Naming Rights: University District

This is the latest in a series of posts examining the naming origins of our Seattle neighborhoods. Last week we visited Madrona, and today it's on to another neighborhood of obvious naming origins--the University District.

University Way & 45th Street, 1959 courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives from our Flickr pool

The origin of this neighborhood's moniker couldn't be more obvious, what with the giant university in its midst and all. But up until the first decade of the 20th century, this area north of Portage Bay was known as Brooklyn. The name came from developer James Moore (yes, of Moore Theatre fame), who laid out the area in 1890.

Paul Dorpat's essay on HistoryLink, explains the origins of the name:

The easterner Moore called his new addition Brooklyn. It was a stretch for although this Brooklyn like the one in New York was situated "across the water" from the larger community, Lake Union was a much wider water than the East River in New York.
In promoting his Brooklyn, the developer gave much more attention to the likelihood that it would soon become an industrial neighborhood than the neighbor of a state university. Moore predicted correctly that his Brooklyn would one day lay beside a canal carved between Lake Washington and Puget Sound. (The Lake Washington Ship Canal opened in 1917.)

And so it might have remained, if the Legislature hadn't voted in 1891 to move the Territorial University from downtown to the tract set aside for academic use, a "wooded wilderness bordering Union Bay." As Paul Dorpat and Walt Crowley write in National Trust Guide Seattle, residents in the area quickly voted to join the City of Seattle, and development expanded from there.

Once students descended on the neighborhood in 1895, the name "Brooklyn" began to fall away in favor of University Station (named for a heated trolley stop at 42nd and University), then the University District. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909 hastened the area's development and sealed Brooklyn's demise in favor of an entirely new identity for the area.

Brooklyn's origins live on in Brooklyn Avenue, paralleling University Way. Moore had originally called 12th Avenue "Brooklyn" and the street we know by that name today was Broadway. That was Moore's intended main drag until David Denny decided to lay electric trolley tracks up Columbus (present-day University Way) instead.

However the neighborhood's old name is rising to prominence once again, ironically because of public transit, the same force that helped made the name obsolete more than a century ago via the University Station. Sound Transit's planned expansion of the light rail includes one stop at Husky Stadium, and another on Brooklyn Avenue, which will be known as Brooklyn Station.

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By Allecia in Arts & Events on February 17, 2011 11:00 AM

Comments [rss]

Andrew C

Great stuff Allecia V.

alleciav

Awww, thanks Andrew C.

Katie

It would have been REALLY helpful if this had been posted prior to last Sunday, because "Brooklyn" was a bar-trivia answer that night!

alleciav

Ooh, which bar? Damn I love a good trivia night.

Katie

Wedgewood Ale House. It's on Sundays at 9, and is really low-key. Two weeks ago they had someone from MOHAI there who contributed some Seattle-related questions. The difficulty of the trivia is hit-and-miss, but we have done horribly the last few times we went!

alleciav

Ravenna Blog, those efforts don't surprise me. I hope the station retains the Brooklyn name. One thing I love about transit systems in older cities is the light it sheds on how the neighborhoods have developed over time...even though most users will just see it as an extension of Brooklyn Ave.

Romulusnr, I have noticed the New England influence in Capitol Hill street names but I didn't know all of them. I've also seen a flurry of streets in Phinney and its environs with Illinois-influenced names, like Evanston and Palatine.

Keith Tyler

Lynn St, Boston St, Newton St, Melrose Ave, and Malden Ave are all named after cities in Massachusetts. (The first one is my home town.) I suspect Winthrop Ave is the same. Likewise Harvard Ave and Boylston Ave are named after Boston landmarks. And let's not forget Massachusetts St and Virginia St, both named after East Coast states.

Seattle's Beacon Hill is named after the one in Boston.

Roanoke St is named after Roanoke, VA.

Everett, WA was ultimately named after the same man Everett, MA was named for, a Massachusetts governor and congressman.

Auburn, WA was named after Auburn, NY.

Sumner, WA was named for Charles Sumner, another Massachusetts senator.

And Portland, OR was named after Portland, ME (which narrowly won a coin toss over Boston).

So you see, us East Coast Transplants aren't actually transplants at all. The East Coast's influence has been here from day one.

Ravenna Blog

It is nice to know the origin of the University District's Brooklyn, but it may not stay the name of the station.

I know that the Northeast District Council would like to see the name changed to University District Station (discussed during their last meeting, on February 3). Letters have been written!

Perhaps as a response, the following paragraph could be found in Sound Transit's latest North Link Light Rail Update (from February 15):

"During project development, Sound Transit uses temporary, working titles for Link light rail stations based on landmarks or cross streets. Brooklyn Station, Roosevelt Station and Northgate Station are working titles; the Sound Transit Board will select official station names for the North Link project at a later date."