The Industrial District is the principal industrial area of

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

. It is bounded on the west by the Duwamish River and

Elliott Bay Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is in the U.S. state of Washington, extending southeastward between West Point in the north and Alki Point in the south. Seattle was founded on this body of water in the 1850s ...

, beyond which lies Delridge of

West Seattle West Seattle is a conglomeration of neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington, United States. It comprises two of the thirteen districts, Delridge and Southwest, and encompasses all of Seattle west of the Duwamish River. It was incorporated as an i ...

; on the east by

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Califor ...

, beyond which lies Beacon Hill; on the north by S King and S Dearborn Streets, beyond which lie Pioneer Square and southwest International District of

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

; and on the south by the main lines of the

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...

and

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

, or about S Lucille Street, beyond which is Georgetown.

SoDo Sodo ( am, ሶዶ) or Wolaita Sodo ( am, ወላይታ ሶዶ) or ( Wolaytatto: ''Wolayta Sodo Ambbaa'') is a city in south-central Ethiopia. The administrative center of the Wolaita Zone. It has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation bet ...

is the name of the northwest portion of the neighborhood, named for its being South of Downtown. SoDo is the location of

T-Mobile Park T-Mobile Park is a retractable roof stadium in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners and has a seating capacity of 47,929. It is in Seattle's SoDo neighborhood, near the western t ...

, home of the

Seattle Mariners The Seattle Mariners are an American professional baseball team based in Seattle. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League West, West division. The team joined the American League ...

, and

Lumen Field Lumen Field is a multi-purpose stadium in Seattle, Washington, United States. Located in the city's SoDo neighborhood, it is the home field for the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL), the Seattle Sea Dragons of the XFL, the ...

, home of the

Seattle Seahawks The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 as ...

and

Seattle Sounders FC Seattle Sounders Football Club is an American professional men's soccer club based in Seattle. The Sounders compete as a member of the Western Conference of Major League Soccer (MLS). The club was established on November 13, 2007, and began ...

. Lumen Field was also the site of the former

Kingdome The Kingdome (officially the King County Stadium) was a multi-purpose stadium located in the Industrial District, Seattle, Industrial District (later SoDo, Seattle, SoDo) neighborhood of Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. O ...

. The Industrial District may also be defined by land use, with the primarily residential and open space Delridge district extending west from W Marginal Way SW and south of SW Spokane Street, and with the heavy industrial-zoned lower Duwamish River east of Marginal and north of Spokane as part of the Industrial District.(1)
(2)
(3)
Maps "NN-1030S", "NN-1040S".jpg 17 June 2002. orMaps "NN-1120S", "NN-1130S", "NN-1140S".Jpg ic13 June.
(4)
See heading, "Note about limitations of these data".
(5) Shenk, Polack, Dornfield, Frantilla, Neman (2002). Most of the Industrial District is built on what was once the

mudflat Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats or, in Ireland, slob or slobs, are coastal wetlands that form in intertidal areas where sediments have been deposited by tides or rivers. A global analysis published in 2019 suggested that tidal fl ...

s and lowlands of Elliott Bay and the Duwamish

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...

, dredged, straightened, and filled 1902 and 1907. Much of the area is also built on landfill which is prone to

liquefaction In materials science, liquefaction is a process that generates a liquid from a solid or a gas or that generates a non-liquid phase which behaves in accordance with fluid dynamics. It occurs both naturally and artificially. As an example of the ...

. This makes buildings in this area highly prone to earthquake damage. Principal arterials are First and Fourth Avenues S,

Alaskan Way Alaskan Way, originally Railroad Avenue, is a street in Seattle, Washington, that runs along the Elliott Bay waterfront from just north of S. Holgate Street in the Industrial District—south of which it becomes East Marginal Way S.— to Broad S ...

, East Marginal and Airport Ways S (north- and southbound); and S Spokane, the Spokane Street Viaduct,

West Seattle Bridge The West Seattle Bridge, officially the Jeanette Williams Memorial Bridge, is a cantilevered segmental bridge that serves as the primary connection between West Seattle and important highways such as State Route 99 (and the tunnel through downt ...

, and S Royal Brougham Way (east- and westbound; Royal Brougham was formerly S Atlantic Street). Minor arterials are 6th Avenue S, S Holgate and S Lander Streets, and S Industrial Way.

History

What is now Seattle has been inhabited since the end of the last

glacial period A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betw ...

(c. 8,000 BCE—10,000 years ago). For example, the villages of ''tohl-AHL-too'' ("

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...

house") and later ''hah-AH-poos'' ("where there are horse clams") at the then-mouth of the Duwamish River in what is now the Industrial District, had been inhabited since the 6th century CE. The ''Dkh^w’Duw’Absh'' and ''Xacuabš'' ("People of the Inside" and "People of the Large Lake", now the

Duwamish tribe The Duwamish ( lut, Dxʷdəwʔabš, ) are a Lushootseed-speaking Native American tribe in western Washington, and the indigenous people of metropolitan Seattle, where they have been living since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8000 BCE ...

) of the Lushootseed (Whulshootseed, Skagit-Nisqually)

Coast Salish The Coast Salish is a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one of the Coas ...

nations inhabited at least 17 villages in the mid-1850s, living in some 93 permanent

longhouses A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from timber and often rep ...

(khwaac'ál'al) along

Salmon Bay Salmon Bay is a portion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound, lying west of the Fremont Cut. It is the westernmost section of the canal and empties into Puget Sound' ...

Portage Bay Portage Bay is a body of water, often thought of as the eastern arm of Lake Union, that forms a part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle, Washington. To the east, Portage Bay is connected with Union Bay—a part of Lake Washington— ...

Lake Washington Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It borders the cities of Seattle on the west, ...

Lake Sammamish Lake Sammamish is a freshwater lake east of Seattle in King County, Washington, United States. The lake is long and wide, with a maximum depth of and a surface area of . It lies east of Lake Washington and west of the Sammamish Plateau, and ...

, and the

Duwamish Duwamish may refer to: * Duwamish tribe, a Native American tribe in Washington state * Duwamish River, in Washington state * ''Duwamish'' (fireboat) See also * Elliott Bay Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is ...

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...

, and

Cedar Cedar may refer to: Trees and plants *''Cedrus'', common English name cedar, an Old-World genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae *Cedar (plant), a list of trees and plants known as cedar Places United States * Cedar, Arizona * ...

rivers. In 1905 the Seattle Box Company relocated to the southeast corner of 4th Avenue S and S Spokane Street becoming one of the first residents of the Industrial District.

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 c ...

moved its world headquarters to the Industrial District in 1997, occupying the 1912 building constructed for

Sears, Roebuck and Company Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

as a catalog distribution center. Some current industrial business owners are concerned about the future of the Industrial District. The area is seen by some city developers as an ideal zone in which to expand non-industrial businesses and residential land use south of

Downtown Seattle Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared with other city centers on the U.S. West Coast due to its geographical situation, being hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by ...

Economy

Uwajimaya Uwajimaya, Inc., doing business as , is a family-owned supermarket chain with its corporate headquarters in the International District, Seattle, Washington, and with locations in Greater Seattle and Oregon. Uwajimaya sells mainly Asian food—w ...

has its headquarters in the Industrial District.Uwajimaya Is Searching For A New Bag Design!
"

. Retrieved on November 13, 2011. "Uwajimaya Corporate Office 4601 6th Avenue S., Seattle, WA 98108"

History

Economy

References

Further reading