Columbia City
Landmark-protected streetcar-era commercial district platted as a would-be seaport that never got its harbor.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Columbia City in Seattle opens with a puzzle: the picnic lawns of nearby Genesee Park sit on no water at all, yet this whole neighborhood was platted in 1891 as a future seaport. It follows the streetcar investors who bought forty acres along Wetmore Slough, named the town Columbia after Christopher Columbus, and laid out streets for explorers like Magellan and Vespucci, betting that boats would one day reach it from Lake Washington. The guide traces the town's early confidence, incorporating on its own in 1893 before voting itself into Seattle in 1907 by a lopsided margin.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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