Lower Queen Anne is a

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 northwestern

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, at the base of Queen Anne Hill. While its boundaries are not precise, the

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''wikt:toponym, toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for ...

usually refers to the shopping, office, and residential districts to the north and west of

Seattle Center The Seattle Center is an entertainment, education, tourism and performing arts center located in the Lower Queen Anne, Seattle, Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Constructed for the Century 21 Exposition, 1962 W ...

. The neighborhood is connected to Upper Queen Anne—the shopping district at the top of the hill—by an extremely steep section of Queen Anne Avenue N. known as the Counterbalance, in memory of the cable cars that once ran up and down it. In early April 2021, the Seattle City Council passed a resolution that officially recognized changing the name of the area previously known as Lower Queen Anne to Uptown. While "Lower Queen Anne" and "Uptown" are rarely used to refer to the grounds of Seattle Center itself, most of Seattle Center is in the neighborhood; these include

Climate Pledge Arena Climate Pledge Arena is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is located north of downtown Seattle in the entertainment complex known as the Seattle Center, the site of the 1962 World's Fair, for which it was ...

(home of the

Seattle Storm The Seattle Storm are an American professional basketball team based in Seattle. The Storm compete in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) as a member of the Western Conference (WNBA), Western Conference. The team was founded by Gi ...

of the WNBA and the

Seattle Kraken The Seattle Kraken are a professional ice hockey team based in Seattle. The Kraken compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division (NHL), Pacific Division in the Western Conference (NHL), Western Conference. The t ...

of the

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

), the Exhibition Hall, McCaw Hall (home of the

Seattle Opera Seattle Opera is an American opera company based in Seattle, Washington. The company's season runs from August through late May, comprising five or six operas of eight to ten performances each, often featuring double casts in major roles to all ...

and

Pacific Northwest Ballet Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) is an American ballet company based in Seattle, Washington. It is said to have the highest per capita attendance in the United States, with 11,000 subscribers in 2004. The company consists of 49 dancers and hosts ...

), the Cornish Playhouse (home of the Intiman Summer Theatre Festival and

Cornish College of the Arts Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) was a Private college, private art school, art college in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1914 by music teacher Nellie Cornish. The college's main campus is in the Denny Triangle, Seattle, Denny Triangle ...

), the Bagley Wright Theater (home of Seattle Repertory Theatre), and the studios for

KEXP KEXP-FM (90.3 FM broadcasting, FM) is a non-commercial Radio broadcasting, radio station in Seattle, Seattle, Washington, United States, specializing in indie music programmed by its disc jockeys. KEXP's studios are located at the Seattle Cent ...

radio.

Lower Queen Anne also has a three-screen movie theater, the SIFF Cinema Uptown, and

On the Boards On the Boards (OtB) is a non-profit contemporary performing arts organization in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1978. Originally located at Washington Hall in the Central District, the organization moved in 1998 to their current location in U ...

, a center for

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

theater and music.

Geography

Lower Queen Anne can be considered either a distinct neighborhood, or part of the larger Queen Anne neighborhood. Although the borders of Lower Queen Anne are not clearly defined, they usually include the area from Ward St. to Denny Way. Additionally, the area from the intersection of W. Galer St. and 5th Ave W. to W Prospect St. and Queen Anne Ave. N. are also usually considered part of the Lower Queen Anne area. However, as no borders for neighborhoods in the city of Seattle have been clearly defined, the boundaries of Lower Queen Anne remain merely set by popular opinion.

Transit

The

Seattle Center Monorail The Seattle Center Monorail is an elevated railway, elevated straddle-beam monorail line in Seattle, Washington, United States. The monorail runs along 5th Avenue between the Seattle Center and Westlake Center in Downtown Seattle, making n ...

, the city's only monorail line, runs from Lower Queen Anne to

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 ( ...

King County Metro King County Metro, officially the King County Metro Transit Department and often shortened to Metro, is the public transit authority of King County, Washington, which includes the city of Seattle. It is the eighth-largest transit bus agency in t ...

operates several bus routes that travel through the neighborhood, including the RapidRide D Line.

Economy

The Seattle-based newspaper known as the ''

Seattle Post-Intelligencer The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (popularly known as the ''Seattle P-I'', the ''Post-Intelligencer'', or simply the ''P-I'') is an online newspaper and former print newspaper based in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. Th ...

'' was located in Lower Queen Anne. Local radio station KEXP-FM moved its headquarters to Lower Queen Anne in a building adjacent to the

in December 2015. The neighborhood is also home to numerous high-tech companies. The corporate headquarters of F5 Networks was located in Lower Queen Anne until it was moved to

F5 Tower F5 Tower (previously The Mark and Fifth and Columbia Tower) is a skyscraper in Downtown Seattle, Washington. It consists of 44 floors and is the sixth-tallest building in Seattle. The tower consists of of office space leased entirely by F5 ...

. It is the home of business texting startup Zipwhip. It was the home of Quicksoft, the first company to score commercial success with

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

. Prior to its dissolution, Pro Air was also headquartered in Lower Queen Anne. Outreach, a sales software company, moved their offices to Lower Queen Anne in 2018, filling a space previously held by Big Fish Games. Lower Queen Anne is home to many restaurants.

References

External links

Queen Anne Historical SocietyGreater Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce
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