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A Curvaceous New Look

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COURTESY OF PAUL G. PEARSON Then: More than 20 years of work went into shaping Green Lake’s new shoreline, and with it the enlarging of Green Lake Park. PAUL DORPAT Now: The East Green Lake Playfield, shown in part here, was the largest addition of park land made from fill piled on top of the old lakebed. The view looks north along the curving western border of that fill.

THANKS TO Paul G. Pearson, who sent along this week's revelation of how a new shoreline was constructed for Green Lake, and with it the gift of a new city park.

This view of a pile driver constructing its own throughway across the East Green Lake Bay was photographed in 1912. One year earlier, the lake was lowered seven feet with mixed results. It robbed the lake of its natural circulation by drying up the stream that ran between the lake and Union Bay on Lake Washington. (Decades of "Green Lake Itch" would follow.) But it also exposed a shoreline that was the first ground for the new park that was extended with fill.

The pile driver is following the curves of the Olmsted Brothers' 1908 design for Green Lake Park. A narrow-gauge railroad track was laid atop the trestle, and by this efficient means dirt was dumped to all sides, eventually, unless I am contradicted, covering the trestle itself.

In all, about two miles of trestle was built, from which more than 250,000 cubic yards of earth were dumped to form a dike. After another 900,000-plus cubic yards of lake bottom were dredged and distributed between the dike and the shoreline it was discovered that, when dry, the dredgings were too "fluffy" to support the park's new landscape. More substantial fill from the usual sources — such as construction sites — was added.

The historical photograph was recorded by the Maple Leaf Studio, whose offices were one block from the new Green Lake Library seen here on the far right. The exposed shoreline is also revealed there. Next week we will take a close-up look at this same section of East Green Lake Way North in 1910, when the library was new.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.