Cal Anderson Park is Seattle's true backyard
Published: Apr 21, 2009
Seattle Center may be known colloquially as "the city's backyard," but, in truth, that nickname should belong to Cal Anderson Park. A nearly 11-acre park located in the heart of Seattle's Capitol Hill neighbrorhood, Cal Anderson is where Seattle goes to kick a ball around, play chess, teach itself guitar on a park bench, or simply to relax and be itself.
Part of the park's charm is its venerability. At 105 years old, Cal Anderson predates nearly everything that makes modern-day Seattle. Long before the Space Needle or Starbucks, locals have been relaxing on the grass of what was once known as Lincoln Park — a park space that once ran alongside Lincoln Reservoir.
A top-to-bottom 2006 redesign of the park put the reservoir underground, adding four acres of usuable space and creating a wonderfully inviting, European-styled public space in the process.
Everything about Cal Anderson Park feels right. The playfields are big enough to accomodate friendly games of soccer, baseball, football, tennis and dodgeball. The winding paths are lined with finely crushed rock, not concrete, and they feel great underfoot.
A cone-shaped fountain, inspired perhaps by Seattle's (hopefully) benign backyard volcano Mount Rainier, emits a gentle stream of water that courses quietly over a manmade creek bed. An oversized chessboard provides distraction for adults, and a perfect-sized playground keeps the kids busy. And the Lincoln Reservoir Gatehouse, the last remaining visible element of the reservoir, provides a stately anchor to it all.
The most enticing thing about Cal Anderson Park, however, is the people who use it almost every day. It's rare not to find Frisbee disc fanatics, a small army of folksingers and a picnic of drag queens holding court at Cal Anderson — usually all at once. It's just a city at play in its own perfect backyard.
- by Geoff Carter, Seattle Reporter for HelloMetro
(Click to leave a message)
