WRITTEN BY PAUL DORPAT

COURTESY OF CLARENCE BRANNMAN

In 1909 the Eastlake Trolley up University Way reached the end of its line along the southern rim of Ravenna Park. Here, as it turns toward 15th Avenue Northeast, it passes the rustic gate to the nearly new Cowen Park. The stone columns that replaced the gate can be seen below, behind the pedestrians.

 

	PAUL DORPAT

MOST LIKELY this photograph from the Asahel Curtis studio was recorded late in 1909. For Curtis, that was a record year for picture taking, probably because the summer-long Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was held in 1909 on a University of Washington campus made photogenic for it.

Every part of the greater University District was retouched for the A-Y-P, including Cowen Park, although obviously the paving on University Way did not make it as far north as the entrance to the park here at Ravenna Boulevard. That Cowen Park be named for Charles Cowen, the wealthy English immigrant who gave it to the city in 1906, was part of the deal. Cowen also paid for the rustic entrance shown here and, when it wore out, for the two stone columns and wing-wall seats that replaced it in the early 1920s.

The stone gate survives, and on it is written "Man Shall Not Live By Bread Alone." Looking here beyond the woman standing with the child and through the original gate, it is clear that neither shall man leave the land alone. On the north side of the gate the park land drops away into a ravine. Since the early 1960s it has been a more-or-less level playfield made from 100,000 yards of "free fill" scooped away during the creation nearby of Interstate 5.

In 1909 the creek from Green Lake still splashed down the enchanting canyon through Cowen and Ravenna parks. Had the Seattle Park Department followed the Olmsted Plan for Green Lake, the creek would have been saved, for the lake would have been lowered only 4 feet. Instead it was dropped 7 feet and the primary source of the creek was turned off.