Re:Take: Last Days for South Park

Re:Take is local history buff Rob Ketcherside's weekly look at the Emerald City now and in days of yore through photos dug out of the city archives. This week, south Seattle booms with bubbly 1920s auto expansion.

After Boeing Field opened in 1928, all roads led to Georgetown. First up, a bridge to replace the ailing one at 8th Avenue South. The 14th Avenue South bridge was hailed as a marvel of engineering, with a beautiful, cheap design. Now we call it the South Park Bridge. It will close down forever on Wednesday at midnight because it ain't safe.

King County voters were rich in 1928 and happy to fund the South Park bridge. Then the stock market collapsed, ushering in the Great Depression. By 1930 Seattle voters couldn't afford the remaining roads planned around the airport.

City leaders got creative to build the now-forgotten "Sound Lake Way", a new east west connection from the Puget Sound to Lake Washington along the north edge of the airport. They forced the railroads to pony up $100,000 for the Albro Place Viaduct, pictured here. Then they forced property owners to pay to widen Swift Avenue and Graham to Rainier Avenue.

It wasn't cheap to rebuild Seattle for cars and planes. It ended up costing $350,000 to get Albro up to Beacon Hill. Presumably Seattle paid for the cost overruns on the viaduct.

Things are looking up for South Park. Their bridge will still get stuck open the day after tomorrow. But funding is coming together for a replacement. So far it's traditional, with various government agencies chipping in a few bucks. Maybe we'll see some creative new financing if that falls short.

More over at Flickr.

(Photo courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, October, 1931.)