A companion to the map
Museum of Seattle
Walk through six places where Seattle remade its land—and where the consequences are still visible in streets, shorelines, buildings, and deeds.
The parcel map tells you what can be built on a lot today. These rooms ask how the lot acquired its shape, its value, and the rules attached to it. Every panel includes the sources behind the story and says how closely we checked them.
Open
Room 01
Alki
Seattle often begins its story with twenty-two settlers stepping ashore at Alki in 1851. The place they entered already had names, uses, homes, and graves.
Room 02
The Duwamish River
Seattle straightened the Duwamish, removed one of its tributaries, and built an industrial waterway in its place. The old river—and the cost of remaking it—remain visible.
Room 03
Pioneer Square
Seattle's oldest neighborhood has been a mill town, the scene of a mass expulsion, a burned city center, a gateway to the Klondike, a shantytown, and—very nearly—a parking district.
Room 04
The Regrades
Between 1897 and 1930 Seattle moved more than eleven million cubic yards of earth into Elliott Bay. The new flat ground had a price—and property owners were expected to pay it.
Room 05
Nihonmachi
Japanese Seattle built hotels, apartments, shops, and institutions on land the law often prevented immigrants from owning. In 1942, forced removal emptied the neighborhood in a matter of weeks.
Room 06
The Central District
Tens of thousands of King County properties still carry deed language naming who was once forbidden to live there. Those restrictions helped shape the Central District—and the parcel geography around it.
These rooms are works in progress. None has yet been reviewed by every community whose history it carries. Each room names what remains uncertain and links to a full source register. Corrections, additions, and better sources are welcome.