Collins Playfield… Whatever Happened To
January 14th, 2009 @ 1:20 am by Cliffe | Sorted Photo Exposure |
Since Litlnemo, Alan Stein, and Paul Dorpat
were so kind to help us out yesterday, I’m raising another question today. These four photos are from the Seattle Municipal Archives showing Collins Playfield and Field House. The question is: where was it (CD?) and what happened to it? Click on the thumbnails to have a closer look.
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| Collins Field House, with Ben Evans’ first automobile, 1917. Photograph courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives. |
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| Collins Playfield [Field House interior] Game Room, 1915. Photograph courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives. |
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| Collins Field House. 135 lb football team, city champs. Nobi Kawa, second row on left, 1950. Photograph courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives.
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| Children wading, Collins Playfield. Date unknown. Photograph courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives. |
CD. The UW has a couple Collins Field and Field House photos listed under Green Lake, but they are wrong. (Look at all those Asian and Black kids in the pictures. It had to be closer to the CD at that period.) There is also a picture of it in the book Seattle’s Green Lake, but it doesn’t say that the Field House was at Green Lake — it’s there to show the background of Ben Evans, who had a certain impact on the history of Green Lake.
The Seattle Chinese Athletic Association website says that the Collins Field House was located “across the street from the Buddhist Church.” Which was across Washington, I think.
If you go to the Seattle Public Library’s website and look at the Sanborn maps in Volume 1, it’s page 20 that shows it. The park is still there, I guess, or at least some open field is there. It’s not part of Seattle’s park system anymore, it seems. I’m not sure who’s space it is now. It’s between Washington and Main, and 16th and 14th. The site of the Field House now is just part grass and part parking lot, it seems. Very sad.
Ooh, a floor plan and some pictures of the interior — and it was a lovely building then — are in the book The American City, from 1913, at http://books.google.com/books?id=R6ZLAAAAMAAJ . Check out pages 501-503.
Collins Park was bewteen 14th and 16th Avenues S., and was bounded on the north by S. Washington St. and on the south by S. Main St. Map is here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=1400+S+Washington+St,+Seattle,+King,+Washington+98144&sll=47.578248,-122.312121&sspn=0.006702,0.013733&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=Fc1U1gIdYaK1-A&split=0&ll=47.600455,-122.312486&spn=0.001675,0.003433&t=h&z=18
The park was transfered out as part of the Model City program in the 1970s, as mentioned in here:
http://web1.seattle.gov/dpd/historicalsite/QueryResult.aspx?ID=271509133
More info here:
http://www.seattle.gov/PARKS/history/CollinsPG.pdf
The Collins Field House, located at the east end of the park, was the 3rd recreation center built by the city, after the one at Hiawatha in West Seattle and the Ballard Field House. After the city transfered the property, the Collins Field House was torn down in 1975, noted on page 9 in here:
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/history/LHPAC.pdf
I’m not 100% certain, but I believe that Collin’s Playfield used to be where Cal Anderson park is now. The water pictured here was the reservoir from what I understand.
I recently read “The Hill With A Future: Seattle’s Capitol Hill” by Jacqueline B. Williams, and she talks quite a lot about Collin’s in that book. I don’t remember any exact wording, but I puzzled it out as now being Cal Anderson in my head as I was reading.
Actually, it does appear that Collins Field was (still is?) in the Central District with the Center on 16th Ave S. between Washington St. and Main St. I should probably know more about this since it is less than 10 blocks from my house, but don’t know much about it. I don’t think it is quite in the right place to be part of Pratt Park now which is slightly further NW of the 16th Ave and Washington St location.
Here is a link the a scanned document that shows the playfield location, center, and costs of purchasing and building some components of the park:
http://www.seattle.gov/PARKS/history/CollinsPG.pdf
Good pull Bryan, it seems you are absolutely correct in the location.
http://www.wingluke.org/pages/CHC/exhibit1/e11053a.htm.
I live across the street from Pratt Park, which is about a block east of this location. I can’t find the name of the park on any map, so I shall take a walk shortly to find out.
It does appear that portions of the park are still there between 16th Ave S and 14th Ave S, but a small parking lot is on the SE corner and the West portion of the block has a rather large building along 14th Ave that possibly the remaining open space is associated with now. I have driven past whatever building it is on 14th Ave but never paid attention to what it is — looks like Public Housing possibly.
Street view for where the Center would have been:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=212+16th+Avenue+South,+Seattle,+WA+98122&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=29.163842,55.810547&ie=UTF8&ll=47.600506,-122.312497&spn=0.001512,0.006813&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=47.600426,-122.31155&panoid=LQlUvZ6yCBYyy_mZqtYDrQ&cbp=11,268.1707305346277,,0,0.8159328499160007
Accoding to King County, the parcel is now owned by Seattle Buddhist Church. I’m mystified why the city would ever sell a park.
Looks like according to the CollinsPG.pdf file that the property was transferred to an “Urban Renewal Project” in the 1970s and the center torn down in part because the nearby Pratt Park facilities replaced similar function. Too bad, looks like the park had some interesting history as the first park in Seattle with recreation director and first library extension. The park’s name sake, John Collins, also had an interesting early Seattle founder/leader history that I was previously unaware of as well as Council Member, Mayor, Territorial Legislator, and owner of the Seattle Hotel at the Yesler/James/First junction (recently featured on this site as well).
For what it is worth, the scanned document comes from Don Sherwood’s
Data on history of Seattle park system : compiled April 19, 1960, updated regularly to date / compiled by Don Sherwood (Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation). This is in the Seattle Room at the central library…
I guess I was wrong about the location of the Buddhist church, it was (is?) across Main, not Washington.
(Crossing my fingers that this post won’t go into moderation — I don’t know why my posts are getting moderated all of a sudden.)
(And also noting that the “who’s” in my first post should be “whose”.)
This park is decidedly Bhuddist with a few features that one should see in person. The large building next door is “Wisteria View Manor”, one of two large predominantly Asian senior living facilities in the neighborhood.
Does anyone know much about the fate of the Field House (other than that it’s obviously torn down now)? Was it dilapidated and ugly by the time it went away, or did the Buddhist church folks just not want it? Because when it was built it was very cool, but I imagine public buildings like that get a lot of wear and tear. And what year was it torn down? It’s weird how little information about it is available online.
Incidentally, I had ancestors living on Washington St a couple of blocks away, when the building was still new. So I imagine they visited it a time or two.
Litlnemo: I’ve got my eye on you! Just kidding. I’m not sure why the spam filter hates you.
Cliffe, it is weird because of my last two messages, the first one wasn’t moderated and the second one was. But neither of them had links or anything that would be likely to trigger moderation. Very odd. I wonder if somehow your spam filters are to moderate messages containing a particular word that I keep using or something?
Could be. I “train” it every day with around 200-300 spam posts. It’s probably got a lot of false positive type lessons learned over time. Mainly because the spammers say *anything* and then include smutty links.
Is the wading pool filled in? Or is it now a pond? I can see the outline on the google view. As I understand it, there are only a few parks with the wading pools. (I was most familiar with the one in QA which I think we called Little Howe.)
Martha- there is a little drybed stream that meanders through a bit of the park near the southwest corner- the Bhuddists have done quite a bit of “zen” work here (we call it the Zen park), and it looks to me as if the entire parcel of land has been regraded. The stone steps shown in the picture I linked above are gone, I assume replaced by the smaller, less-steep set there now. There is definitely no wading pool, nor can one see any remains on foot. I’ll look at the satellite image again to see if I can observe what you’re talking about.
Barb,
I saw the original location on the hand-sketched design posted by Bryan. When I looked at a google map, I see some sort of a pond, but the shape is different than the oval shown in the sketch. The one I remember looked a lot like the one in Volunteer Park, shown here:
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/_images/pools/volunteerwp.jpg
It isn’t important, other than in it is fun to remember things from childhood. I am going to visit Seattle in June, and I can go see some of my memories then.
Some relatively recent photos of the park. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wisteria_Park. Note also the links for photos of Seattle Buddhist Church and Seattle Koyasan Church.
Im very like doing this research paper on legalizing pot.
I like information that you have
Gute Arbeit hier! Gute Inhalte.
Want my comments? I can do it but i not desire…. Sorry… I is goth man…
If you go to historicaerials.com you can see this very clearly in the 1936 and 1968 data sets. In 1980 the building is suddenly gone but the park remains.
http://www.historicaerials.com/
From the main page, click in to Seattle, then click the appropriate year among the buttons on the right side.
This is a wonderful wealth of information. Good Luck!