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Loudtown: Life in Seattle's Noisiest Neighborhood
By Rob Hampton
Lilly Tellefson, curator of the Georgetown Power Plant Museum, in what she calls "switch heaven." Rob Hampton photo. |
With flannel shirtsleeves rolled past her tattooed forearms, Lilly makes a few more adjustments to the railcar-sized air pump that for seventy years helped pressurize one of the plant's steam turbines. Finally, she turns a brass knob and the contraption roars to life.
The pump runs like a locomotive being revved by a teenager. "These are supposed to fly out," she yells, lifting a rotating contraption that looks like an enormous dumbbell with a hinge in the middle. "The linkage is seized up." The pump accelerates with a terrifying roar and the dumbbell spins too fast to be fussed with. Tellefson sprints back to the brass knob and with a quick twist, the pump gasps and comes to rest.
She leans against the pump and sighs. "This is a summer project," she says.
Tellefson fuels her unpaid work as director of the Georgetown Power Plant Museum with a passion to protect its machinery and make it more accessible to the public. Her main adversary is King County International Airport, which would like to extend its runway to the power plant's doorstep. It's the kind of battle that's often fought in this crowded neighborhood, located 3 miles from downtown Seattle, in the Duwamish River Valley. The struggle is between protectors of Georgetown's history and quality of life, and those who want to sustain the businesses that form the backbone of Seattle's industrial economy.
Georgetown was a much quieter place when Europeans first settled on the banks of the Duwamish River. The area was already home to members of the Duwamish tribe who called themselves the Qelqaquby, or Proud People. They fished the river's prolific salmon and steelhead runs, and also gathered shellfish and grew potatoes. Eagles cruised the skies instead of jets. Paddles knocked against sides of dugout canoes where ships now blow their horns.
King County's first white settlers, led by Luther Collins, arrived in the Duwamish River Valley on September 14, 1851. This was three months before the Denny party would settle in what is now Pioneer Square. On the heels of Collins and Denny were other pioneers hungry for land of their own.
Gradually, agriculture gave to industry. By the time the Georgetown Power Plant was built in 1907, Georgetown sported the world's sixth-largest brewery, Seattle Brewing and Malting Company, which later bought and became Rainier Beer. The area was connected to the rest of the continent by the transcontinental railroad, which skirted the base of Beacon Hill on its way from Seattle to Tacoma and beyond. Soon, the meandering Duwamish River would be straightened and dredged to allow deep-water vessels. With industries and industrial-strength transportation came the promise of prosperity.
By 1907, Georgetown had also earned a reputation for being a great place to party. At its apex--or nadir--of debauchery, the town had 24 saloons. Horse racing fans would crowd into the interurban railway's cattle cars to visit the Meadows Race Track, built in 1902 on land that would later become King County International Airport. After the horse races, fans stampeded to the largely unregulated saloons and brothels for post-game festivities.
Georgetown incorporated as a city in 1904 to protect its economy from state temperance laws, which prohibited the sale and manufacture of booze within one mile of cities. It wasn't until 1910 that voters chose to be annexed by the teetotalers to the north.
The Hat 'n' Boots as they were in the 1970s. Courtesy of www.hatnboots.org. |
Today, the Georgetown Power Plant, though designated a National Historic Landmark, is largely unknown and unnoticed. Lilly Tellefson hopes to renovate the plant and use it as a museum and teaching facility.
She says, "God, when we first got here, you can't imagine how hideous this place was. Everything was seized up."
Tellefson takes me outside to show where the airport hopes to add 800 feet to its runway, bringing it close to the plant's southeast corner. Airport officials say they need to expand in order to provide buffer zones at each end of the strip. But Tellefson is worried the blast from jet engines will damage the plant. "Their butts will be right in our face," she says. "They're already cracking the east windows."
After the tour, I head over to Stella Pizza to see if the owner, Lisa "Stella" Steadman, shares Tellefson's frustration with local industries. The popular Georgetown hangout is located on Airport Way South, which runs alongside the railroad tracks and I-5. Though we're eating outside, the clamor of trucks, train whistles, and highway traffic has us shouting like we're in a loud bar.
The racket doesn't faze Steadman. "I wouldn't live anywhere else," she says. "I moved here from Capitol Hill in 1992. It was noisy too, but for other reasons--people playing bongos and chanting. Here, it's...predictable."
It's the tight community that keeps Steadman here. "When I first moved here, I walked into the pharmacy, and an employee said, 'Oh, are you the lady who just moved in on Ellis?' In Capitol Hill, I didn't even know all the people in my building."
Georgetown's small businesses also share this sense of fraternity. All City Coffee, Helmet Head Hair Salon, Artcore Tattoo and Piercing Gallery, Georgetown News and Video, and Stella Pizza have united under the name Georgetown Industries to post group advertisements in newspapers and host local events.
While some residents are lured to Georgetown because of its neighborhood unity, many are fleeing high rent prices. The Rainier Cold Storage building across the street from Stella Pizza has become a refuge for artists who can't afford studios elsewhere. But rental prices are rising here too, says Judy Jacobs, who with her husband Michael runs The Creative Zone, a papercraft and book-making company, in one of the Rainier building's studios.
Jacobs says, "Our rent has gone up once, and it's going up again in October. And there aren't a whole lot of artists looking to rent here--Bremerton and Tacoma are better deals. But who wants to live in Bremerton? Bleech!"
I wouldn't have expected an artist to prefer Georgetown to a quiet life on the Kitsap Peninsula. Bremerton maintains 520 acres of parkland, for instance, and Georgetown only offers a dirt playfield that is usually occupied by teams. That will change this fall, when construction begins to transform an unused grass lot on the 6400 block between Corson and Carleton Avenue into Oxbow Park.
The most striking feature of the park will be the enormous cowboy Hat 'n' Boots sculpture that once housed the office and restrooms for the Premium Tex gas station, built in 1955 on the corner of Corson Avenue and East Marginal Way. The once-thriving pit stop closed in 1987, and since then, the Hat 'n' Boots' only customers have been weeds, weather, and skateboarders cruising the hat's curved brim. Once they're spruced up, the Hat 'n' Boots will be moved out of the weedlot and onto the grass of Oxbow Park.
Carlos Dominguez, who lives a block away with his wife and three sons, says he's glad that soon his kids won't have to play on their busy street.
But what he tells me next reminds me that for all its big businesses, diesel dust and clamor, the place Dominguez calls home resembles a small, isolated town. Residents know their neighbors, small-business owners look out for one another, and you've got to drive a ways if you want to stock the fridge.
"What we could really use," he says, "is a big supermarket."
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| La Dele Sines | Jul 08, 2002 | Georgetown | office manager |
| great article!!! - could you update the caption under the photo of Hat n Boots - this photo is from the late 50's and the website is actually www.hatnboots.org - thanks so much for your coverage of our much ignored neighborhood | |||
