Seward Park 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 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 Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

, just west of Seward Park. It is part of Seattle's South End. The park occupies all of Bailey Peninsula.

Neighborhood

The neighborhood is bounded on the east and north by

Lake Washington Lake Washington () is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the largest lake in King County, Washington, King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington (state), Was ...

, on the south by South Kenyon Street, and on the west by the eastern boundaries of Columbia City, one of Seattle's oldest neighborhoods.

Environment

The 300 acres (121 ha) of Seward Park has about a 120 acre (48.6 ha) surviving remnant of

old-growth forest An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Natio ...

, providing a glimpse of what some of the lake shore looked like before the growth of the city of Seattle. With trees older than 250 years, the Seward Park forest is relatively young (the forests of Seattle before the city were fully mature, up to 1,000–2,000 years old). The park's trees largely consists of softwoods, mostly

Douglas fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is the tallest tree in the Pinaceae family. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Or ...

s, but with other species present as well, including

Western hemlock ''Tsuga heterophylla'', the western hemlock or western hemlock-spruce, is a species of hemlock native to the northwest coast of North America, with its northwestern limit on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, and its southeastern limit in northern ...

, Pacific madrona and Alaskan cedar. One of the earliest settlers, E. A. Clark, was influential in the life of Cheshiahud, a young man at the time, the mid-1850s. The Seward Park neighborhood includes what may be one of the highest residential hills in Seattle (the hill is traversed by Graham Street near its high point, thus earning it the name "Graham hill"). In a series of annexations, the neighborhood joined the City of Seattle in 1907.

Education

Although no schools fall within the borders of the neighborhood as described on city maps, three

public schools Public school may refer to: *Public school (government-funded), a no-fee school, publicly funded and operated by the government *Public school (United Kingdom), certain elite fee-charging private schools in England and Wales *Great Public Schools, ...

Graham Hill Norman Graham Hill (15 February 1929 – 29 November 1975) was a British racing driver, rower and motorsport executive, who competed in Formula One from to . Nicknamed "Mr. Monaco", Hill won two Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles ...

and Hawthorne and Dunlap elementary schools serve the area's students. In addition the

alternative Alternative or alternate may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Alternative (Kamen Rider), Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki'' * Alternative comics, or independent comics are an altern ...

Orca K-8 lies within blocks of the neighborhood's boundary.

Jewish Community

Seward Park is home to the largest concentration of

Orthodox Jews Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as literally revealed by God on Mount Sinai and faithfully tr ...

in the Seattle area. Established after the Jewish community of the Central District relocated en masse in the early 1960s, the

eruv An ''eruv'' (; , , also transliterated as ''eiruv'' or ''erub'', plural: ''eruvin'' or ''eruvim'') is a ritual ''halakhic'' enclosure made for the purpose of allowing activities which are normally Activities prohibited on Shabbat, prohibited ...

-bound neighborhood has five

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

s and a

Kollel A kollel (also kolel) (, , , , a "gathering" or "collection" f scholars is an institute for full-time, advanced Torah study, study of the Talmud and rabbinic literature. Like a yeshiva, a kollel features Shiur (Torah), shiurim (lectures) and ...

, and its main thoroughfare becomes a family parade on Shabbat and holidays. The state’s oldest Ashkenazi Orthodox congregation, Bikur Cholim Machzikay-Hadath (BCMH), runs a campus that includes the local mikveh, a summer camp, and the girls’ high school Derech Emunah. Seward Park also contains two congregations - Sephardic Bikur Holim, which follows Turkish tradition, and

Congregation Ezra Bessaroth Congregation Ezra Bessaroth is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 5412 Wilson Avenue South, in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, in the United States. Established in 1914, Ezra Bessaroth is one of Seat ...

, from the Island of Rhodes - which anchor Seattle’s

Sephardic Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

population, the third largest community in the country.

Notes

References

* . Page links to
Village Descriptions Duwamish-Seattle section
*

External links

Friends of Seward Park
*Cassandra Tate
Seward Park
at

HistoryLink HistoryLink is an online encyclopedia of Washington (state), Washington state history. The site has more than 8,100 entries and attracts 23,000 weekly visitors. It has 500 biographies and more than 14,000 images. The non-profit historical organi ...

* {{Coord, 47, 33, 02, N, 122, 15, 52, W, format=dms, display=title, type:city_region:US-WA