Living in Seattle
Featured Neighborhoods
By now, you probably get the picture: Seattle is a beautiful place to live. In or within one hour of the city you can hike, paddleboard, kayak, bike, and ski every day of the year and still make it to night shift. Seattle is also so much more than its outdoorsy reputation. Consider the award-winning restaurants of many different cuisines; the talented trifecta of Seattle Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Seattle Opera; the various history and art museums; and the never–ending parade of events and festivals (here’s a longer, non-exhaustive list). And you can get to all of these places via an impressive public transit system while listening to some expert-curated music.
We wanted to highlight the diverse and vibrant communities that continue to call the greater Seattle metropolitan area home. Although ethnic groups aren’t defined by these neighborhoods, we acknowledge that many were pushed into these areas by historical and modern redlining. Rapid gentrification has changed all of these neighborhoods and displaced many BIPOC folks, though the history, culture, and collective action towards equity and justice still remain.
International District
Read: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Outdoor spot: Hing Hay Park
Chinatown
Follow: @humbows_not_hotels, @winglukemuseum
From Wing Luke Museum’s website:
Seattle’s Chinatown-International District rose not far from the waterfront on reclaimed tideflats once populated by the native Duwamish people. During a gigantic city regrading project completed in 1910, this shoreline was filled in with earth, buildings were erected and a neighborhood was born. Much of the area remains as it was nearly a hundred years ago. There are brick hotels, wood-framed doorways, and elaborate balconies. There also has been incredible change.
Like other neighborhoods, there has been a push and pull among the people living here, where race, age, politics, and traditions all blend together and occasionally collide. It is the only area in the continental United States where Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, African Americans, and Vietnamese have settled together and built one neighborhood. The historic neighborhood is the cultural anchor for Asian Americans as well as the home base for Wing Luke Museum.
Read more about the C-ID’s history through Ronnie Chew’s memoir excerpts, and through the Seattle Public Library’s collection, and current activist efforts.
Little Saigon
Follow: @littlesaigoncreative
Little Saigon History Timeline Exhibit
(https://www.pbs.org/video/-close-little-saigon-close/)
Japantown
From a piece in the South Seattle Emerald on the Hai! Japantown annual festival:
Seattle’s Nihonmachi (historic Japantown) — established in the 1900s despite considerable anti-Asian racism at the time — is located within a 15-block area in the Chinatown-International District (CID). It includes landmarks like the century-old Panama Hotel, the Higo Variety Store building, which is still owned by a relative of the original owners, and Maneki, Seattle’s oldest Japanese restaurant. With the second-largest Japanese American community on the West Coast, Seattle’s pre-WWII Nihonmachi was once a bustling, booming, and lively place.
But the mass incarceration of around 120,000 Japanese Americans during the war dealt Seattle’s Nihonmachi a terrible blow. When the U.S. government forced the city’s Japanese American community to leave their businesses and communities behind to live in prison camps, the historic district was almost completely wiped out. Most Japanese Americans were not able to maintain their businesses while imprisoned, and after the war, most did not try….A slow but steady revival of the historic district began at long last. Nowadays, the area is called simply Japantown (not Nihonmachi). “Hai! Japantown,” literally meaning “Yes! Japantown,” was launched in 2017 through the efforts of invested community members, including Shiramizu, Murakami, Jan Johnson, owner of the Panama Hotel, and Cassie Chin of the Wing Luke Museum.
Follow: @japantownseattle
Central District
Follow: @africatownsea, @wanawariseattle, @estelitaslib
Outdoor spot: Madrona Beach
The Central District’s rich multicultural history, woven by Black, Jewish, and Asian residents, was a result of redlining, which confined minoritized populations to the Central District and the C-ID, resulting in cross-racial alliances like the Gang of Four, whose legacies can still be found in the city today. Even the structures in the neighborhood are rich with history – The People’s Wall representing the Black Panther Party’s Seattle chapter (the second to open after Oakland); the storied Garfield High School with notable alumni such as Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, and Bruce Lee; the Douglass-Truth Public Library which houses the largest African American collection on the West Coast. Even the clinical spaces have a unique heritage – Seattle Children’s Odessa Brown Clinic, built after the efforts of community organizer Odessa, historically served the Black residents of the CD, in the same building as Carolyn Downs, the only remaining Black Panther-founded clinic (and a rotation site of our Swedish Cherry Hill family residency colleagues).
Rapid gentrification in the last few decades has pushed Black residents south of the city, but dedicated activists and community organizations remain to rebuild the community. Africatown Land Trust is actively acquiring and stewarding land for the Black/African diaspora, and various Black-owned businesses are opening in the area .
Capitol Hill
Follow: @takingblackpride, @wildroseseattle, @sapphicseattle, @azngloparty
Outdoor spot: Volunteer Park, Arboretum, Cal Anderson
From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Racially restrictive covenants north of the Ship Canal left Capitol Hill as a mixed area within a segregated city…As it remains today, the Broadway campus [of Seattle Central College] was a focal point for protest during the 1960s civil rights movement. The neighborhood has, at least since the 1950s, been the center of gay life in the region. The city’s first gay bar opened there, the state’s first openly gay legislator – Cal Anderson – made his home there and the gay rights movement got its start on Capitol Hill. Pride weekend is still the big draw, though the Capitol Hill Block Party gives it a run for its money.
Throughout the decades, the drag scene has featured prominent figures, some of whom have gone on to compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
South Seattle (Beacon Hill, Columbia City, Rainier Beach)
Follow: @thestationcoffeeshop, @elcentrodelaraza
Read: this Stranger article; Nathan Vass’ book The Lines That Make, chronicling his experience as a bus driver for the 7
Outdoor spot: Seward Park, Lake Washington Boulevard
South Seattle, composed of multiple smaller working-class neighborhoods, remains one of the most diverse areas of the city. In fact, 98118, one of the zip codes in the area, was one of the most diverse in the country, with residents speaking at least 59 languages. In addition to beloved family-owned businesses, this part of Seattle also has a bike and walking path, and the beautiful Kubota Garden.
Ballard
Follow: @nordicmuseum
Outdoor spot: Golden Gardens
Often lumped together with its free-spirited, artistic neighbor Fremont (overlapping areas sometimes begrudgingly or proudly nicknamed “Frelard”), Ballard has a distinctively maritime Scandinavian history. Even Ballard isn’t immune from gentrification, although there has been a recent return of businesses celebrating its heritage. You can explore the Locks (if you go at the right time, you can see salmon swimming upstream!) and Golden Gardens, one of the only sandy beaches in the city.
Whitecenter/South Park
Follow: @neplantlaculturalarts
Listen: El Rey 1360AM
Today, the Greater Seattle area has a vibrant Latino community spread across numerous neighborhoods and outlying cities. In some places, Latinos represent nearly 30 percent of the population. For example, Seattle’s South Park neighborhood and nearby White Center community are long established centers for King County’s Latino culture, serving as home to many Latino families and businesses. The cities of Sea Tac and Burien, in contrast, are emerging as relatively new and sizable, culturally recognizable Latino neighborhoods. – Revisiting Washington
Waves of migration (wartime work in shipbuilding and aircraft assembly, migrant farm workers from Yakima County, political refugees from Latin America) brought many Latine folks to this area. Activist efforts from the strong Chicana/o movement at University of Washington and the local Brown Beret chapter led to the establishment of Sea Mar, a network of clinics that serve the local Latine population – and is a rotation site for our residents. Some of the original student organizers remain in the area and have started documenting the rich history of the area at the Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture, which shares a space with a Sea Mar clinic, community space, and local radio station.
West Seattle
Outdoor spot: Alki Beach, Schmitz Park
West Seattle — the oldest and the biggest of Seattle’s neighborhoods — is both a peninsula and a state of mind. The first Euro-American settlers arrived here (on Alki Point) in 1851, but left within a few months, moving to a more agreeable location on the other side of Elliott Bay (the site of present-day downtown Seattle). Orphaned at an early age, isolated by water on three sides, West Seattle has clung to its cultural independence, remaining determinedly aloof even while fighting tenaciously for the bridges, highways, and ferries that have brought it closer to its sprawling neighbor to the east. – “Seattle Neighborhoods: Thumbnail History
Explore the Area:
Click the link below to see what Seattle has to offer
Seattle is Coast Salish Land
Named after Suquamish leader Chief Si’ahl, modern-day Seattle is on the ancestral, occupied, and unceded lands of the Coast Salish people. From the Burke Museum website, where you can learn more about the Coast Salish tribes via an interactive map:
The Coast Salish-speaking peoples have lived in what is present-day western Washington and southwestern British Columbia for more than 10,000 years. Their geographic territory includes the lands bordering the Salish Sea—Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, Gulf Islands, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Strait of Georgia—as well as the Pacific coast of Washington and northern Oregon.
Washington is home to 29 federally recognized tribes (Chehalis, Colville, Cowlitz, Hoh, Jamestown S’Klallam, Kalispel, Lower Elwha Klallam, Lummi, Makah, Muckleshoot, Nisqually, Nooksack, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Puyallup, Quileute, Quinault, Samish, Sauk-Suiattle, Shoalwater Bay, Skokomish, Snoqualmie, Spokane, Squaxin Island, Stillaguamish, Suquamish, Swinomish, Tulalip, Upper Skagit, and Yakama), and several unrecognized tribes (Chinook, Snohomish, Duwamish, Snoqualmoo, Kikiallus, Steilacoom.
Photo from Spike Mafford Photography