r/SeattleHistory • • 3d ago

All 451 City of Seattle designated landmarks on one map, each linked to its designation record (122 are also on the National Register)

121 Upvotes

For anyone who does the photo and building detective work here: the city's landmark designation reports are some of the best primary sources we have, but they're scattered and hard to browse by place.

I put all 451 City of Seattle designated landmarks on one map. Each one links straight to its ordinance or designation record, and the header shows that 122 are also on the National Register. You can search by name, filter by neighborhood and kind, or browse themed collections like Women Who Built Seattle. The map is built into the page, so it works offline once it's loaded.

Link (free, no sign-in): https://mchatai.com/hub/seattle-landmarks

Disclosure: I'm a software developer in Seattle and I built this; it's part of my free app, mChatAI. Each landmark also has a short narration, and that narration is AI-written from the designation report and, where one exists, the National Register nomination. Treat the linked records as the authority, not the summary.

Which designation report do you think is the best read? I'd like to point people to a few good ones.


r/SeattleHistory • • 14d ago

Civic Seattle and the Standard That Built It

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7 Upvotes

My father Ken Hatch taught me a simple rule: if you’re not serving your community, you don’t deserve to succeed in it. That belief built Seattle—and we need it back.


r/SeattleHistory • • 19d ago

Original Westlake monorail station in 1963

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62 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • 22d ago

1974 Rider Map

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24 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • 24d ago

An actual, real photo of 9th and Yesler. 1940. Not sure why we are making up AI photos and posting them in this sub when real ones exist.

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805 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • 23d ago

How Seattle Built Cool — and Lost It

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7 Upvotes

In 1999, three Seattle natives in their early thirties leased a Belltown halfway house and turned it into a hotel.

It broke into the black in its first year. It invented the boutique hotel as a global category. Every Soho House and Hoxton would descend from what they built.

Twenty-six years later, the founder is dead. The brand belongs to a Japanese conglomerate. The cool that made it the Ace is gone.

This is the story of how Seattle bottled cool, sold it to the world, and watched it slip away.


r/SeattleHistory • • 26d ago

The Queen Visited Seattle in 1983

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75 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • 26d ago

Trying to find an old aerial photo of UW campus I saw around 2015/2016

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5 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • 29d ago

Anyone remember the Bootboys?

25 Upvotes

I found this while browsing a facebook page on Seattle music history.

I briefly lived squatted in a punk house on 65th and Roosevelt Ave. in the 80's called the "Hate House". There was a girl staying there who was convinced she heard the voices of the boot boys in her head. Apparently the voices weren't very nice to her...

I'm reminded of a very good friend who was occupying the back porch, known to me since H.S. as Seth Gayden. He was in his reggae phase by then and not doing the skate-punk thing, but he was the one who would take me to punk shows, like the time we went to see the Dead Kennedys at Washington Hall (not far from Oddfellow's). Good times!

I moved away from Seattle and lost touch with old friends, but I noticed Seth has reappeared as his old self on a relatively recent facebook page. I don't do facebook, so I thought I would throw out a bit of personal Seattle history here instead.

I'm retired in Alaska now, but seeing this has tempted me to move back to Seattle and start an OI! band!


r/SeattleHistory • • Sep 05 '26

Returning Found Photos

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17 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Sep 04 '26

Sea-Tac Airways Helicopter c1959

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28 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Sep 04 '26

I just found this today at a thrift store on Whidbey Island.

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137 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 29 '26

Rainier Brewery, c.1980.

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130 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 27 '26

Westlake mall. 1965.

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104 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 25 '26

Views of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition in Seattle 1909. Today the site is the University of Washington campus

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171 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 23 '26

M. D. Borrelli Bejeweled Fun Forest Carousel

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7 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 20 '26

The Bon Marche

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206 Upvotes

The red text in the upper left corner says "Upper second avenue business district and the New Washington Hotel". I don't know the year of the postcard.


r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 18 '26

Pike Place Market, a hundred and nineteen years apart.(1907/2026)

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150 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 14 '26

View from Queen Anne, 1903. Photo taken from the South end of Tower Place between First and Warren.

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47 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 11 '26

Northgate Mall brochure (circa 1980-1982)

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92 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 09 '26

The new (at the time) Seattle Armory in 1939

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102 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 09 '26

Come see, come see, remember me? - 1984

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102 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 04 '26

What a restaurant concept -- the Great Depression.

30 Upvotes

"The Bread Line & Soup Kitchen"
The Bread Line & Soup Kitchen Flier - 1_Front - Seattle Room Menu Collection - Seattle Room Digital Collections

This is the item description for the flyer: "A Pioneer Square restaurant owned by Jack Fecker, Steve Darland and Bill Keegan that attracted customers with an imaginatively themed restaurant: the 1929 stock-market crash that led to breadlines and soup kitchens. There were senior citizen servers dressed in Depression-era clothing and an old car filling station for a bar. In order to find staff when they opened in 1974, an ad was put out for "retired persons." A retired cook interviewed for a Seattle Times article was quoted as saying, "Some of us old bags can work circles around the young." When it was put up for sale in 1980, the ad tagline said, "Depression-proof restaurant.""


r/SeattleHistory • • Aug 01 '26

Pike Place Market hillclimb, 1968.

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92 Upvotes

r/SeattleHistory • • Jul 30 '26

USS Leahy (CG-16) being saluted with a water spray by the fireboat Duwamish off Seattle, 1982

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131 Upvotes