(photograph from the Seattle Municipal Archives)
What is currently Westlake
Park didn't even exist
until the late 1980s. Before then, Westlake
Avenue extended south to the intersection of Pike Street. In
1961, the two southern most blocks of Westlake
Avenue were turned into the monorail station for
the 1962 World’s Fair. Where the Westlake
Park fountain now stands,
there used to be a triangular shaped building that housed a Bartell Drugs store.
North of Pine Street, where the Westlake
Center / Mall currently
exists, there were various small retail stores right along the north side of Pine Street. There
was even a small, free standing, triangular shaped building that housed a
jewelry store called Westfields, at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and
Pine Street, abutting the east side of the monorail path and station.
In the early 1980s all the buildings on the north side of
Pine Street, between Fourth Avenue and Fifth Avenue were torn down to make way
for the construction of Westlake Center / Mall and for the park to its south.
The free standing triangle shaped jewelry store, called Westfields, at the
corner of Pine Street
and Fifth Avenue
was also torn down, as was the building that housed the Bartell Drug store,
where the Westlake
Park fountain now stands.
The only remaining building in that block, which existed before Westlake Center was built, is the Mayflower Hotel
at the corner of Fourth Avenue
and Olive Way.
In addition, when Westlake
Center was constructed,
the monorail was shortened, and the 1960s monorail station built for the 1962
World’s Fair was torn down. The current monorail station is an integrated part
of Westlake Center.
It isn’t clear if Seattle had
a central social nexus like Westlake Park before 1988 when construction of Westlake Park was finished and it opened. Because
it is an official park, owned by the Seattle Parks Department, it has also
become a location for political and social demonstrations and protests of every
imaginable description. Unfortunately, the aspects of Westlake Park that make
it a tourist attraction, also attract the detrimental human elements that make
it a place where pimps try to recruit homeless teens girls into the prostitution,
where marijuana, cocaine and crack are sold, and where assaults, robberies,
shootings, and stabbings occur. In the late 1990s, Seattle’s government passed ordinances that
make it illegal for people to loiter on city streets. But since Westlake Park is owned by the Seattle Parks
Department, and is therefore a legal park with its own jurisdiction, it is
exempt from the anti-loitering ordinances. As a result, the people who
otherwise found themselves arrested for sitting on downtown sidewalks, learned
to gravitate to Westlake
Park, where they could
remain until park closing hours without much interference by police or park
rangers.
It seems reasonable to predict that only a few of the people
who currently spend their entire days, day after day, all day in Westlake Park, know its history. If not for the
1962 World’s Fair, Westlake Avenue
might still extend southward to Pike
Street, and there might still be a Bartell Drug store
where the Westlake
Park fountain stands, and
is these often covered with people sitting on it, as long as the weather
permits.
