Volunteer Park

About this property

Volunteer Park is a 48.3-acre (19.5 ha) park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Volunteer Park was acquired by the city of Seattle in 1876 from J.M. Colman at a cost of $2,000. When Seattle Cemetery became Denny Park in 1884, the bodies interred there were moved to Washelli Cemetery, at the site of the future park. It soon became apparent that the land would be better suited to park use and the bodies were moved once again, this time to Lake View Cemetery; the park was renamed Lake View Park. This caused considerable confusion, leading to another renaming to City Park in 1887. J. Willis Sayre, a Seattle theatre critic, journalist and historian who had fought in the Spanish–American War, actively lobbied local officials to rename it once again - as Volunteer Park, to honor the volunteers who served in the war. Volunteer Park is one of the highlights of Seattle's Olmsted park and boulevard system. The Board of Park Commissioners brought John Charles Olmsted, of the Olmsted Brothers' Landscape Architects firm, to Seattle in 1903 to design a park system which would provide open space and help guide development in the rapidly growing city. In Olmsted's first comprehensive plan, Volunteer Park served as the central park of the system due to its location near downtown. Hired that same year to develop plans for Volunteer Park, Olmsted and his associates studied the landscape and built the plans around its natural beauty. Taking advantage of its ridgetop location, Olmsted ran one axis of the park's plan along the top of the hill, laying out a concourse running north and south through the park. It is lined with an allé of chestnut trees stretching between the two ends of the drive. A second axis runs through the city's municipal water system reservoir, which had been built in 1901. At the intersection of the two axes, he placed a concert grove, pergola, and terraced planting beds flanked by lily ponds. On the eastern side of the park, paths looped around the concert grove and connected the interior of the park with the streetcar stop at 15th Avenue East and East Prospect Street. Large lawns surrounded by planting beds and groves of trees filled the interior. Multi-layered plantings filled planting beds on the perimeter of the park on the east, south, and west, to buffer the park from the city beyond its borders. On the western side of the park, the landscape featured lawns and more wooded areas. A carriage drive looped down the slope and around the reservoir connecting with the concourse drive at its northern and southern ends. The original 1904 plan had a small children's playground at the northwest corner of the park. It included a shelterhouse with restrooms and a covered area that provided seating for caregivers as their charges enjoyed the sandboxes, swings, “Little Folks Lawn,” and wading pool. A revised 1909 plan added a playground for larger children at the request of playground advocates. Neighbors objected to its location on account of the noise potential, and this playground was moved to the northeast corner of the park.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in King County

Historic places, battles, and census history across King County.

More historic places in Washington

Browse all historic places in Washington.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Washington history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.