Friday Roundtable: Seattle Street Railways in 1896

Seattle Street Railways 1896 by Harry Foesig. Map scan by Andrew Filer.

Seattle has a long history with rail public transit. This map was drawn by Harry Foesig and published in Leslie Blanchard's 1968 book, The Street Railway Era in Seattle: a Chronicle of Six Decades. Despite the map depicting Seattle 129 years ago, many of the routes shown are still served by Metro routes today.

• RapidRide D runs on 15th Ave, Elliott Way, and Mercer St.
• Westlake Ave is served by Route 40.
• Eastlake Ave now has Route 70, soon to be the J Line.
• RapidRide G covers most of Madison, Route 11 covers the eastern third.
• The Central District had two routes similar to today's routes 3 and 4.
• Route 7 travels down Rainier.

STB Writer Nathan Dickey observed that Harbor Island is drawn on the map, even though it did not exist in 1896. As shown below, it was built during the first half of the 20th century.

Historical development around the Duwamish Waterway

This is an open thread.