Where do Seattle’s neighborhood names come from

Marketers and developers – the same place as nearly any other young city. I like the concept that even the oldest and hoity-toitiest Seattle neighborhood names come from developers:

But even Seattle’s crunchiest neighborhood got its name from land developers, who named it after their hometown in Fremont, Neb.

Capitol Hill owes its name to turn-of-the-century superdeveloper James Moore, who bought property and persuaded a state legislator to introduce a bill to move the state capital there.

“It was really just a real estate promotion,” said Seattle historian Paul Dorpat. “There was no chance in hell they would do that … but he knew he could get publicity.”

Another name that stuck first appeared in a Seattle Weekly article in the late 1980s about how the industrial area south of downtown was changing with new businesses and artists moving in. Editor Rose Pike suggested the name Sodo for SOuth of the soon-to-be-blown-up KingDOme.

The name really caught on after developer Frank Stagen erected red neon signs on top of the area’s huge Sears building — until Starbucks replaced them with its mermaid.

I personally like descriptive, genuinely bottom up names like “Pill Hill” (aka “first hill”), “Frelard” (Between Ballard and Fremont), and the Denny Regrade (the area where they dragged tons of dirt from the top of Denny St. its base, thus regrading it).

A quick check using our text search shows no one (not a soul!) advertising a “West Edge,” “Park District,” or “Midtown” property. Maybe the Park District developer should learn from history and get his state legislator to promote a resolution to move Olympic National Park to North of downtown.