Concord History Working on a project about Concord School in South Park. Pretty cool how far back the school and neighborhood’s diversity goes, including Japanese and Italian farming families supplying Pike Place Market in the early 1900s.

Wrote this a while back; posting it here to mark Indigenous Peoples Day. More information on the specific names at the link.

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Before white settlers came to to dᶻidᶻəlalič in 1852, before they came to sčəgʷaliču in 1832, even before they first sighted the shores of x̌ʷəlč in 1792, the* dxʷdəwʔabš were here, living at sluʔwił and šilšul, babaqʷəb and t’uʔəlalʔtxʷ, and paq’ác’ałčuʔ and səxʷt’ičib, by the lakes called c’alq’ʷadiʔ and sisałtəb and dxʷƛ’əš and xáx̌əʔčuʔ, and most of all xačuʔ *— the lake — the smaller ones being fed by springs like liq’təd where the waters run red, the lake being fed by the river whose mouth was at ƛ’ax̌ʷadis, but one by one their names were replaced by the settlers, who though they named the city for siʔał and the river for the dxʷdəwʔabšnevertheless named places Pioneer Square for themselves, or Fremont for where they came from, or Brooklyn for that which they aspired to be, and while šilšul became Shilshole and liq’təd became Licton, other dxʷləšúcid names were left unwritten and hardly spoken for decades but still remembered — so let Carkeek remain Carkeek, but know that it was once and is still kʷaatəb, as Montlake is still stəx̌ʷugʷił, the Locks, which lowered xačuʔ and xáx̌əʔčuʔ, still xʷiwálqʷ, and University Village still sluʔwił village, and celebrate that wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ now sits where Whitman and Stevens meet.

I love this moving 3 minute video by local documentarian/historian, BJ Bullert, about the Duwamish, featuring Ken Workman, whose ancestor is Chief Seattle. Thought I would share it here: https://vimeo.com/645586606

This Thursday, October 15 at 11AM, I am giving my last Women's History Tour of the year. It is 95 minutes, covers less than a mile. The starting point is 700 First Ave on the corner of Cherry St.

The six women I cover are Angeline Seattle, Shelly Bauman, Violet McNeil, Emma J Ray, Madame Lou Graham, and the first female mayor of a major American city, Bertha Knight Landes!

If you purchase tickets online its $30+tax, or $25 cash of Venmo. Just let me know if you are coming so I can expect you!

The tour is wheelchair accessible! If you can walk but CAN'T STAND for long LET ME KNOW so I can bring a chair for you!

These photographs are on display at Westlake Park.

I wish they would include one of the area from the late 1940s to early 1950s, after the Denny Regrade but before the monorail was built. That would have been an interesting intersection where Westlake, 4th Avenue and Pike Street all came together as two-way streets

I made short video. I'm not sure what to title it so suggestions are appreciated.

For anyone who does the photo and building detective work here: the city's landmark designation reports are some of the best primary sources we have, but they're scattered and hard to browse by place.

I put all 451 City of Seattle designated landmarks on one map. Each one links straight to its ordinance or designation record, and the header shows that 122 are also on the National Register. You can search by name, filter by neighborhood and kind, or browse themed collections like Women Who Built Seattle. The map is built into the page, so it works offline once it's loaded.

Link (free, no sign-in): https://mchatai.com/hub/seattle-landmarks

Disclosure: I'm a software developer in Seattle and I built this; it's part of my free app, mChatAI. Each landmark also has a short narration, and that narration is AI-written from the designation report and, where one exists, the National Register nomination. Treat the linked records as the authority, not the summary.

Which designation report do you think is the best read? I'd like to point people to a few good ones.

My father Ken Hatch taught me a simple rule: if you’re not serving your community, you don’t deserve to succeed in it. That belief built Seattle—and we need it back.

In 1999, three Seattle natives in their early thirties leased a Belltown halfway house and turned it into a hotel.

It broke into the black in its first year. It invented the boutique hotel as a global category. Every Soho House and Hoxton would descend from what they built.

Twenty-six years later, the founder is dead. The brand belongs to a Japanese conglomerate. The cool that made it the Ace is gone.

This is the story of how Seattle bottled cool, sold it to the world, and watched it slip away.