Queen Anne Communitee

Queen Anne

The community of Queen Anne is one of Seattle’s oldest residential neighborhoods. Pioneer settler Thomas Mercer first called the forested, water-lapped district Eden Hill.

Queen Anne Hill, rising 456 feet above Puget Sound, is the highest promontory in a city of hills. Although it is one of oldest areas of the city, the hill’s steep slopes made it one of the last neighborhoods to be developed. Electric streetcar lines reached the top of the hill in 1902 after they were equipped with counterweights to stabilize the cars along the 18 percent grade. Offering some of the most spectacular views of the city, Puget Sound, and Mt. Rainier, wealthy Seattleites built new “Queen Anne” style mansions on the South facing slope at the end of the nineteenth century, giving the area its present name. By 1930 the hill had 30,000 residents.

Seattle Center lies at the foot of hill just north of Belltown. The area underwent extensive redevelopment for the 1962 “Century 21” world’s fair, which left among other institutions the Space Needle (the city’s most famous landmark), the mile-long twin Monorails.