Rainier Beach:
Rainier Beach is a set of neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington that are mostly residential. Also called Atlantic City, Rainier Beach can include Dunlap, Pritchard Island, and Rainier View neighborhoods.
The neighborhood is located in the far southeastern corner of the city along Lake Washington. Its primary arterials are Rainier and Renton Avenues South (northwest- and southeast-bound).
Neighborhood boundaries are informal and sometimes overlapping in Seattle; formal designations have not existed since 1910. Rainier Beach blends with the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Dunlap (formerly Hillman City, also called Othello) on the north. On the east is Lake Washington, and the South Beacon Hill neighborhood lies to the west. South of Rainier Beach is Rainier View, bounded by South Bangor Street on the north and the city boundary on its south, east, and west. The Skyway and Bryn Mawr neighborhoods of unincorporated King County lie to the south and east, respectively, of Rainier View. The city of Tukwila abuts Rainier View on the west.
Public places and spaces
Rainier Beach has Be'ersheva Park (Atlantic City Park 1934-1978) and the Atlantic City Boat Ramp, Kubota Garden Park, Lakeridge Park, Fred Hutchinson Playground, and Deadhorse Canyon Natural Area. Too steep for houses in the 19th century, Lakeridge Park preserves 35.8 acres (14.2 ha) of Taylor Creek and Deadhorse Canyon. Urban green spaces and restored natural places can not long survive the intense impact of urban life without due care and community stewardship. Neighborhood groups of citizen stewards of Rainier Beach creeks and woods provide public education and volunteer effort, together with the City Department of Neighborhoods and the Parks and Recreation Department.
Mapes Creek flows from a ridge in Rainier Beach through Kubota Garden Historical Landmark (1981) and Be'ersheva Park (formerly Atlantic City Park 1907-1977) to Lake Washington. The creek was largely spared the assault of urban development by the relative remoteness of its watershed through the frenzied boom development decades 1850-1910 and the efforts of the business of Master Gardener Fujitaro Kubota from 1927, interrupted by World War II Japanese American Internment, until his death in 1973. Fortuitous efforts of the Kubota family had continued to leave it relatively protected until environmental protection blossomed in the later 20th century. The garden is now maintained by the gardeners of the city Parks and Recreation department and by volunteers, largely from surrounding neighborhoods. The city purchased approximately 17 acres of adjacent land to remain as a natural area, thus protecting about 21.5 acres (8.7 hectares) of Mapes Creek and the headwaters ravine (1987).[ The non-profit Kubota Garden Foundation (1990) provides stewardship to enhance and perpetuate the garden within the spirit and vision of its founder, in turn promoting understanding of Japanese gardening and philosophy in a uniquely syncretic Pacific Northwest Japanese American aesthetic.
Taylor Creek flows from Deadhorse Canyon (west of Rainier Avenue S at 68th Avenue S and northwest of Skyway Park), through Lakeridge Park to Lake Washington. With volunteer effort and some city matching grants, restoration has been underway since 1971. Volunteers have planted thousands of indigenous trees and plants, removed tons of garbage, removed invasive plants, and had city help removing fish-blocking culverts and improving trails. Viable, daylighted streams can exist only in intimate connection with restoration and stewardship by the neighborhoods of their watersheds in a long run, since the good health of an urban stream could not long survive carelessness or neglect.With impervious surfaces having replaced most of the natural ground cover in urban environments, both the sheer volume and flow rate from unmoderated stormwater and the carrying of non-point pollution converge through urban creeks. Effective solutions include the entire urban watershed, far beyond the riparian channel itself. A deer has been spotted and sightings of raccoons, opossum and birds are common. By about 2050, the area will be looking like a young version of what it looked like before being disrupted. Taylor is one of the four largest streams in urban Seattle.
Transit
Rainier Beach will have a Sound Transit Link Light Rail station, the Rainier Beach Station. This will connect Rainier Beach to Downtown Seattle and to Seattle Tacoma International Airport.
Beacon Hill:
Beacon Hill is a hill and neighborhood in southeast Seattle, Washington. The municipal government subdivides it into North Beacon Hill, Mid-Beacon Hill, Holly Park, and South Beacon Hill,[1] though most people who live there simply call it "Beacon Hill." Home to the world headquarters of Amazon.com and the Seattle Division of the Department of Veterans Affairs' Puget Sound Health Care System, the hill offers views of downtown, the Industrial District, Elliott Bay, First Hill, Rainier Valley, and, when the weather is good, Mount Rainier and the Olympic Mountains. It is roughly bounded on the west by Interstate 5, on the north by Interstate 90, on the east by Rainier Avenue South, Cheasty Boulevard South, and Martin Luther King Junior Way South, and on the south by the Seattle city boundary. Homes on the northern part of the hill were mostly built in the early 1900s; thus, North Beacon Hill contains many excellent examples of Craftsman bungalows and "Seattle box houses" (a local variant of the Foursquare style).
History and demographics
The Duwamish called the hill "Greenish-Yellow Spine" (Lushootseed: qWátSéécH), probably referring to the color of the deciduous trees that once grew thickly on the hill.[2] Early settlers named it Holgate and Hanford Hill after two early settlers, John Holgate and Edward Hanford, who settled in the area in the 1850s[3] and are commemorated to this day by South Holgate and Hanford Streets on North Beacon Hill. A later arrival, M. Harwood Young, named the hill after the Beacon Hill in his hometown, Boston, Massachusetts.
It was nicknamed "Boeing Hill" in the 1950s and 60s due to the number of residents who worked in the nearby [Boeing] airplane factory. The term fell out of use when many Boeing employees joined the general exodus to the suburbs, and Asian immigrants took their place. Today the neighborhood is majority Asian, as can be seen by the many Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino businesses along Beacon Avenue South. However, the area remains racially diverse, as shown by the United States 2000 Census: 51% Asian, 20% white, 13% black, 9% Hispanic/Latino and 7% other. [4] The census also showed the total Beacon Hill population to be 22,300. Neighboring Raininer Valley also shows a similar diversity.
Landmarks and institutions
- Pacific Medical Center (PacMed) located at the northern tip of Beacon Hill. Formerly a marine hospital, now most of the building is leased to Amazon.com
- Jefferson Park: Golf, lawn bowling, open space
- Dr. Jose Rizal Park: views west overlooking downtown, Elliott Bay and Olympi Mountains; start of bike path to I-90 bridge, Lake Washington, Mercer Island, Eastgate[5]
- El Centro de la Raza, a civil rights and community service organization, in the former Beacon Hill School[6]
- Beacon Hill First Baptist Church[7]: a designated historic landmark Tudor Revival building built in 1910, designed by notable architect Ellsworth Storey
- The Frank D. Black property [8]: designated landmark river rock structures built in 1914
- Cheasty Greenbelt/Cheasty Boulevard Trail
- Sound Transit Light Rail station, located at Beacon Avenue South and South Lander Street, due to open in Fall 2009
- Beacon Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library, newly opened in 2005.
Nearby neighborhoods
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