Freeway Park, officially known as Jim Ellis Freeway Park, is an

urban park An urban park or metropolitan park, also known as a city park, municipal park (North America), public park, public open space, or municipal gardens (United Kingdom, UK), is a park or botanical garden in cities, densely populated suburbia and oth ...

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 ...

, United States, connecting the city's

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 ( ...

to the

Seattle Convention Center The Seattle Convention Center (SCC), formerly the Washington State Convention Center (WSCC), is a convention center in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. It consists of two buildings in Downtown Seattle with exhibition hall ...

and First Hill. The park sits atop a section of

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 ...

and a large city-owned parking lot; 8th Avenue also bridges over the park. An unusual mixture of

brutalist architecture Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...

and greenery, the park, designed by

Lawrence Halprin Lawrence Halprin (July 1, 1916 – October 25, 2009) was an American landscape architect, designer, and teacher. Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in 1949, Halprin often collaborated with a local circle of modernist ...

's office under the supervision of

Angela Danadjieva Angela Danadjieva is a landscape architect who founded the multidisciplinary design firm Danadjieva & Koenig Associates with her partner Thomas Koenig. She is well known for her work with Lawrence Halprin & Associates, including the Keller Fountain ...

, opened to the public on July 4, 1976, at a cost of $23.5 million. An expansion of the park that stretches several blocks up First Hill, including a stairway and wheelchair ramp, was opened in 1982. The park is also a cultural landscape and a precedent setting park that, according to The Cultural Landscape Foundation, helped define a new land-use typology for American cities. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on December 19, 2019, having been listed on the

Washington Heritage Register The Washington Heritage Register is an official list of sites and properties found throughout Washington state, United States. The Washington Heritage Register is administered by the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preserva ...

in a unanimous vote on October 25; it was also declared a Seattle Landmark by the city's landmarks preservation board in a unanimous vote on May 18, 2022. The park's unique architecture has made it famous among

parkour Parkour () is an athletic Training#Physical training, training discipline or sport in which practitioners (called ''traceurs'') attempt to get from one point to another in the fastest and most efficient way possible, without assisting equipment ...

enthusiasts. The World Freerunning and Parkour Federation listed Freeway Park second on its list of the seven best parkour locations in the world.

History

A series of crimes, in particular a murder on January 18, 2002, briefly gave the park a reputation as a haven for crime and led to calls for a radical redesign. Many at first attributed the dangers to the design of the park. A neighborhood group formed under the name Freeway Park Neighborhood Association (FPNA) collaborated with the city's parks and recreation department to produce an "activation plan" for the park, published in 2005 as "A New Vision for Freeway Park". The report has concluded that the park's problems could be remedied by numerous small changes: increased security patrols, better lighting, pruning back of certain plants, and above all increased use, both in terms of organized events and simply encouraging more convention center visitors to use the park. The strategy, only partly implemented , seems to be succeeding: according to

David Brewster Sir David Brewster Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order, KH President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, PRSE Fellow of the Royal Society of London, FRS Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, FSA Scot Fellow of the Scottish Society of ...

of the FPNA, crime in the park is down 90% compared to that of 2002. The park was renovated in 2008 and renamed to honor civic leader Jim Ellis.

Gallery

Image:Seattle - Freeway Park c. 1970s.jpg,

Brutalist Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the b ...

fountain, Freeway Park, circa 1970s. Image:Seattle Freeway Park 10.jpg, The park winds its way down First Hill, offering both a staircase and wheelchair-accessible ramps. Image:Seattle Freeway Park 24.jpg,

fountain, Freeway Park. Image:Freeway Park canyon.jpg Image:Freeway Park miles of squares.jpg Image:Freeway Park waterfall.jpg Image:Freeway Park geometry.jpg Image:Freeway Park warning sign.jpg

References

External links

Official website
(

Seattle Parks and Recreation Seattle Parks and Recreation (officially the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR)) is the government department responsible for maintaining the parks, open spaces, and community centers of the city of Seattle, Washington. The department maint ...

)
Freeway Park Association website

Virtual Reality Tour of Freeway Park
requires

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

. {{Authority control Brutalist architecture in Washington (state) Parks in Seattle Downtown Seattle 1976 establishments in Washington (state) National Register of Historic Places in Seattle Landmarks in Seattle Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington (state)

History

Gallery

References

Further reading

External links