Belltown is Seattle’s canary in the coal mine.
When Seattle thrives, so does Belltown. When times are not so great,
Belltown suffers. And today, Belltown is booming. High-rise condos,
trendy restaurants, hip ad agencies all mark the new face of
Belltown—the neighborhood that hugs the water northwest of Downtown.
Originally the farm of William Bell, the neighborhood is the site
of the famous Denny Regrade—the leveling of Denny Hill, which sat north
of Downtown and made expansion northward difficult. In the decades
following the Regrade, Belltown became a home of labor halls, sailors’
bars, and cheap theatres. By the 70s, artists started to move in,
making the neighborhood a Seattle version of Greenwich Village. And
like that formerly bohemian part of New York, the hip reputation has
made Belltown desirable to the young, successful professionals that
continue to flock to Seattle.
While signs of the old Belltown persist on the fringes of the
neighborhood, with a new condo breaking ground seemingly every week,
high tech companies like
RealNetworks, night clubs like Rendezvous, posh bakeries like
Macrina, and the $90m
Olympic Sculpture Park under construction, the one thing that’s dependable about Belltown is that it’s always changing.
