Queen Anne
Steep hilltop neighborhood once hauled by an underground counterweight streetcar system, its tunnels still buried beneath the avenue.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Queen Anne in Seattle starts underground, in two tunnels beneath the avenue where sixteen-ton concrete counterweights once hung on cables for nearly forty years. It follows the nineteen-oh-one system the Seattle Electric Company built to haul streetcars up a hill too steep for their wheels, and the attendants stationed in curbside boxes who had to judge, by eye, exactly how much each passing car weighed. You'll hear from a longtime resident who remembered what happened on the morning the weight was hooked up wrong. The tunnels and their counterweights are still down there, sealed beneath the pavement.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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