Fremont History Articles
A brick at Troll’s Knoll
The Friends of Troll’s Knoll is a community group dedicated to preserving and maintaining the green space around the Fremont Troll on North 36th Street, under the Aurora Bridge. The Troll’s Knoll includes a garden area and in recent digging, this paver brick was unearthed. The name stamped on the paver, Denny Renton, was a company which closed in 1927 and was in what is now part of the Cedar River watershed. It is hoped that this brick paver artifact can be incorporated into the other art features in the garden at Troll’s Knoll.
The lights are on again at the “Interurban.”
The Waiting for the Interurban statue is at the intersection of North 34th Street and Fremont Avenue. It memorializes the former rail line, called the Interurban, which went northward through Fremont to the city of Everett. This transfer point at the intersection, where City of Seattle streetcar lines also converged, did much to give Fremont the reputation of being the “center” of things, the Center of the Universe.
The Interurban statue was created by Richard Beyer in 1978.
The Hall of Giants: The Story of Fremont and the Troll
In 1990 the Fremont Arts Council sought proposals for a vacant area on North 36th Street which was directly underneath the Aurora Bridge. Immediately the folktale of the troll beneath the bridge came to mind, and this design proposal won acceptance.
The Fremont Troll became so popular that in 2005, the City of Seattle changed the name of the north-south avenue leading to it, to Troll Avenue. This made it much easier for visitors to Seattle to find the Fremont Troll.
Who was B.F. Day?
Benjamin Franklin Day was 45 years old when he and his wife Frances arrived in Seattle in the spring of 1880.
Born in Ohio, B.F. Day had farmed in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. Biographical notes indicate that Day wanted to leave farming because of the hard physical labor. We don’t know why he chose to come to Seattle, but as a former farmer who had raised corn & hogs, B.F. Day would have known the importance of railroads in moving products to market. In the 1870s-1880s there was constant speculation about railroad routes across the USA.
The Burke-Gilman Trail in Fremont
The Burke-Gilman Trail, a walking-biking corridor which passes through Fremont, is the legacy of early Seattle movers-and-shakers, Thomas Burke and Daniel Gilman. The energy and activism of these men characterized the era of the 1870s-1880s when the population of Seattle began to grow and the city sought to make something of itself. Burke & Gilman transformed the city with their promotion of transportation projects.
Early Seattleites had already noted that there was a creek flowing westward from Lake Union through what is now Fremont and on out to Puget Sound.
C.P. Stone, Namesake of Stone Way
Corliss P. Stone was an early businessman, real estate investor, and civic activist of Seattle.
Stone was born in Vermont in 1838 and worked in what was called a dry goods store, meaning household supplies not including food. Some dry goods stores eventually evolved to sell clothing only.
As a young man Stone traveled to San Francisco to investigate the business climate and then he came to the Pacific Northwest. He worked for a time at Port Madison (north end of Bainbridge Island) which was the site of a lumber mill.
The Ross and Fremont Post Offices
Some Seattle-area neighborhoods, like Bothell, were named for early settlers. With the arrival of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad in 1887, a railway station could give its name to the neighborhood.
Just north of Seattle’s Queen Anne hill, the Ross family had land claims on both sides of a stream called The Outlet, which flowed from Lake Union westward out to Puget Sound. The Ross family gave permission for the new railroad to come across their property and the railroad planners named a station in their honor.
Plats of Fremont
One of the ways to trace neighborhood history is by its land use, including plats of land laid out with streets and house lots. This map of the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle is marked with plats and their names.
The founding of Fremont in 1888 was in the area closest to the ship canal, although at that time it was only a small stream called The Outlet. The plat, which was named Denny &
Ross School in Fremont
Ross Park on Third Ave NW at NW 43rd Street is the former site of Ross School. It was named for the family who were the earliest settlers in the western part of Fremont.
The John Ross family took land in homestead claims on both sides of what is now the ship canal, including the present site of Seattle Pacific University. Up until the ship canal was created in 1911-1917,
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.
