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The city’s “great fire” of 1889 excited its already boom town qualities with the great labor of rebuilding more than 30 city blocks from scratch and real estate loans.
The technology for running electric trolleys came to Seattle only months before the fire and following the destruction, trolley systems – in addition to cable cars – began to send out their trunk lines in most directions from the city’s core. Many in the immigrant tide needed cheaper land to build their homes – sites not in old Seattle but also not far from it. The new common carriers to Ballard, the University District (still named Brooklyn then), Beacon Hill and those on the east shore of Lake Washington obliged.
Three lines reached the lake – at Leschi, Madison, and Madrona. There all of them featured parks and other attractions like promenades, canoes for hire and nature trails. The line to Madrona was the last of the three and the final part of it, where the trolley cars descended to the lake, was in the embrace of a picturesque forest. On reaching the lake riders found bathhouses, a dance pavilion, and rustic benches disturbed along paths that led back into the forest. The hotel shown here greeted them at lake’s edge.
The Madrona hotel was built in 1892 and that’s the date penciled on the flip side of the original photo card produced by A. J. McDonald, a photographer responsible for a few of the best suburban scenes hereabouts in the early 1890s. On the left a trolley car stands at the end of its line. Perhaps McDonald road that car to the park to make this impression, while the conductor waited for him to return for the ride back to Pioneer Square, with a First Hill transfer on Broadway Avenue to a James Street cable car. The fare from waterfront to waterfront – Elliott Bay to Lake Washington – was five cents.
WEB EXTRAS
For the complete MADRONA PARK STORY with some extras too, please click here.