Wedgwood is a middle-class residential neighborhood in northeast Seattle, Washington, with a modest commercial strip. Wedgwood is located about two miles (3.2 km) north and slightly east of the University of Washington; it is about six miles (9.7 km) northeast of Downtown. The neighborhood is typical of Seattle neighborhoods in having more than one name and different, overlapping, well-documented definitions of the neighborhood.
The misspelling Wedgewood is not uncommon—at least five businesses use it, and it even appears in the unofficial City Clerk’s Neighborhood Map Atlas—but the origin and spelling of the name are clear: the neighborhood was named after the English bone china-maker Wedgwood, the favorite of the wife of Albert (“Al”) Balch (1903–1976), the developer who named the neighborhood. Balch was also the founder of adjoining View Ridge.
History
The area has been inhabited since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8,000 BCE—10,000 years ago). The Dkhw’Duw’Absh, “the People of the Inside,” and the xachua’bsh or hah-choo-AHBSH, “People of a Large Lake” or “Lake People,” today the Duwamish tribe, Native Americans of the Lushootseed (Skagit-Nisqually) Coast Salish hunted and traveled through what is now Wedgwood. The Wedgwood Rock, a glacial erratic boulder 19 ft (5.8 m) tall by 75 ft (23 m) circumference, became the intersection of several trails through the dense, old-growth forest that covered what is now Seattle. The neighborhood adopted Big Rock after being protected from housing development in 1941.
The land that formed the original core of Wedgwood, west of 35th Avenue NE between 80th and 85th Streets, was a heavily wooded ginseng farm at one time. Charles E. Thorpe had cleared a portion of his 40-acre (160,000 m2) tract north of the Seattle city limits of the time, building a log cabin from the wood of his trees. By 1920s, 35th Avenue NE was becoming a thoroughfare with homes and businesses (the first store opened in 1922), the electric (1923), water (1926), and sewer grids had been extended to the area, and it was becoming too urban for Thorpe’s tastes. The Jesuit institution Seattle University paid Thorpe $65,000 for the property, planning to build a new campus there and move north from First Hill. Thorpe left Seattle, never to return.
The Jolly Roger and then Coon Chicken Inn
In 1916, Washington joined Prohibition, and north Seattle, WA saw an upswing in commercial activity. Unincorporated areas of King County accessible by auto became popular locations for speakeasies selling illegal liquor and purveying prostitution and gambling, often in clever guises. One remarkable structure among numerous establishments was the China Castle, later the Jolly Roger, having a unique tower from which a watchman signaled the approach of the police, visible from miles away. In a raid, patrons and employees could leave via tunnels like one under the highway, efficiently dispersing via the wooded ravine on the other side. Bed Bug Exterminator Seattle
Check out different neighborhoods like Alki
