(click and click again to enlarge photos)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on Oct. 31, 2019
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on Nov. 3, 2019)

Empty tank holds a reservoir of affection in Maple Leaf

By Clay Eals

Who doesn’t love a maple tree?

One stood tall and lush in our front yard when I was a child. Its leaves grew to be enormous and green, then yellow and brilliant autumn orange, their sturdy stems becoming curled handles to pick up and twirl. Combing the woods across the street for trees to climb, we kids gravitated to maples. Big branches. No sticky pitch.

Such notably Northwest nuances underlie the fondness bred in residents of Seattle’s Maple Leaf neighborhood, especially for its sizeable symbol: the water tower and now-empty (!) tank at the southeast corner of Northeast 88th Street and Roosevelt Way.

Erected in 1949 to replace two smaller ones built in about 1915, the tank was painted by the city in 1986 with a pleasing pattern of interlocking white maple leaves on a sky-blue background. The adornment followed a national distinction secured by then-Mayor Charles Royer, the naming of Maple Leaf as Neighborhood of the Year over 2,000 other contestants by Nashville-based Neighborhoods USA.

The Seattle Times editorially saluted the honor, appropriating the melody of “Seattle,” the Perry Como hit, with substitute lyrics that included “full of houses, full of trees / full of homespun families / and an absence of yuppies …”

Certainly “yuppies,” a term emerging in the 1980s, were scarce when our “Then” photo was taken, not long after 1949 and looking southeast toward the tank as it presided over an enormous, open-air, ground-level reservoir completed in 1910. The image evinces a nearly rural air, with scattered structures and byway businesses offering garden supplies and gasoline, supplemented by a low billboard for General Tire downtown.

In fact, one could – and still can – stand near the foot of the tank and see downtown, for Maple Leaf, at 446 feet above sea level, is essentially tied with Queen Anne as the third highest hill in Seattle.

The neighborhood’s boundaries, distinct on the sides (Interstate 5 and Lake City Way), are fuzzier south to north (roughly from Northeast 80th to Northgate). But its soul is singular, says Donna Hartmann-Miller, who worked at legendarily friendly Maple Leaf Hardware and for 10 years led the local community council’s shaping of the modern, 16-acre Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, a $55 million project dedicated in 2013 that included covering the reservoir.

Meanwhile, worried that the tank – which held eight million pounds of water 100 feet aloft – would falter in an earthquake, Seattle drained it in 2009. Today, a nearby antenna tower generates city revenue.

Anything but empty is the tank’s imposing civic appeal. “It’s balanced and symmetrical – it’s Americana,” Hartmann-Miller says. “Everybody talks about it with affection.”

Just like, perhaps, a maple leaf.

WEB EXTRAS

The $55 million figure above is a correction. In the column printed in the Nov. 3, 2019, Seattle Times, the incorrect figure of $6 million was used. The park development itself cost $6 million, but the entire project, including covering of the reservoir, cost $55 million.

You can see the same column reprinted in the Maple Leaf Community Council newsletter, page 3.

To see Jean Sherrard’s 360-degree video of the NOW prospect and compare it with the THEN photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are two photos of Maple Leaf Reservoir Park and two  clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column. Enjoy!