Hard work is renewing neighborhood with long history

Originally published Saturday, November 1, 1997

By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The boundaries of the Central Area have been nibbled away for years by real estate agents and residents who ignored the historic community boundaries because of ignorance or prejudice.

Madison Valley, Madison/Miller, Madrona, Capitol Hill and Leschi all claimed chunks of what for years was considered the Central Area. Today, the community is framed by South Jackson Street, Martin Luther King Jr. Way, East Madison Street and 12th Avenue.

Tucked amid the Central Area's family-sized homes are such major institutions as Providence Medical Center, Seattle University and Seattle Vocational Institute. The community has major employers as well, including Gai's Northwest Bakery and Wonder Bread. The exhaust fans from the bakeries pump out the mouth-watering aroma of fresh-baked bread along South Jackson Street.

At the center of the neighborhood is Garfield High School, a battered inner-city school that continues to produce the majority of Seattle's National Merit Scholars. Its notable alumni include architect Minoru Yamasaki, designer of New York's World Trade Center, ski racer Debbie Armstong and artist Ted Rand.

Two famous Garfield students -- martial arts expert and actor Bruce Lee and rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix -- lived hard and died young.

The grand spires and bell towers that punctuate the Central Area skyline speak to its spiritual presence. The thicket of churches made the neighborhood "more than a place of residences," McKinney says. "It was a place of institutions that blacks could identify with. . . . It was home."

This is the neighborhood that nurtured so many black and white jazz musicians, singers and artists. Hendrix followed in the footsteps of the legendary Ray Charles, composer Quincy Jones (another Garfield grad) and Texas-born jazz vocalist Ernestine Anderson, who serenaded Mayor Norm Rice at a YWCA award ceremony last month.

Anderson grew up in the Central Area in the 1940s, back when South Jackson Street had soul.

In the book "Jackson Street After Hours," Seattle music critic and author Paul de Barros writes: "In 1948, there were over two dozen nightclubs along Jackson Street, clubs where jazz and bootleg liquor flowed as freely as money from a soldier's pocket."

Jackson Street today is a different place. It has been resurrected after years of deadening blight.

"This area right now is probably the most exciting area in terms of economic development in the city, with so many people working so hard to make it a nice neighborhood," says Jack Rothwell, who owns Welch Hardware with his wife. "For years and years and years, we have been this poor relative to the city of Seattle."

Rothwell's landmark store was started 51 years ago by his father-in-law and his two brothers. Over the years, it survived when many of the businesses on South Jackson Street failed. "This was an economically depressed area. There was homeless people, prostitution and some drug dealing," Rothwell recalls.

Now there is a new Walgreen drugstore, Starbucks, grocery store and a dozen other shops at the corner of South Jackson and 23rd Avenue South. Hollywood Video will open later this year as part of a second phase of retail and office construction.

Rothwell credits Rice for his persistence and for having never given up on the Central Area. As a result of a community planning effort in 1994, Rice created the Central Area Development Association, a non-profit development corporation.

A second organization, MidTown Commons, was formed about the same time to tackle similar redevelopment schemes in the area of 23rd Avenue and East Union Street.

Continued:

• Change is coming quickly
• Once blighted area's economy now booming
• Residents hope to keep old flavor amid new growth