Seward Park, Seattle

Seward Park
Seattle Neighborhood
Aerial view of Seward Park area from the west featuring forested Bailey Peninsula in Lake Washington, with Mercer Island on top.
Map of Seward Park's location in Seattle
Coordinates: 47°33′02″N 122°15′52″W / 47.55056°N 122.26444°W / 47.55056; -122.26444

Seward Park is a neighborhood in southeast Seattle, Washington just west of the park of the same name. It is part of Seattle's South End. The park itself occupies all of Bailey Peninsula, a prominent, forested peninsula that juts into Lake Washington. The attached map is accurate, broadly speaking, in capturing "Greater Seward Park," though real estate sites, such as Zillow, will refer to the part of the neighborhood north of Orcas Street as Lakewood, which is reasonable, since that neighborhood is the historic home of a "community club" (which owns its own house and land) once known as the Lakewood Community Club (built on or around the 1920s), and now known as the Lakewood-Seward Community Club.

The neighborhood is bounded on the east and north by Lake Washington, on the south by South Kenyon Street, and on the west by the eastern boundaries of Columbia City, one of Seattle's oldest neighborhoods. Because, as the city of Seattle proudly notes, Seattle does not believe in wards, wishing to avoid the "ward politics of 'back'" (that would be Chicago and eastward), Seattle has no legally defined neighborhoods. However, the city does respond to popular definitions, as does Zillow, and the city's website indicates how complex the west border of the Seward Park (or Lakewood-Seward Park) neighborhood is.

The 300 acres (121 ha) of Seward Park has about a 120 acre (48.6 ha) surviving remnant of old growth forest, providing a glimpse of what some of the lake shore looked like before the growth of the city of Seattle. With trees older than 250 years, the Seward Park forest is relatively young (the forests of Seattle before the city were fully mature, up to 1,000–2,000 years old). Still, there is no other forest within the city limits like Seward Park's. You can wander trails where all you can see are towering softwoods, mostly Douglas firs, but with other species present as well, including Western hemlock, Pacific madrona and Alaskan cedar. The Park offers at least five distinct experiences, which are further described under the entry for the park itself.