Fremont History Articles
The McKenzie Building at 3400 Fremont Avenue North
By 1927 Fremont was a well-established neighborhood with a busy commercial district along Fremont Avenue North and the side-streets including North 34th Street. In that year a pioneer building, Hotel Dixon, was demolished to make way for a new-era commercial building with storefronts at the sidewalk level and offices upstairs. There also is a basement which today still houses successful businesses.
The McKenzie Building at 3400 Fremont Avenue North was designed by Seattle architect John R.
Hotel Dixon at 3400 Fremont Avenue North
Walter A. Shorey was one of the enterprising young men who came to Seattle to get in on its opportunities for growth. He arrived just in time for the opening of a new neighborhood, Fremont, in 1888. Shorey obtained a prime site at the main intersection of North 34th Street & Fremont Avenue, to build a large hotel/boarding house. Fremont’s founders had planned ahead to establish resources for the community, so they had already set up a lumber mill which provided jobs and materials to build houses.
Fremont Public Art: The Berlin 1936 Crew Racer
The Data 1 office building at 744 North 34th Street was completed in 2017 and has outdoor artworks on each side of the building. At one side, underneath the Aurora Bridge, is a fragment of the Berlin Wall which tells of the triumph of the human spirit when Communism fell in 1989.
At the other corner of the Data 1 building (on the left as you look at it) is a metal sculpture of a man holding an oar,
Fremont Public Art: The Berlin Wall Fragment
The Berlin Wall divided East and West Germany and was torn down by its citizens on November 9, 1989, during the collapse of dictatorial rule of the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. We remember this significant historical event at the Berlin Wall and what it represents, the freedom of self-rule.
The Berlin Wall was completely demolished at that time, and fragments were carried away as mementos. The fragment which has been installed as public art in Fremont,
Fremont Public Art: The Lenin Statue
In 1981, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia commissioned Bulgarian sculptor Emil Venkov to create a statue that portrayed Vladimir Lenin as a bringer of revolution. Briefly installed in Poprav, Czechoslovakia, the 16-foot bronze statue was sent to a scrapyard after the 1989 fall of Communism.
The statue in the scrapyard was discovered by Lewis Carpenter, an English teacher from Issaquah, Washington, who was teaching in Poprav and knew the artist. Purchasing the statue with his own funds,
The Fremont Neighborhood in Seattle is Founded in 1888
Each neighborhood of Seattle proudly waves the banner of its unique name, and yet many were named in a similar way: by real estate investors. Fremont in Seattle was also named by real estate investors. What made the Seattle neighborhood called Fremont stand out from others, was its good location, its jump-start after Seattle’s Great Fire of 1889, and its vigorous developers who utilized the growing streetcar system to advantage.
3400 Phinney Avenue North: the original trolley car barn
The red-brick trolley car barn in Fremont was built in 1905 as a home base for the five lines which traveled around the Fremont, Ballard, Phinney, and Greenlake areas. The parking area had pits below, used by mechanics who repaired the underworking of the cars. On the east side of the building was a yard with a wash tower for cleaning the cars.
The building was the first major streetcar service facility to be built in north Seattle,
