Gas Works Park
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Gas Works Park
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The park seen in 2011
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| Location | 2000 N. Northlake Way, Seattle, Washington |
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| Area | 20.5 acres (8.3 ha) |
| Built | 1906 |
| Architect | Haag, Richard Haag; Jefferies-Norton Corp |
| Architectural style | Post-industrial |
| NRHP Reference # | 02000862 |
| Added to NRHP | January 2, 2013 |
Gas Works Park in Seattle, Washington, is a 19.1-acre (77,000 m2) public park on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant, located on the north shore of Lake Union at the south end of the Wallingford neighborhood. The park was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 2, 2013, more than a decade after being nominated.
Gas Works park contains remnants of the sole remaining coal gasification plant in the United States. The plant operated from 1906 to 1956 and was bought by the City of Seattle for park purposes in 1962. The park opened to the public in 1975. The park was designed by Seattle landscape architect Richard Haag, who won the American Society of Landscape Architects Presidents Award of Design Excellence for the project. It was originally named Myrtle Edwards Park, after the city councilwoman who had spearheaded the drive to acquire the site and who died in a car crash in 1969. In 1972, the Edwards family requested that her name be taken off the park because the design called for the retention of much of the plant. In 1976, Elliott Bay Park, just north of Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, was renamed Myrtle Edwards Park.
Gas Works Park incorporates numerous pieces of the old plant. Some stand as ruins, while others have been reconditioned, painted, and incorporated into a children's "play barn" structure, constructed in part from what was the plant's exhauster-compressor building. A web site affiliated with the Seattle Times newspaper says, "Gas Works Park is easily the strangest park in Seattle and may rank among the strangest in the world."
Gas Works Park also features an artificial kite-flying hill with an elaborately sculptured sundial built into its summit. The park was for many years the exclusive site of a summer series of "Peace Concerts". These concerts are now shared out among several Seattle parks. The park also has for many years hosted one of Seattle's two major Fourth of July fireworks events; in 2009, it was the sole such event. The park is the traditional end point of the Solstice Cyclists and the start point for Seattle's World Naked Bike Ride.
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