Gas Works Park

Gas Works Park makes decay look good

It takes a city as eccentric as Seattle to take an abandoned 20-acre coal-processing facility, plant grass upon its grounds and make one of the city's most beloved parks. As unlikely as the notion sounds, such a place does exist ... and if Seattle's residents are bothered by the rusting hulks of equipment that that sit on the rolling green lawns of Gas Works Park, they're too busy enjoying the park to let on.

Gas Works' unlikely star attraction has been standing on the north shore of Lake Union since 1906, when Seattle Gas Light Company built the machinery for the purpose of extracting gas from coal. The city reclaimed the property in the early 1970s, performed a vigorous cleaning of the site's soil and water, created an artificial hill just west of the equipment, transformed the old boiler house into a picnic shelter and re-opened the grounds in 1975, this time as one of the most unusual parks in the world.

That being said, the way people use Gas Works is hardly unusual. Thanks to that artificial hill and the gentle winds rolling off Lake Union, Gas Works is one of the city's most popular kite-flying spots. People come to Gas Works to play touch football, hold picnics, attend open-air concerts, or simply to relax on its green lawns and soak up Seattle's spring and summer sunshine. And the view from Lake Union's north shore, encompassing downtown Seattle, Queen Anne and Eastlake, is spectacular. It almost distracts you from the rust-orange colossus sitting benignly in Gas Works' midst.

- by Geoff Carter, Seattle Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)