Photo by Alex Porter, in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.
They started taking down the big blue wall around the light rail construction site today! They removed a few segments at 17th and Lander — right where Lander St. used to go through.
The end of the seemingly endless Beacon Hill Station construction project is in sight!
Culinary Communion front steps. Photo by Wendi.
Culinary Communion is going to begin operating a weekday lunch counter. While the official grand opening isn’t until April 1, we will have a “soft opening” during the month of March and will be open for business on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays (with a few exceptions – please check our website at www.culinarycommunion.com) from 11am-2pm. We will offer a variety of sandwiches – using the Swinery meat (when available) and homemade bread –- plus, a salad, soup, and hot entrée of the day. Menu items will be priced between $6 and $9. Lunch is available to eat-in or take out. No reservations necessary. Questions can be directed to info@culinarycommunion.com or 206.284.8687. Look for more information about the grand opening soon!
Culinary Communion is located at 2524 Beacon Avenue South in North Beacon Hill.
Marybeth Turner with SDOT wrote to let us know:
SDOT will close a lane on the Jose Rizal Bridge (12th Avenue South, connecting Beacon Hill to downtown Seattle) on Thursday, March 5. The southbound, right-hand lane will be closed from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to allow crews to inspect expansion joints.
Beacon Hill received a brief mention in the New York Times today:
The deep recession, with its lost jobs and falling home values nationwide, poses another kind of threat: to the character of neighborhoods settled by the young creative class, from the Lower East Side in Manhattan to Beacon Hill in Seattle. The tide of gentrification that transformed economically depressed enclaves is receding, leaving some communities high and dry.
It’s a bit odd, because Beacon Hill doesn’t actually seem to fit the pattern described in the article, of neighborhoods gentrified by “the young creative class” and then finding their new hipster shops and cafés collapsing from the effects of the recession. Beacon Hill is still a neighborhood seemingly on the verge of gentrification, but we haven’t yet seen an influx of shops “playing the Decemberists in a continuous loop,” as the Times puts it. We have a couple of newish coffee shops, and a couple of newer businesses that might have been on the cutting edge of gentrification up here, but, honestly, it sounds more as if the Times meant to name-check Georgetown.
OK, so it’s not a dusting. It is snowing pretty hard out there now. We now have more than 1.5 inches of snow here on North Beacon. Drive carefully, folks.
The dusting of snow we’ve gotten has made the streets slick enough for Seattle Public Schools to run two hours late today. Buses are on their snow routes, there is no door-to-door service, no breakfast service, no Head Start, and no half-day kindergarten. (Full-day kindergarteners will have the two-hour delay.) Most private schools in town seem to be two hours late as well. See schoolreport.org for details.
SODO at sunset. Photo by Wendi.
We’d like to welcome the folks at the SODO Agogo blog to the Seattle neighborhood blogosphere! Many of us pass through SODO on a regular basis, so a blog for that area should be useful to Beaconians. It may end up with a different feel than other neighborhood blogs, since it’s not really a residential neighborhood, but it has lots of businesses, restaurants, and entertaining.
(On another topic: I wonder why people spell it SODO. Why not SoDo since it was, originally, “South of the Dome” and now is “South of Downtown”? Sometimes I spell it with lower-case letters anyway because I don’t like the all-caps version.)
Photo by Joel Lee
I was walking my dog this morning and noticed that they are taking down the gulag style chain-link and barbed wire fence that surrounded the now underground reservoir at Jefferson park. It has been a blight on the neighborhood for years and a major step in reclaiming the park as a public space. In the attached photo the fence you see at the bottom is just a temporary fence.
Exciting news! That huge open space up there atop the reservoir is going to provide great views and a place to lounge in the sun or run or toss a Frisbee or ball around.
The existing North Beacon Hill neighborhood plan for the light rail station area is in the process of being revised. As we have seen recently, the topic of density and transit-oriented development in the neighborhood is controversial. You can make your voice heard in the process of rezoning and changing North Beacon by attending the City’s neighborhood plan update meeting on Saturday, March 28, from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm at El Centro de la Raza, 2524 16th Ave South.
These photos are from the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr. If you have photos or short videos of the neighborhood, you are invited to add them to the pool as well.
Spoons store sign on Beacon Avenue South. Photo by Wendi.
The front steps of the Culinary Communion house. Photo by Wendi.
Skillet serving meals in the Queen Anne neighborhood last summer. Photo by Benjamin Hollis.
Hey skillet nation !!
an idea……
we have an idea we would like to implement. Seattle doesn’t have enough street food, and we want to help change that. We are toying with the idea of creating a weekend street food market. We would like to have a parking lot of some kind perhaps in a neighborhood say ballard, fremont, cap hill, udistrict, beacon hill etc…where us and maybe 5-10 other street food vendors could set up for a saturday and sunday during the day and perhaps even into the evening. I believe it could be a great experiment (and successful) and perhaps couple it with some farmers, musicians etc…anyways…if you have any suggestions or perhaps a location…please don’t hesitate to email me (josh) at eat@skilletstreetfood.com…
and thanks…we want to make seattle the epicenter of street food..!!!
Beacon Hill currently lacks a farmers’ market. Something like this would be an interesting alternative. Perhaps at El Centro, next to the train station (once it’s opened)? An event like this would draw visitors to the neighborhood, potentially helping the Hill’s economy, as well as giving us something interesting to do on the weekends. However, it’s possible the local restaurateurs would feel threatened by potential weekend competition. Have an opinion? Let Josh know at eat@skilletstreetfood.com.
Thanks to Slog for the heads-up.
Angetina Isernio, a long time Beacon Hill resident and mother of Frank Isernio of Isernio’s Sausage fame, passed away on February 15 at the age of 102 years old.
She was born in San Marco la Catola, Italy, in 1906. Her family later settled on Beacon Hill, where she met and married Frank Isernio Sr., who was born here in Seattle and, along with his brothers, farmed land in what is now part of Boeing Field, and sold produce at Pike Place Market. She raised rabbits and chickens in the backyard of their Beacon Hill family home (where she lived for 70 years of her life) while Frank Sr. raised vegetables. Together, they raised two children, Gloria and Frank.
Angetina’s homemade sausages from the family recipe eventually inspired Frank Jr. to found his gourmet sausage business. Angetina made a special effort to contribute to his success, by going around to local grocery stores and asking the meat department managers “Do you have any of that wonderful new Isernio’s Italian Sausage?”
A funeral mass and life celebration will be held at Saint George Catholic Church, 5306 13th Avenue South, this Saturday, February 21, 10:00 am. There is an online guestbook/memory book to post your memories of Angetina Isernio.
Higher density near the Columbia City light rail station. Photo by Matthew Rutledge.
By Andrew Smith
Recently House Bill 1490 has started a discussion in our region over density and transit-oriented-development. Originally the bill required cities to create zoning packages that would have allowed increased density in a half-mile radius around all light rail and commuter rail stations. In a recent revision, that requirement was scaled back to apply to only communities defined by the Puget Sound Regional Council as “growth centers”: Auburn, Downtown Bellevue, Overlake, Everett, Federal Way, Kent, Lakewood, Lynnwood, Puyallup, Redmond, Seatac, Capitol Hill, Downtown Seattle, Northgate, the University District, Downtown Tacoma, and Tukwila. I imagine many in Southeast Seattle breathed a sigh of relief when they read that, as many in that area were very concerned about increased density changing their neighborhoods. However, I’d like to make the case for increased density in these areas, focusing my argument on Beacon Hill, and point out that while increased density could change the neighborhood, that change might be a better change than what will happen if density is prohibited.
More »
McClellan Place. Photo by Wendi.
The Seattle Parks and Recreation Department has a collection of histories about most of the city’s parks, including one that gives us a fragment of information about this most tiny park. The original improvement, it tells us, was financed by the Beacon Hill Lions Club. Unfortunately, it gives no date. (Anyone know when? Do we even still have a Lions Club on the Hill?)
Next time you walk past the Red Apple, take a moment to visit McClellan Place, and enjoy a bit of one of the Hill’s — and Seattle’s — smallest parks. Perhaps next summer it would be nice to bring a lawn chair and a hibachi out there and have a picnic.
It's OK to enter the park! Photo by Wendi.
on Thursday, February 19, at the Beacon Hill Library, 2821 Beacon Avenue South, 6:30 p.m. The event is free. — Seattle Books ExaminerThe folks from Feet First want you to know about their upcoming planning meeting:
On Saturday, February 21st & Sunday, February 22nd, Feet First will embark on the first strategic planning meeting designed to develop a new framework to guide us in the next three years. Feet First needs to hear from you.
When: Saturday, February 21, 9am-5pm and Sunday, February 22nd, 9am-2pm
Where: EOS Alliance, 650 South Orcas Street, Suite 220 (Georgetown neighborhood)Your participation in both days is encouraged. Lunch will be served both days.
RSVP to Atsuko Murota, by emailing atsuko@feetfirst.info or by calling 206-652-2310.
Feet First is a non-profit advocacy organization founded to promote walkable communities and to advance pedestrian interests.
Beacon Avenue in October 1949, just north of Bayview, facing south, near the current location of Baja Bistro. Courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives, item 41958.
The same street, almost 60 years later in February 2009.
Some of the sadder losses to Seattle are the neighborhood theaters that used to exist in just about every part of the city, including Beacon Hill. On the left side of the “past” photo, you see the Beacon Theatre at 2352 Beacon Avenue South, then showing a double bill of Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal in The Fountainhead, and Glenn Ford and Ida Lupino in Lust For Gold.
The Beacon was previously the Grey Goose Theatre, and featured a pipe organ, installed in the 1920s to play music with the motion pictures of the day. The theater was demolished in 1964.
The 1949 photo looks very different from the modern scene on the left side of Beacon Avenue, but the right side is remarkably unchanged. The house with the vertical stripes still exists, as does the retail building to its left (though it has had changes to its façade). McKale’s service station is now a 76 gas station (just beyond the edge of the photo), but sadly, full-service gas stations have also gone the way of the old-time neighborhood movie theater.
On Saturday, February 14th at approximately 8:02 p.m. officers responded to a 911 call of an armed robbery of a clothing store in the 2500 block of 15th Avenue South. After robbing the store, the two male suspects fled the scene on foot and remain at large. Nobody was injured during the robbery and no shots were fired. An SPD K-9 unit responded and conducted an unsuccessful track. Suspect #1 is described as a black male, late teens to early 20’s, 5′7″ tall, 160 lbs., short black hair and wearing a black t-shirt, black pants and a red,white, and black scarf over his face. Suspect #2 is described as a black male, late teens to early 20’s, 6′1″ tall, 180 lbs., short black hair and wearing a black t-shirt, black pants and a black doo-rag over his face. Both suspects were wearing gloves. One suspect was armed with a silver handgun and the other with a black handgun. It is unknown at this time what was taken during the robbery. Anyone with information about these suspects or their whereabouts is asked to call 911 or Seattle Police immediately.
Sukiyaki. Photo by Mari.
Edited to add: Blaine Memorial UMC mentions in the comments: “During the month of March, we will also be holding a food drive to benefit the Rainier Valley Food Bank.”
Edited again to correct the name of the Beacon Avenue Food Bank.
Kerrie Carbary of Volunteer Chore Services writes:
“An extremely independent 87 year old who lives near the VA Hospital on Beacon Hill is very proud of how energetic and capable she is, but during the cold last month she fell, and now she realized that she could use a bit of help to be able to stay in her own home. Her house is charming and lovely, and she loves to keep it nice. Would you like to visit with her for an hour or two a month, and help her with the chores she can no longer do, such as bending over, lifting, and light housework? During the summer, she has a beautiful garden, so some gardening may be in the future for the right volunteer as well. She has no family in the area to help her out, and until now has been the helper for her friends, who are mostly older than her. She is full of wonderful stories, and would love a visit from you!”
To volunteer, go here or email Kerrie at kerriec@ccsww.org. Volunteers are required to complete a registration packet, provide three personal references, pass a background check, and attend an orientation.
