Beacon Hill is a

hill A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. It often has a distinct summit, and is usually applied to peaks which are above elevation compared to the relative landmass, though not as prominent as Mountain, mountains. Hills ...

and

neighborhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...

in southeastern

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

, Washington. It is roughly bounded on the west by

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway System, 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 thro ...

, on the north by

Interstate 90 Interstate 90 (I-90) is an east–west transcontinental freeway and the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at . It begins in Seattle, Washington, and travels through the Pacific Northwest, Mountain states, Mountain West, Great Pla ...

Asian Americans Asian Americans are Americans with Asian diaspora, ancestry from the continent of Asia (including naturalized Americans who are Immigration to the United States, immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of those immigrants). A ...

and

African Americans African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa ...

and is among the most racially diverse in Seattle. It was formerly home to the world headquarters of

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

(at the Pacific Tower) and present home to the Seattle Division of the Department of Veterans Affairs' Puget Sound Health Care System.

Geography

Beacon Hill offers views of

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English 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 district ( ...

, the

Industrial District Industrial district (ID) is a place where workers and firms, specialised in a main industry and auxiliary industries, live and work. The concept was initially used by Alfred Marshall to describe some aspects of the industrial organisation of nat ...

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 ...

, First Hill, Rainier Valley, and, when the weather is good,

Mount Rainier Mount Rainier ( ), also known as Tahoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With an off ...

and the

Olympic Mountains The Olympic Mountains are a mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula of the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are not especially high – Mount Olympus (Washington), Mount Olympus is the high ...

. It is roughly bounded on the west by

, on the north by

, on the east by Rainier Avenue South, Cheasty Boulevard South, and Martin Luther King Junior Way South, and on the south by the Seattle city boundary. It is part of Seattle's South End. The municipal government subdivides it into North Beacon Hill, Mid-Beacon Hill, Holly Park, and South Beacon Hill, though most people who live there simply call it "Beacon Hill." Homes on the northern part of the hill were mostly built in the early 1900s; thus, North Beacon Hill contains many examples of Craftsman

bungalow A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is typically single or one and a half storey, if a smaller upper storey exists it is frequently set in the roof and Roof window, windows that come out from the roof, and may be surrounded by wide ve ...

s and Seattle box houses, a local variant of the Foursquare style.

Nearby neighborhoods

* Columbia City * Georgetown *

(see also

SoDo Sodo () or officially Wolaita Sodo (, ) is a city in south Ethiopia. The city is a political and administrative center of the Wolaita Zone and South Ethiopia Regional State. It has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation between abov ...

) * International District/Chinatown * Judkins Park * Mount Baker * Rainier Valley * Rainier Beach *

History and demographics

The Duwamish call the hill "Greenish-Yellow Spine" ( Lushootseed: qWátSéécH, pronounced QWAH-tseech), probably referring to the color of the deciduous trees that once grew thickly on the hill. Early settlers named it Holgate and Hanford Hill after two early settlers, John Holgate and Edward Hanford, who settled in the area in the 1850s and are commemorated to this day by South Holgate and Hanford Streets on North Beacon Hill. A later arrival, M. Harwood Young, named the hill after the Beacon Hill in his hometown,

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. Beacon Avenue, the main thoroughfare through the neighborhood, was built with a wide

median The median of a set of numbers is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a Sample (statistics), data sample, a statistical population, population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as the “ ...

that covered the wooden pipe carrying Seattle's drinking water supply from the Cedar River. The water main had been constructed in 1901 along the ridgeline of the hill. The street was later used for streetcar service from 1931 to 1941 and

utility pole A utility pole, commonly referred to as a transmission pole, telephone pole, telecommunication pole, power pole, hydro pole, telegraph pole, or telegraph post, is a column or post used to support overhead power lines and various other public util ...

s—becoming a "pole forest" by the 1950s. The city government relocated the utility poles and beautified Beacon Avenue in the 1970s and 1980s, which included landscaping the median into a walking trail. Beacon Hill was nicknamed "Boeing Hill" in the 1950s and 60s due to the number of residents who worked in the nearby

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

airplane factory. The term fell out of use when many Boeing employees joined the general exodus to the suburbs, and Asian

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

took their place. Today the neighborhood is majority Asian, as can be seen by the many Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino businesses along Beacon Avenue South. However, the area remains racially diverse, as shown by the 2000 United States census: 51% Asian, 20% white, 13% black, 9% Hispanic/Latino and 7% other. The census also showed the total Beacon Hill population to be 22,300. Neighboring Rainier Valley also shows a similar diversity.

Landmarks and institutions

* Pacific Medical Center (PacMed) located at the northern tip of Beacon Hill. Formerly a marine hospital, the building served as headquarters to

for ten years. * Jefferson Park: Golf, lawn bowling, skate park, Beacon Mountain Playground, tennis courts, open space and more. Golf professional

Fred Couples Frederick Steven Couples (born October 3, 1959) is an American professional golfer who has competed on the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour Champions. A former World No. 1, he has won 64 professional tournaments, most notably the Masters Tournament ...

was raised in the neighborhood and Jefferson Park was his home course as a teen. * Beacon Food Forest is one of the nation's largest food forest projects and is located on the west side of Jefferson Park. * Comet Lodge Cemetery (1895) * Dr. Jose Rizal Park: views to the west overlooking downtown, Elliott Bay and Olympic Mountains; start of bike path to I-90 bridge, Lake Washington, Mercer Island, Eastgate * El Centro de la Raza, a civil rights and community service organization, in the former Beacon Hill School built in 1904 * Seattle - Beacon Hill First Baptist Church 02A

Seattle - Beacon Hill First Baptist Church 02A

Beacon Hill First Baptist Church a historic landmark

Tudor Revival Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in the UK, first manifested in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in rea ...

building built in 1910, designed by notable architect Ellsworth Storey * The Frank D. Black property a designated landmark with river rock structures built in 1914 * Cheasty Greenbelt/Cheasty Boulevard Trail * Beacon Hill Station of Sound Transit Light Rail, located at Beacon Avenue South and South Lander Street * Beacon Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library, reopened in a new building and location in 2005 * Beacon Hill International Elementary School, a K-5 school that offers bilingual and diverse programs * Daejeon Park

Awards and honors

In 2012, the

American Planning Association The American Planning Association (APA) is a professional organization representing the field of urban planning in the United States. APA was formed in 1978, when two separate professional planning organizations, the American Institute of Pla ...

named Beacon Hill as one of the 30 Great Places in America.

Culture

The Beacon Arts Guild is a community nonprofit arts organization that is based on Beacon Hill. They organize cultural events in the neighborhood and sponsor affordable housing and studio space for artists. A summer music festival, named "Beacon Rocks", was organized in the 2010s by another organization to host monthly performances on the Roberto Maestas Festival Street. The neighborhood is home to the Beacon Food Forest, an urban food forest on adjacent to Jefferson Park that was created in 2012. The project is part of the city's P-Patch network of shared neighborhood farms and is maintained year-round by volunteers. It includes walnuts, chestnuts, berry shrubs and vegetables.

References

External links

North Beacon Hill Neighborhood Council

{{Seattle neighborhoods