Volunteer Park is a park in the
Capitol Hill
Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...
neighborhood 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 ...
, United States.
History
Volunteer Park was acquired by the city of Seattle in 1876 from J.M. Colman at a cost of $2,000. When Seattle Cemetery became
Denny Park
Denny Park is a park located in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It occupies the block bounded by John Street and Denny Way on the north and south and Dexter and 9th Avenues N. on the west and east.
History
Denny Park ...
in 1884, the bodies interred there were moved to Washelli Cemetery, at the site of the future park. It soon became apparent that the land would be better suited to park use and the bodies were moved once again, this time to Lake View Cemetery; the park was renamed Lake View Park. This caused considerable confusion, leading to another renaming to City Park in 1887. J. Willis Sayre, a Seattle theatre critic, journalist and historian who had fought in the Spanish–American War, actively lobbied local officials to rename it once again - as Volunteer Park, to honor the volunteers who served in the war.
Volunteer Park is one of the highlights of Seattle's Olmsted park and boulevard system. The Board of Park Commissioners brought
John Charles Olmsted
John Charles Olmsted (1852–1920), was an American landscape architect. The nephew and adopted son of Frederick Law Olmsted, he worked with his father and his younger brother, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., in their father's firm. After their fath ...
, of the Olmsted Brothers' Landscape Architects firm, to Seattle in 1903 to design a park system which would provide open space and help guide development in the rapidly growing city. In Olmsted's first comprehensive plan, Volunteer Park served as the central park of the system due to its location near downtown.
Hired that same year to develop plans for Volunteer Park, Olmsted and his associates studied the landscape and built the plans around its natural beauty. Taking advantage of its ridgetop location, Olmsted ran one axis of the park's plan along the top of the hill, laying out a concourse running north and south through the park. It is lined with an allé of chestnut trees stretching between the two ends of the drive. A second axis runs through the city's municipal water system reservoir, which had been built in 1901. At the intersection of the two axes, he placed a concert grove, pergola, and terraced planting beds flanked by lily ponds.
On the eastern side of the park, paths looped around the concert grove and connected the interior of the park with the streetcar stop at 15th Avenue East and East Prospect Street. Large lawns surrounded by planting beds and groves of trees filled the interior. Multi-layered plantings filled planting beds on the perimeter of the park on the east, south, and west, to buffer the park from the city beyond its borders. On the western side of the park, the landscape featured lawns and more wooded areas. A carriage drive looped down the slope and around the reservoir connecting with the concourse drive at its northern and southern ends.
The original 1904 plan had a small children's playground at the northwest corner of the park. It included a shelterhouse with restrooms and a covered area that provided seating for caregivers as their charges enjoyed the sandboxes, swings, “Little Folks Lawn,” and wading pool. A revised 1909 plan added a playground for larger children at the request of playground advocates. Neighbors objected to its location on account of the noise potential, and this playground was moved to the northeast corner of the park.
The northern edge of the park is largely reserved for the work areas of the park. The caretaker's cottage, the greenhouses, and other facilities are located along the northern fenceline. The conservatory was added in 1912, built from a kit purchased from the Hitchings Company of New York.
The pergola Olmsted sited on the concourse featured a “concert grove” on its east side. It is shown on Olmsted plans as a cluster of trees adjacent to a covered shelter in the middle of the pergola. In 1915, the Park Department built a bandshell, designed by prominent Seattle architect Carl Gould, on the edge of the lawn north of the reservoir. Olmsted objected to its siting there because of its intrusion on the greensward – the great lawn, but it better served the type of musical performances that were popular at that time. It was a wooden structure and had to be torn down in 1947 because of rotted timbers. A new stage structure, designed by Rich Haag, was built in 1971.
An effort by the Washington State Art Association to build a museum in the park was rebuffed in 1910. Olmsted argued that, “Volunteer Park is obviously a landscape park – not an ornamental public square nor primarily a public playground. The conclusion is evident that the proposed art museum is not suggested as a means for the public to enjoy the landscape of the park… Owing to its size and style of architecture, the art museum is in no way to be subordinate to the park landscape, but on the contrary the museum would completely dominate a large part if not the whole of the park… destroying much of the landscape value of this park.” The issue would arise again, however, when the Fuller family offered to donate funding for construction of a museum for the Seattle Art Institute. The Park Department accepted the offer and the Seattle Art Museum was built in 1932. It would serve as home to the Seattle Art Museum until 1991, when a new building was constructed downtown. The Volunteer Park building became the new home of SAM’s Asian art collections and was renamed Seattle Asian Art Museum.
Features
![Volunteer Park Water Tower, Seattle, WA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Volunteer_Park_Water_Tower%2C_Seattle%2C_WA.JPG)
The park includes a
conservatory (a designated city landmark) which was completed in 1912; an
amphitheater
An amphitheatre (British English) or amphitheater (American English; both ) is an open-air venue used for entertainment, performances, and sports. The term derives from the ancient Greek ('), from ('), meaning "on both sides" or "around" and ...
; a
water tower
A water tower is an elevated structure supporting a water tank constructed at a height sufficient to pressurize a distribution system for potable water, and to provide emergency storage for fire protection. Water towers often operate in conju ...
with an observation deck, built by the Water Department in 1906, a fenced-off
reservoir
A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation.
Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...
; the dramatic
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
building of the
Seattle Asian Art Museum
The Seattle Asian Art Museum (often abbreviated to SAAM) is a museum of Asian art at Volunteer Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Part of the Seattle Art Museum, the SAAM exhibits historic and contemp ...
(a designated city landmark); a
statue of William H. Seward; a
memorial
A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or works of a ...
to Judge
Thomas Burke; and a
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
,
''Black Sun'', by
Isamu Noguchi
was an American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and severa ...
(colloquially referred to as "The Doughnut"), around which a scenic view of the Seattle skyline that prominently features the
Space Needle
The Space Needle is an observation tower in Seattle, Washington, United States. Considered to be an icon of the city, it has been designated a Seattle landmark. Located in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, it was built in the Seattle Center f ...
can be seen, as well as several meadows and picnic tables. The wading pool is operational in the summer months and operates daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Volunteer Park is also well known for its extensive dahlia garden in season. There are also koi ponds at the park which are home to the fish during the summer months.
Events
The park hosts various free concerts and outdoor theater events throughout the year.
There are also picnic tables for birthday parties and ample space for outdoor sports like touch football, frisbee and various field day activities.
See also
*
List of Olmsted parks in Seattle
References
External links
Parks Department page on Volunteer ParkSeattle Photograph Collection- University of Washington Library
{{Authority control
Capitol Hill, Seattle
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington (state)
National Register of Historic Places in Seattle
Parks in Seattle