A look back: 120 years in the life of a city block

The Olympic Sculpture Park, set between Bay and Broad streets north of downtown, is the latest phase in the reinvention of Seattle's waterfront. Since the Denny Party first crossed Elliott Bay in 1852, the stretch of shoreline that is now home to the park has gone through almost constant change.

1850s-1900 | The founding of a city and an industrial waterfront

The city's shore once ended at what is now Elliott Avenue, the busy street crossing under the sculpture park. The site was an Indian campground in the late 1800s. But by the 1880s, most land adjacent to the water was owned by railroads, which were key to Seattle's growth. The city's population ballooned between the 1880s and 1900 — from about 3,000 people to more than 80,000.

1900-1950s | The Denny Regrade and Union Oil

The industrialization of the site continued, and in 1910 Union Oil of California (Unocal) opened a fuel-storage terminal there. The shoreline was extended into the water with a massive landfill project that was part of the Denny Regrade. The regrade, done in three phases from 1898 to 1930, sluiced 100-foot Denny Hill, between Denny Way and Pike Street, and washed much of it into Elliott Bay — nearly 6 million cubic yards in all. The landfill where the sculpture park now sits was done in 1920. The Elliott Bay seawall was completed in 1935 to shore up the new waterfront.

1960s-1990s | The waterfront as destination

The greening of the area began when Myrtle Edwards Park opened in 1976, on land once used to dump debris from the construction of I-5. Unocal operations were phased out in the 1970s and 1980s, and cleanup started in 1989. In 1981, a trolley began running from Broad Street to the International District south of downtown.

1999-2007 | The birth of the sculpture park

In 1999-2000, The Trust for Public Land and the Seattle Art Museum acquired rights to buy land for the park, much of it vacant industrial land owned by Unocal. SAM unveiled its plans for the park in 2002, and ground was broken in June 2005. A trolley maintenance barn on the site was demolished in 2005. (Funds have been set aside for a new barn in Pioneer Square.) The sculpture park's opening was set for October 2006 but was delayed until Jan. 20, 2007, due to a King County concrete workers' strike.