Fremont History Articles
Fremont’s Grand Union Streetcar Switch
One of the reasons why Fremont was long regarded as the Center of the Universe was because of its convergence of streetcar lines. At the north end of the Fremont Bridge, in the spot where there is now the Waiting for the Interurban sculpture, there was a Grand Union track layout for streetcars to turn or go straight ahead, accommodating all the lines that passed through. The car barn for maintenance was located just west of here,
Fremont and Seattle’s Ship Canal
Seattle’s earliest white settlers saw immediately that it would be possible to connect its freshwater lakes to the saltwater Puget Sound by means of a canal. At a Fourth of July picnic in 1854, Thomas Mercer proposed the name of Lake Union because that body of water was in the middle between Lake Washington to the east and Puget Sound to the west.
Seattle settlers of the 1850s Thomas Mercer and David Denny took land claims at the south end of Lake Union near today’s Seattle Center.
The Fremont Bridge
Not every neighborhood has a bridge, and the Fremont Bridge has been the defining characteristic of the neighborhood since its founding in 1888.
At first there was only a stream, called The Outlet, flowing westward from Lake Union out towards Puget Sound, with a small wooden bridge to span it. Early in neighborhood history, Fremont’s boosters arranged for streetcars to come to Fremont and for this reason a more substantial trestle bridge had to be built,
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,
Fremont Public Art: The Fremont Troll
On North 36th Street, underneath the Aurora Bridge, lives the Fremont Troll.
The Norwegian folk tale about a large and ugly troll living under a bridge and the three hungry billy goats who are afraid to cross is forever immortalized in this iconic statue designed and executed by Professor of Architecture Steve Badanes and his students at the University of Washington, in response to a contest sponsored by the Fremont Arts Committee. Intended to fill up a “problem area” below the Aurora Bridge,
Fremont Public Art: Waiting for the Interurban
In 1978, a down year economically for the Fremont neighborhood, artist and local resident Richard Beyer was tasked with creating a “community focal point” in honor of Fremont’s centennial.
Known for his humorous and humanistic style, Beyer sculpted from rough aluminum six life-size figures and a dog with a human face and placed them at the site of the former station for the “Interurban,” the Seattle to Everett trolley line with a stop in Fremont that had greatly contributed to Fremont’s early growth and prosperity — and that had stopped running almost 40 years previous,
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.
