadily filled in, placing the rails south of Downtown—and
5712-521: Is now the Port-owned 11-acre (4.5 ha) Centennial Park . Patricia "Pat" Davis (elected 1986) and Paige Miller (elected 1988), were the first women ever elected to the Port Commission. Both arrived in their roles as seasoned community activists, and both influenced the Port to take on broader concerns than just commerce. They influenced the Port to engage more with affected communities and to concern itself more with shoreline environmental issues and with
5880-691: Is the former Booth Fisheries Building. Even farther inland, across Elliott Way from the Booth Fisheries Building, three former cannery worker cottages survive. Another example is the Agen Warehouse, also known as Olympic Cold Storage Warehouse, at the corner of Western Avenue and Seneca Street near the downtown piers. Designed by architect John Graham and built in 1910, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places . It originally housed John Agen's Alaska Butter and Cream Company, which moved from Pier 6 (now Pier 57). Immediately north of that
6048-484: Is the third fire station at this address and the fourth to serve the Central Waterfront. The fire department used to play a particularly critical role on the waterfront: not only were the piers all made of wood; until federal money helped pay for the construction of a seawall in 1934, so was the road along the water (prior to that Railroad Avenue, after that Alaskan Way). The Great Seattle Fire of 1889 had consumed
6216-749: The American Hawaiian Steamship Company to be the new general manager of the Port. He emerged as the effective leader of the Port with projects such as expanding the grain terminal at South Hanford Street, building the massive Shilshole Bay Marina in Ballard , purchasing the Ames Terminal (which became Terminal 5) in West Seattle on the West Waterway of the Duwamish, and purchasing Pier 28 from
6384-580: The American Midwest , although this number decreased in the following recession . In 2007, Tay Yoshitani joined the organization as CEO. Soon after the start of his tenure, major scandals broke about the Port. It came out that there had been a significant problem with racist and pornographic emails among the Port of Seattle police, and the Port Commissioners declared that a prior investigation had been "poorly conducted on all levels." After hiring
6552-529: The Century 21 Exposition (a World's Fair), the Port announced a US$ 30 million plan to build a major new container port on the Duwamish Waterway. They also "undert[ook] a six-year program to develop marginal lands and sell them to private industry" to expand the Seattle economy. Two years later, Sea-Land chose the Port's new Terminal 5 (on the site of the former Ames Terminal ) as its West Coast headquarters. By
6720-566: The Elliott Bay Water Taxi (now the King County Water Taxi) to West Seattle before the dock was moved to Pier 50. Between Piers 55 and 56, and utilizing parts of both piers as of 2008, Argosy Cruises moor the tour boats Royal Argosy , Spirit of Seattle , Lady Mary , Goodtime II , and Sightseer . From 2009 to 2021, one of its routes included the boat to Tillicum Village on Blake Island . Pier 56 (originally Pier 5),
6888-601: The Executive Director . Over the course of more than a century, the Port of Seattle has provided facilities for an expansion of Seattle's shipping trade, later including container shipping and the Seattle–Tacoma International Airport , and helped to generate increasing economic activity in the area. Although the Second World War halted much of the global shipping trade and negatively impacted
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7056-619: The Great Northern Railway , the Northern Pacific Railroad , and the Pacific Coast Company , which operated the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad . Furthermore, the railroad companies owned the piers and warehouses where the rails and ships came together, inevitably creating an anti-competitive effect for other businesses wishing to ship through Seattle. As early as 1890, Virgil Bogue had proposed public ownership not only of
7224-666: The Inner Harbour in Victoria, British Columbia and seasonal service to Friday Harbor, Washington . Although very heavily remodeled, the pier traces its history in part to Pier 13, built by the Roslyn Coal and Coke Company (1900), which also had a warehouse across Alaskan Way in the early 20th century. The warehouse was torn down to build the American Can Company building (headquarters of Zulily since 2013), which had an overpass to
7392-500: 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
7560-605: The Milwaukee Road , which filled in a gap in Port-owned land on the mainland side of the East Waterway and paved the way for modernization of that portion of the waterfront. By 1956, foreign commerce shipping tonnage had recovered to levels not seen since the 1920s. A further proposal to dredge a 350-foot (110 m) wide, 4-mile (6.4 km) channel up the Duwamish River failed to come to fruition due to numerous lawsuits and
7728-690: 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,
7896-419: The 1920s, the park had developed an unsavory reputation and was closed." Other early Port projects included cold storage facilities at Bell Street Terminal for local fishermen and on the East Waterway at South Spokane Street for Eastern Washington farmers, as well as two massive piers at Smith Cove. Pier A, later Pier 40 and (since 1944) Pier 90 was 2,530 feet (770 m) long and 310 feet (94 m) wide. It
8064-502: 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
8232-401: The 2000–2001 crash that followed the dot-com bubble . Immediately before that remodel, in 1998 The Real World: Seattle was filmed there. Because the Central Waterfront piers are not zoned residential, the building was officially a 24-hour-a-day film set for the shoot. Several buildings on the inland side of Alaskan Way have strong maritime associations. For example, as mentioned above,
8400-535: The Bell Street Pier (renumbered as Pier 66 in 1944). The Port acquired nearby Pier 69, built in 1900 for the Roslyn Coal & Coke Company and used for many decades by the American Can Company . They refurbished that building and in 1993 moved into it as their new headquarters. (Pier 69 is also the Seattle terminal for Clipper Navigation 's Victoria Clipper hydrofoil service. ) This move freed up Pier 66, which
8568-405: The Central Waterfront since its founding in 1899. Besides the usual run of tourist souvenirs, it sells a variety of Northwest Native art ; the store prides itself on dealing directly with the artists. They also carry Russian lacquer boxes, matreshka dolls and porcelain figurines, copper and wooden postcards , music boxes, and a variety of other unusual items. None of these are nearly as unusual as
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#17328760030878736-524: The Century Agenda, a strategic plan for the port's next 25 years. That same year, the Port became one of the most vocal opponents of the proposal to build a new arena in the Stadium District, which they said would cause issues for its operations. The City of Seattle studied the port's concerns at length and found them to be lacking in factual data or extensive studies. The possibility of merging
8904-463: The Dodwell Dock. That name fell out of usage when the pier was sold in 1916 to the Pacific Net and Twine Company, later merged into Pacific Marine Supply Company. In the 1950s through early 60s, Pier 59 was the home of Puget Sound Tug & Barge. Crowley moved the operations to the Duwamish Waterway in the 1960s. The two "stubby" piers known as the Fish and Salt Docks (later Piers 60 and 61) were purchased by
9072-900: The Galbraith Dock, from which the Kitsap County Transportation Company , run by James Galbraith's son Walter Galbraith, competed against the Black Ball Line at the Colman Dock. It was home port for the Kitsap , the Utopia , the Reliance and the Hyak . From 1929 to the mid-1930s it was general headquarters for Gorst Air Transport, who operated a seaplane service from there, using Keystone-Loening planes. They also operated out of Bremerton across
9240-451: The Great Northern Tunnel through downtown had alleviated some of the chaos because trains that were merely passing through no longer needed to use the waterfront route, it did not change the basic fact that this "avenue" along the Central Waterfront was 150 feet (46 m) wide, built over water, difficult to traverse, and separated Downtown from the piers. To further complicate matters, tracks were owned by three separate private corporations,
9408-491: The Northland Transportation Company, as well as the Arlington Dock Company. During the 1962 Century 21 Exposition , the World's Fair at what afterwards became Seattle Center , the pier added curio shops, restaurants, fish houses, etc., and ceased to be a transportation hub. Trident Imports, opened on the pier around that time, had a decades-long run of importing everything from rattan furniture from Southeast Asia to chocolate from Belgium . Ted Griffin's Seattle Marine Aquarium
9576-426: The Olympic Sculpture Park, and since 2005 a roughly equivalent route has been served by a bus. 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. Pier 46 , 88 acres (360,000 m ) 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
9744-491: The Pike Street Pier. The pier had to be reconfigured because the 1897 Thomson/Cotterill plan dictated that all piers run parallel to one another. Ainsworth and Dunn left this pier around the time the present shed was constructed; subsequent tenants were grain dealer Willis Robinson and the Northwestern Steamship Company. By 1912, the pier was owned and largely occupied by steamship agent Dodwell Dock and Warehouse Company, owned by Dodwell & Co. ( Hong Kong ). It became known as
9912-462: The Port facilities truly unionized again. The commission's conservative politics through the 1920s turned in a more mixed direction in the first years of the Depression. It favored pay cuts over layoffs, increased its advertising in the American Midwest and in Asia, and for a time maintained labor peace by continuing to pay union scale to stevedores and longshoremen. Still, once the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act triggered retaliation by other countries and
10080-411: The Port of Seattle and other port authorities around the state exceptional powers to pursue defense-related projects without requiring the public to vote on the bond issues, which enabled the port to purchase additional land on the Harbor Island side of the East Waterway and to pursue major projects on the mainland side: Pier 42 (now part of Terminal 46), with its pilings as high as 70 feet (21 m), and
10248-477: The Port of Seattle in the mid-1940s, and were removed in 1975 to make room for the Seattle Aquarium. Prior to acquisition by the Port, they had housed the Whiz Fish Company and the Palace Fish Company. Pier 62 (built in 1901) and Pier 63 (built in 1905) have long since lost their sheds, which were similar to the one on Pier 59. Pier 62 was originally numbered Pier 9, known as the Gaffney Dock, after its absentee owner Mary Gaffney. Pier 63 (originally Pier 10)
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#173287600308710416-452: The Port played a large part in Nintendo of America 's move from New York City to Redmond , an Eastside suburb of Seattle. In its early years, the Port had to contend with the fact that the most desirable properties on the Central Waterfront were already occupied by piers, mostly in the hands of the railroads. 70 years later, with the Port's container facilities now completely dominating Seattle's maritime trade, they were confronted with
10584-528: The Port's increased capacity for intermodal transport , with containers transferring between ships and trucks, but especially between ships and rail. Although some carriers shifted operations from Seattle to Tacoma, this was more than compensated by acquisition of new business and the growth of shipping by some of the carriers who remained. Among the new arrivals: toy company Hasbro made Seattle's expanded Terminal 106 its national distribution center and its sole port of entry for container shipments from Asia, and
10752-451: The Ports of Seattle and Tacoma was seriously entertained as early as the 1980s, when Sea-Land abandoned Seattle for Tacoma, followed by K Line and Evergreen Marine Corporation . While Tacoma was clearly the winner in these particular transactions, both port systems were aware that they were being played off against one another. On October 7, 2014, the Port of Seattle and Port of Tacoma announced an agreement to "jointly market and operate
10920-426: The Seattle port, but of all ports in the then newly formed state. As part of gaining statehood, Washington had gained control over its own coastal waters, previously under direct federal control. Initially, it looked like Bogue might prevail, at least with respect to Seattle, but Thomas Burke and others representing the railroad interests managed to stall the initial Harbor Lines Commission plan into oblivion through
11088-412: The Sound. Through this period, the Northern Pacific still owned the pier, but by 1944 the Washington Fish and Oyster Company (now Ocean Beauty Seafoods) had purchased the pier and was its main tenant. Engineering firm Reese and Callender Associates helped them reinforce the pier and to adapt it to its new use. By 1938, the Kitsap Transportation Company was out of business. That year, Ivar Haglund rented
11256-426: The Soviet Union newly an ally, Seattle became a base for trans-oceanic shipping to Siberia . The Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation (Todd Pacific) on Harbor Island scored contracts to build 45 destroyers , which put it in a tie with Bethlehem Steel San Francisco for largest purely military ship production on the U.S. West Coast. The U.S. Navy took over the massive Smith Cove piers. The state legislature granted
11424-458: The Thomson/Cotterill plan, the Orient Dock and both the old and new Bell Street Pier were built parallel to the shore. There was a bridge on the site of the present-day pedestrian overpass. Pier 67 , renamed from Galbraith-Bacon Pier, Wall Street Pier, or Vine Street Pier in World War II, is the site of The Edgewater hotel (originally and briefly the Camelot , and for many years the Edgewater Inn ). The hotel has hosted numerous celebrities over
11592-409: The U.S. Northern Pacific Fishing Fleet's home for operations, provisioning and repairs ever since. Work also began that year on a grain terminal at South Hanford Street on the East Waterway, intended to give Washington growers an alternative to shipping their grain down the Columbia River to Portland, Oregon . Another project begun in 1913, the Bell Street Terminal, the Port's new headquarters near
11760-559: The U.S. from East Asia, Seattle, in the relatively sparsely populated Pacific Northwest would always have a disadvantage in competing with the Port of Long Beach and of Los Angeles in populous Southern California . But, in general, the Port continued to expand. The TOTE loss spurred the Port to acquire and stockpile more land along the Duwamish. The Port built a container facility at Terminal 25 for American President Lines (APL), and an assembly facility for foreign cars at Terminal 115. Terminal 28 (later incorporated into Terminal 30)
11928-430: The U.S., the plan bought some property outright, and provided noise insulation for many other houses. Nonetheless, some neighbors remained unsatisfied. Two decades later, an even heftier controversy arose over adding a third runway at Sea-Tac. While the Port ultimately got its way, that happened only after a lengthy legal battle with the governments of nearly all the communities surrounding the airport. Also controversial
12096-784: The Yukon and Alaska, including the Bering Sea , and transported American soldiers to Manila in the Philippines during the Spanish–American War of 1898–1899. Eventually, they serviced Hawaii , the Mediterranean and Russia , but went bankrupt in 1920. After the Waterhouse company, the pier housed a succession of firms: the Hayden Dock Company, Shepard Line Intercoastal Service, and
12264-611: 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
12432-495: The annexation of some of the relevant area by Tukwila, Washington , a south-side suburb. Despite Burke's best efforts, federal changes that introduced a sliding scale to maritime shipping rates in the early 1950s had taken away much of the historic value of Seattle's being the closest major U.S. port to Asia. In 1954, this rate differential had helped San Francisco to outstrip Seattle even in shipping Eastern Washington apples, shipping 78,000 boxes to Seattle's 5,480. The decade saw
12600-554: The area's past status as the heart of a port, and a handful of businesses have remained in operation since that time. 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
12768-462: The basis for the local economy were being depleted. The salmon catch was down below a tenth of what it had been in the peak year, 1913, and timber production was also significantly down even before the national economy began to tumble. By October 1931, low-rent housing in Seattle was oversaturated, and a Hooverville began to form in the abandoned Skinner & Eddy land along Elliott Bay, site of present-day (2023) Terminal 46. In its first few months it
12936-468: The benefits offered in the M&;M bringing the unions largely on board, the path was clear. Precisely because the Port of Seattle was doing poorly coming into this era, it had more reason than most to make a full-scale embrace of the new technology. In contrast, in particular, to Portland, the Port threw in its lot heavily for the new technology. In the summer of 1962, with the world's eyes on Seattle as host of
13104-600: The biggest factors that swayed the votes in favor of creating the port was the prospect of economic growth, especially given the impending 1914 completion of the Panama Canal . The first Commission Report for 1912 records that: "The Port of Seattle came into existence on September 5, 1911, by a vote of the people of the Port District held on that date in accordance with the Port District Act of March 14, 1911. The work of
13272-585: The building that now houses the Old Spaghetti Factory was built in conjunction with Pier 14, now Pier 70. Southeast from there, across Clay Street, the building that is now the headquarters of Zulily and also houses part of the Art Institute of Seattle began life in 1916 as the American Can Company, and in the 1930s was connected to Pier 69 by a skybridge. Continuing south across Vine Street
13440-435: 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
13608-423: The busy corridor. Still, there continued to be problems with the structural integrity of the planked roadway. Pilings had been driven into soft tideland substrates, waves caused continual damage, and railroad freight cars continually stressed the structure. Between 1911 and 1916, a concrete seawall strengthened the portion of the waterfront between S. Washington Street and Madison Street. Federal funds supplemented
13776-455: The city's 88 piers and terminals, this was no small thing. A pair of 1960 ballot measures passed by broad margins. One expanded the Port Commission from three members to five, with the two new members elected at large rather than on the longstanding three-district basis. The other allocated US$ 10 million in bonds to fund modernization. The state government followed this up in 1961 by giving the Port expanded taxing authority, while also following
13944-468: 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 (A and C, the latter also known as City Dock). In the early 20th century, there was a terminal here for the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad . As of 2008 there
14112-473: The commission for the first six months was confined almost entirely to the preparation of projects which were duly approved by the people at a special election held on March 5, 1912." From the first, the Port of Seattle was faced with the fact that most of the key properties on the Central Waterfront on Elliott Bay were already in the hands of the railroads and other vested interests. This meant that most Port-owned facilities would be in more peripheral areas: to
14280-561: The configuration was deemed necessary by city and state transportation officials. In April 2023, the central section of Alaskan Way was given an honorary name, Dzidzilalich, which was derived from the Lushootseed name dᶻidᶻəlalič (meaning "little crossing-over place"), one of the Duwamish villages on Elliott Bay. The designation was approved by the city council in February 2023 and applies to
14448-542: The context of Seattle's and the Port's relatively weak post-war economy, the start of the Cold War , a generally conservative Port Commission, and the even more hardline WEA, the Seattle longshoremen walked out on September 1, 1948, as did their co-workers up and down the West Coast . Despite red-baiting and the relatively anti-labor Taft–Hartley Act , the ILWU won their fight. Seattle's Griffiths and & Sprague Stevedoring Company
14616-412: 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 (lying in pieces) in 1976, purchased by the Port of Seattle in 1985, restored, given as
14784-566: 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
14952-440: The early 1950s, the Alaskan Way Viaduct was built, paralleling Alaskan Way for much of its distance. In early 2019, a replacement tunnel for the Alaskan Way Viaduct was completed, leading to the closure and demolition of the old viaduct. Starting in February 2019 (when the tunnel opened) and to be completed over six months, the old viaduct was demolished to make way for new development along Seattle's downtown waterfront, including
15120-534: 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
15288-416: The economy, Seattle again became a major port after the war. At the time of the creation of the Port of Seattle as an institution, Seattle was already a major port. However, its Central Waterfront was somewhat chaotic, due in part to having eight (and in some places nine) more or less parallel railroad tracks along the ill-maintained wooden planking of Railroad Avenue. Although the 1903-1906 construction of
15456-525: The end of the 1960s, Seattle was the West Coast's second-busiest port. When Seattle's economy was slammed by the Boeing Bust around the turn of the decade, the previously moribund port was one of its few bright lights. The Port ended up buying the 25-acre (10-hectare) Boeing Plant 1 site along the Duwamish, which was developed into another modern container facility, Terminal 115, as was the old grain elevator site at South Hanford Street. That grain elevator
15624-447: The facility, but it almost certainly turned out to be a money-loser over the next few decades. FTZ status was vastly expanded in 1989, encompassing virtually all of the Port's seaport and airport acreage, a much better proposition than the single small facility. By 1952, it was clear that Seattle's maritime sector had not made a post-war recovery commensurate with other U.S. ports. Many companies were wary of doing business in Seattle in
15792-403: 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,
15960-424: 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. Pier 53 , a very short pier just north of the ferry terminal near the foot of Madison Street, is the site of Seattle Fire Station No. 5, at 925 Alaskan Way. The present 1963 building
16128-460: The first automobile ferry in Western Washington, Leschi , which launched December 6, 1913. The Leschi operated on Lake Washington , providing service from Leschi Park to two locations on the east side of the lake. Earlier that year, Port construction began with the creation of a home port for Puget Sound fishermen; Fishermen's Terminal on Salmon Bay was completed in 1914 and has been
16296-495: The first ship from the People's Republic of China ever to visit a U.S. port. Years later, the Port invested in a major cold storage facility and Pier 91, which paid off handsomely when Japan dropped a 1971 ban on fruit imports from Washington. Pier 91 became the chief export point for Washington apples to Japan. The Port further expanded in the 1980s, with the growth of the China trade and
16464-456: The first time ever, it was outdone even by its neighbor to the south, the far smaller city of Tacoma. While the Port of Seattle had launched what was to prove a very successful airport, wartime use of the Elliott Bay and Duwamish River waterfront had not established a particularly good basis for a peacetime port. When the military's new piers reverted to civilian use, they took business away from existing older facilities and, consequently, away from
16632-446: The following years left Seattle with a "reputation in business circles as the least cooperative port on the coast"; sending the port into decline until the coming of World War II. The war led to a common cause among management and labor, but the militant International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which had broken away from the ILA in 1937, still harbored strong memories of 1934. In
16800-517: The hands of an increasingly professionalize bureaucracy. Like any other government entity, the Port was affected by the realignment of American politics: the rising anti-war movement, the civil rights and women's movements, but above all the environmental movement. The Sea-Tac Communities plan, developed over a period of three years and adopted in 1976, established a comprehensive framework to compensate homeowners and other property owners affected by airport noise. The first large-scale plan of its kind in
16968-614: The heart of town. Further, it had been over a decade since the Port had run a major national and international publicity campaign. And there were labor troubles (see following section Politics and the Port ). The Port was not entirely without a strategy. On the shore of the area around Pioneer Square and immediately south, they purchased and modernized Piers 43 and 45 through 49 from the Pacific Coast Company Piers 43, 45, 46, and 47 were eventually incorporated into present-day Terminal 46. Fishermen's Terminal at Salmon Bay
17136-532: The last of four transcontinental railroads to reach Seattle. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul was commonly known as the "Milwaukee Road", so the pier became known as the "Milwaukee Pier". It soon became the terminal for the McCormick Steamship Line, the Munson McCormick Line and Osaka Shosen Kaisha, and by the mid-1930s was also known as the "McCormick Terminal". In the 1950s at least part of
17304-492: The longest-lasting legacies of the war years was the comprehensive May 1, 1944 renumbering of all of Seattle's Elliott Bay piers into a single system encompassing the bay. While the War years were a boom time for Seattle and its port, the immediate postwar years were not. Wartime production had made Seattle-based Boeing the region's largest employer; peace resulted in 70,000 Boeing layoffs. Nor did Seattle's port get its expected share of post-war commercial shipping traffic: for
17472-618: The loss of at least 1700 tons of freight. No one was killed in the accident, and the following year the Northern Pacific Railroad completed a new Pier 4, this time with better bracing, which survives today as the renamed Pier 55. Its first tenant, the Arlington Dock Company, was a shipping agent for passenger steamships to several West Coast cities and to Alaska, Asia and Europe. The pier was used for passenger service until around World War I. The Fisheries Supply Company became
17640-419: The mainland side of the East Waterway. Owning and operating facilities themselves allowed the Port to set rates so as to promote trade, rather than to maximize their own profits. It also let them set up a " closed shop ": in this era, and as long as Robert Bridges remained on the commission, all Port facilities were unionized . Naturally, these policies did not sit well with the established interests. Still,
17808-558: The marine terminals of both ports as a single entity," though they were not merging. Joint operations began with the formation of the Northwest Seaport Alliance on August 4, 2015, creating the third-largest cargo gateway in the United States; by the end of the year, it reported more than 3.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units handled by the two ports, an increase of 4 percent. The Port of Seattle has been something of
17976-484: The minority on an increasingly conservative Commission. He resigned his seat in August 1919. His continued activist career (including a run for governor) was cut short by his death on December 21, 1921. The new commissioners—W.S. Lincoln, George B. Lamping, and now-former mayor Cotterill —took the Port in a very different direction: wharf rates were raised to the same range as the private dock companies, port land
18144-550: 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,
18312-481: The new fireboat Duwamish replaced the Snoqualmie . The wood-frame building was demolished in 1916 and replaced by an elegant brick building in 1917, incorporating Craftsman and Tudor Revival details. An additional fireboat Alki came into service in 1928. While the 1917 fire station was recognized as an aesthetically good building, by the early 1960s its supporting pier timbers were becoming unsafe. The building
18480-442: 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
18648-477: The north end of the Central Waterfront, loaded its first cargo October 28, 1913 while the warehouse facilities were still under construction, and by 1914 served much of the Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet and provided easy access for farmers around Puget Sound to bring their produce to Pike Place Market . A viaduct to Pike Place Market and a rooftop park, solarium, and pool were added in 1915. "but by
18816-510: The northeast corner of the pier shed for a one-room aquarium , which included a small fish and chips stand. The aquarium closed around 1945, at which time the restaurant moved to the southeastern corner and was redesigned in Streamline Moderne style. Ivar's Acres of Clams, named after an old folk song , became the flagship of the Ivar's chain of seafood restaurants. In 1966, Haglund purchased
18984-436: The old Northern Pacific piers) it retains only traces of its historic character. The pier was built as Pier 14 by Ainsworth and Dunn and completed in 1902 along with a warehouse across Railroad Avenue (today's Alaskan Way) that later, from the 1970s into the 2010s, housed the Old Spaghetti Factory. Ainsworth and Dunn's Seattle Fish Company dated from 1889 and occupied a succession of Central Waterfront locations. Beginning with
19152-412: The opposite problem: much of the Central Waterfront, especially the portion north of Pier 59 (the Seattle Aquarium since 1977 ) had fallen into dereliction. The Port took a leading role in trying to remedy this, with Pat Davis and Paige Miller, the first two women on the Port Commission, taking a particularly large role. One of the deteriorating properties in question was the Port's own headquarters at
19320-574: The organization's procurement activities into one division to afford better control. Yoshitani also increased commitment to environmental practices. The port has many environmental programs, including shore power for cruise ships and a plan to clean up the Lower Duwamish Waterway (in partnership with Boeing, King County, and the City of Seattle). The Ports of Seattle and Tacoma have been able to turn certain environmental concerns to their advantage, as
19488-424: The outbreak of World War I brought even more traffic to the Port than the expected opening of the Panama Canal, and the recent investments meant Seattle had the most modern port facilities on the U.S. West Coast, while providing the lowest port costs, which stilled criticism for the moment. In the second quarter of 1915, Seattle alone saw more foreign trade than the entire state of California ; its 1918 tonnage set
19656-428: The path away from break-bulk cargo toward containerization . Alaska Steamship Company had experimented with containerization as early as 1949, and Sea-Land had begun the move toward international standardization when it shared its patents in 1956, but the unions had initially opposed moving in this direction because of the inevitable loss in jobs from what was, as much as anything, a labor-saving technology. With
19824-407: The pier as its Seattle base from 1946 to 1955, and visiting naval vessels moored on its north side. Like the piers to it south, its historic uses were superseded by containerization, and it was remodeled to house shops and restaurants. Triad Development bought the pier in 1995, and in the late 1990s it was remodeled as a headquarters for Go2Net , which was merged into InfoSpace, and fared poorly in
19992-456: The pier in the 1930s. Pier 70 , at the foot of Clay and Broad Streets, now marks the northern end of the Central Waterfront. Beyond that are the Olympic Sculpture Park and Myrtle Edwards Park . Although the pier shed retains its historic shape, it was remodeled after a fire in 1915, remodeled again in the 1970s, and so heavily altered in the late 1990s—reclad with metal siding, all windows and doors modernized and many reconfigured—that (unlike
20160-461: The pier was used for fish processing. By the 1960s, the Port of Seattle owned the pier, and had cut holes in the deck for recreational fishing, but the pilings were deteriorating and the pier was settling unevenly. In 1971, the City purchased the pier from the Port and renovated it over the next three years. The renovated pier, now known as the "Bay Pavilion", has restaurants, shops, an amusement arcade, and an early 20th-century carousel . In June 2012
20328-400: The pier, and Washington Fish and Oyster Company became his tenant. The restaurant was repeatedly redesigned and expanded over the years, achieving more or less its present configuration before Haglund's death in 1985. Since 1988, Pier 54 has been home not only to Ivar's Acres of Clams, but also to the current incarnation of Ye Olde Curiosity Shop , which has occupied a succession of venues on
20496-555: The pier. Pier 66 is the official designation for the Port of Seattle's Bell Street Pier and Bell Harbor complex, which replaced historic Piers 64, 65, and 66 in the mid-1990s. Facilities at the Bell Street facility include a marina, a cruise ship terminal, a conference center, the Odyssey Maritime Discovery Center, restaurants, and marine services. A pedestrian elevator and overpass at Bell Street connects it to
20664-495: 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
20832-426: The piers as far north as Union Street along with the rest of the heart of the city. After the Great Fire, a small one-story wood frame firehouse was erected near the foot of Madison Street, but not quite at the present site. It opened January 3, 1891 with a crew of nine, the new fireboat Snoqualmie and a small hose wagon. In 1902, a larger two-story wood-frame building was constructed on the present site and in 1910,
21000-596: 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
21168-468: The present Pier 55 was Pier 4 and Pier 57 was Pier 6. 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
21336-406: The principal tenant from at least 1938 to the 1980s. In 1945, the pier was remodeled. Structural improvements were made at that time by Melvin O. Sylliaasen and in the 1960s by the engineering firm Harvey Dodd and Associates. Further improvements were made in the late 1990s, along with some alterations to the exterior of the pier shed. The north side of Pier 55 was formerly the downtown terminus of
21504-556: The prior decade, and the Port of Tacoma in particular undercut Seattle on prices. A price war through the 1920s resulted in a 1929 agreement through the American Association of Port Authorities to set uniform wharf rates. Seattle and the state of Washington were not well-positioned coming into the Great Depression that began in 1929. Due to over-fishing and excessive logging, the natural resources that had provided much of
21672-509: The reconstruction of Alaskan Way itself, which will be completed in 2024. In October 2018, Alaskan Way was temporarily shifted west to facilitate the demolition of the viaduct. The rebuilt Alaskan Way surface street will consist of up to 8 lanes of traffic along its lower section, including two lanes in each direction for general traffic, one lane in each direction for transit, and two turn lanes for ferry access. This new configuration has faced criticism from local businesses and residents; however,
21840-413: 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 705 feet (215 m) and added a domed waiting room and a 72-foot (22 m) 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
22008-522: The route of the southern portion of today's Alaskan Way—on dry land. Around 1900, Railroad Avenue was a chaos of horses and buggies, pedestrians, and rail cars, with multiple railroad tracks and sidings. The congestion of the rail corridor was somewhat relieved when the Great Northern built a rail tunnel (1903–1906) under Downtown. From that time, only traffic that actually needed to access the waterfront had to use Railroad Avenue; other trains could bypass
22176-444: The scandal broke, appears never to have personally profited from these schemes, although some other Port officials almost certainly did, and Gormley had juggled the books to cover for US$ 70,000 of loans that were never repaid. Cotterill, already voted out of office, and a " lame duck " at the time the scandal broke, had apparently received at least one loan for $ 190; it is unclear whether he had paid it back. This scandal coincided with
22344-518: The section between Dearborn Street and Pike Street. It also includes Elliott Way, a four-lane street connecting Alaskan Way near Pike Place Market to Belltown that opened in May. The bicycle lanes on the new promenade are planned to end near Pier 62, with a gap to the Elliott Bay Trail at Pier 70 (Broad Street). A new bicycle lane on the west side was proposed to begin construction in 2023, but its design
22512-542: The south, the newly dredged East Waterway of the Duwamish between the newly filled mainland Industrial District and the newly created Harbor Island ; to the north, where the Great Northern Railway occupied only part of Smith Cove ; and 6 miles (9.7 km) north in Ballard , newly annexed to Seattle, where Salmon Bay would form the outlet of the new Lake Washington Ship Canal connecting Lake Washington and Lake Union to salt water. The Port commissioned
22680-549: The south. In 1989, the city traded Pier 57 for Piers 62 and 63. Pier 57 (originally Pier 6) near the foot of University Street was built in 1902 by the Miller and Geske Construction Company and repeatedly modified over the course of the next decade. It was originally built for the John B. Agen Company. In 1909, the pier passed into the hands of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad ,
22848-590: The start of the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike , a particularly complicated situation in Seattle. Not only was the ILA faced off against the Waterfront Employers Association (WEA), but the Port and the Teamsters' Union both wavered in between, and newly elected Seattle mayor Charles L. Smith outflanked the Employers Association, undercutting a tentative agreement with the ILA by declaring
23016-529: The state's first municipally owned dock. Even The Seattle Times , normally opposed to municipal ownership, began to advocate for similar measures in Seattle. On March 14, 1911, the Port District Act became state law, allowing the formation of port districts. The Port of Seattle was created by the state of Washington in 1911. Under the Port District Act, the port's construction plan had to be presented and voted upon before construction could start. One of
23184-489: The store's "museum" curiosities, which are not for sale: "Sylvester" the mummy , fetal Conjoined twins calves, a collection of shrunken human heads , a woven cedar bark hat worn by Chief Seattle , whale and walrus oosiks , and a number of items that appeared in Ripley's Believe It Or Not . Pier 55 , at the foot of Spring Street, was originally named Pier 4. The first Pier 4, built in 1900, collapsed in September 1901, causing
23352-441: The street is Seattle's World Trade Center, completed 1998. The Bell Street Pier Cruise Terminal opened in 2000, bringing heavy cruise ships to Seattle for the first time in decades, with Seattle as home port for ships from Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean International . A second portion of the terminal opened the following year, and by 2003 Holland America Line and Princess Cruises were running cruises to Alaska from
23520-550: The strike much more rapidly than the Southern California ports. Some of the shipping traffic that was diverted to the Puget Sound ports at that time led to continued business in the years after. In the first decade of the 21st Century, the Port of Seattle had several record-setting years for both container traffic and grain shipments. As of 2008, the grain terminal at Pier 86 handled 6.4 million metric tons of grain, mostly from
23688-463: The then-decrepit state of some parts of Seattle's waterfront, particularly areas that were not owned by the Port. Conversely, Mic Dinsmore, a key figure in the Port bureaucracy beginning in 1985 and its longest-serving executive director (1992–2007) was often criticized as a "aggressive" or "domineering"., In the Dinsmore years, the Port was a strong supporter of NAFTA and was a key player in bringing
23856-475: The third of the Northern Pacific Railroad wharves, was constructed in 1900. President Theodore Roosevelt landed there on the steamer Spokane on May 23, 1903. With the adjacent Pier 4/55, it was one of the two Arlington Docks, but is better known as the base of operations for Frank Waterhouse and Company, a steamship line that rose to prominence during the Klondike Gold Rush. They provided transportation to
24024-409: The upland World Trade Center (another Port of Seattle property), as well as to a parking lot and to Belltown in general. The area once was a shantytown. Cleared around 1903 in conjunction with the regrading of Denny Hill , it became home to the Pacific Coast Company's Orient Dock, which ran parallel to the shoreline rather than at the usual northeast–southwest angle. The southern portion of that dock
24192-416: The voters of King County on September 5, 1911, and authorized by the Port District Act . The Port of Seattle is managed by a five-member Port Commission who are elected at large by the voters of King County and serve four-year terms. (Both the size of the commission and the length of the terms have varied over time. ) The Commissioners govern the Port, lead all inter-governmental functions, and oversee
24360-414: The wake of the 1948 strike (see section Politics and the Port below); a further strike in 1952 and conflicts within the Port Commission and between the Port Commission and Port management certainly did not alleviate these concerns. Things finally began to turn around, or at least level out, in late summer of 1953, when Howard M. Burke was hired away from his position as Seattle-based district manager at
24528-612: 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 (PSNC or Black Ball Line). 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
24696-521: 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 ;
24864-635: The years, most famously the Beatles who came to Seattle in 1964 during the height of Beatlemania . Pier 68 (the Booth Fisheries Pier) was demolished at the time the hotel was built on the newly reconstructed Pier 67. Pier 69 , north of Pier 67 and roughly between Vine and Clay Streets, is the site of the Port of Seattle headquarters and the Seattle terminus of the Clipper Navigation , a foot passenger (walk-on only) ferry with regular service to
25032-415: Was a compromise team that ran as a slate: former State Lands Commissioner Robert Bridges, a strong Progressive; Charles Remsberg, a Republican banker; and recently retired Army Corps of Engineers brigadier general Hiram M. Chittenden , who was expected to hold down the center. In the event, Remsberg proved to be less of a friend to the monied interests than expected. While the Port's initial plans proposed
25200-548: Was also co-architect of the nearby Morrison Hotel (1909) 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. Pier 50 and Pier 52 are used as operating ferry terminals for Washington State Ferries and
25368-407: 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 (1903–1906) under Downtown. From that time, only rail traffic that actually needed to access the waterfront had to use Railroad Avenue; other trains could bypass
25536-555: Was constructed on the site of the Schwabacher Wharf demolished in the 1950s. The Schwabacher Wharf had been just far enough north to survive the Great Seattle Fire in 1889. In the 1890s, it was the site of two prominent events in the city's history. The freighter Miike Maru opened Seattle's Japan trade by docking there August 31, 1896. Less than a year later, July 17, 1897, the steamship Portland arrived from Alaska bearing
25704-597: Was demolished along with the Lenora Street Docks (Piers 64 and 65) to make way for the present-day Pier 66/Bell Street Pier, completed in 1996. That pier includes extensive public space, including (as had been briefly the case in the 1910s) a rooftop park. Bell Street Pier also includes the Bell Harbor International Conference Center; "Bell Harbor International Conference Center" . Port of Seattle . Retrieved February 17, 2022 . across
25872-653: Was demolished in early 1961. After extensive work on the pier supports, the new modern building by Durham, Anderson & Freed opened in December 1963. Pier 54 (originally Pier 3) and its shed were constructed in 1900 by the Northern Pacific Railway , the southernmost of their three adjacent piers between Madison and University Streets. The shed's first tenants were Galbraith and Bacon (James Galbraith and Cecil Bacon) who dealt in grain and hay, and also in building materials. In Mosquito Fleet days it became known as
26040-672: Was effectively replaced by the new Pier 86 Grain Terminal at the foot of Queen Anne Hill southeast of Smith Cove. Naturally, advantages were not always on Seattle's side. For example, Totem Ocean Trailer Express (now TOTE Group ), founded in 1975, opted to base its shipments to Alaska out of Tacoma, where land was cheaper and room for expansion less likely to be an issue. 1975 also was the end of many decades of weekly United Brands banana-boat arrivals in Seattle: since then, bananas have arrived in Seattle by rail or truck. And for cargoes coming into
26208-507: Was enlarged and upgraded, as was the East Waterway Dock on Harbor Island. Still, they failed to support Eastern Washington farmers with a modern grain terminal, and that trade was lost, for the time, to Portland and Tacoma. In 1949 the U.S. Department of Commerce designated a foreign-trade zone (FTZ) on Harbor Island. At the urging of the local business community, the Port invested heavily in gaining this designation and in building
26376-504: Was established, the latter two scored several victories simply by devising plans (a tunnel through Downtown; a uniform alignment of piers) that made enough sense that the railroads and others adopted them more or less voluntarily. Additionally, Cotterill as a state senator led a state-level effort to authorize port districts, though he was out of office by the time it came to fruition. In 1910, pressure toward public ownership of port facilities increased when Tacoma, Washington began building
26544-500: Was expanded by 8.5 acres (3.4 ha) for Nissan , and Seattle became a major port of entry for Datsun vehicles. In 1976, the Port reacquired Piers 90 and 91 at Smith Cove from the Navy and focused them, at least initially, on Asian trade. In April 1979, COSCO 's Liu Lin Hai docked at Pier 91, then proceeded to Terminal 86 to take on a cargo of American grain bound for China, thereby becoming
26712-548: Was known by 1908 as the Holden Dock, but was more commonly known as the Virginia Dock or Virginia Street Dock from its location. It was designed by architect Max Umbrecht and one of its main tenants in the 1910s was Northwest Fisheries, who canned and distributed Alaskan red salmon . An overpass connected the dock to a warehouse on the other side of Railroad Avenue. For many years after the city acquired these two piers in 1989 (in
26880-411: Was leased to private companies to build terminals, and the "closed shop" era ended; after a series of futile strikes, a company union and hiring hall was established (although, unlike many other facilities, the Port never attempted to prevent individual International Longshoremen's Association —ILA—members from hiring on). It would be over a decade later, amidst the Great Depression , before
27048-416: Was located at the west end of the pier. Its star attraction, Namu the killer whale , died in 1966. The architecture, landscape and urban design firm Mithun completed a renovation of the pier in 2000 and is now housed in the second floor of the pier shed. The city purchased Pier 57 in 1971 and Piers 58 to 61 in 1978, after cargo shipping at the piers was relocated years earlier to the container port to
27216-548: Was opposed by the Port of Seattle due to potential conflicts with cruise ship passengers using the Bell Harbor Pier . A revised design from SDOT to move a portion of the lane near Pier 62 to the east side of Alaskan Way drew criticism from local bicycling activists. An updated plan for the bicycle lane, announced in July 2023, would close the lane on days with cruise ship arrivals and departures but leave it otherwise open. During days with closures, cyclists would be redirected to
27384-509: Was replaced by Alaskan Way, along the same route but built on landfill rather than on pilings. The moniker was adopted in 1936 by the city council after a lengthy debate over the name of the city's new waterfront promenade, with the winning suggesting coming from the Alaska-Yukon Pioneers Association to honor the Klondike gold rush . Other front-runners included Pacific Way, Seawall Avenue, Maritime Drive, and Cosmos Quay. In
27552-635: Was sometimes referred to as Pier D. By the 1920s, the Orient Dock was replaced by two "finger piers" running at the usual angles. These Lenora Street Piers (Piers 64 and 65) were used by the "Princess Ships" of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Leslie Salt Co. The Port of Seattle's original Bell Street Pier, the previous Pier 66, was built here in 1914 on dirt from the Denny Regrade. Despite
27720-419: Was the Pier 86 Grain Terminal (completed 1970), which intruded upon the views of Elliott Bay from Seattle's elite Queen Anne neighborhood, while unloading from "loud[ly] clanking" railroad cars left "clouds of wafting grain-dust". While the economically successful grain terminal is still there as of 2023 , there have been mitigation measures, including landscaping and public pedestrian and bicycle paths in what
27888-521: Was the first to reach an agreement with the union; the soon Port followed their lead; and while the WEA held out for 95 days, once it became clear that Harry Truman and the Democratic Party would remain in control of the federal government, they also came to the table and negotiated. The result was such a blow to the WEA that it soon merged into the American Shipowners Association, forming the Pacific Maritime Association . As discussed above (see section The Fifties ), this labor militancy combined with
28056-408: Was the largest pier in the world until the construction of Pier B, later Pier 41 and (since 1944) Pier 91, 50 feet (15 m) longer. A more conservative Port Commission in the 1920s largely put an end to new initiatives of this sort. Trade continued to grow slowly, with an emphasis on China and (especially) Japan, but other West Coast and Gulf Coast ports increasingly copied Seattle's initiatives of
28224-484: Was twice removed by Seattle Police "sweeps," but eventually a compromise was reached that allowed a shantytown to persist for almost a decade. The economic depression and labor troubles of the 1930s (see following section Politics and the Port ) were followed by the wartime economy of World War II . Even before the U.S. entered the war, export of scrap metal to Japan, of course, went to zero, and export of Eastern Washington apples to Europe fared little better, but with
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