By KIMBERLY A.C. WILSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Named the "U.S. Neighborhood of the Year" in 1986, Maple Leaf's beginnings were far more humble when it was first platted for streets a century ago.

Real development didn't come for another 30 years, when veterans and laborers began settling into modest bungalows on the forested land that covered the city's second-highest plateau.

Legend has it that smug Seattleites who lived closer to downtown had long before dubbed the neighborhood "Maple Leaf" because it was so far north it might as well have been across the Canadian border. Or the name might have come about after King County settler Henry Van Asselt married the daughter of fellow pioneer Jacob Maple in 1862. Contemporary wisdom suggests the name reflects the one-time proliferation of towering vine maples in the V-shaped community.

In any event, by the time John and Tillie Schudie opened a Depression-era tavern on the neighborhood's main thoroughfare -- a street that would later become Roosevelt Way -- many of the maples had already been chopped down.

But the Schudies' watering hole was surrounded by other types of tall trees and attracted a faithful -- if sometimes rowdy -- crowd by selling liquor throughout Prohibition.

After John passed away, Tillie Schudie gained a reputation as a frugal businesswoman and all-around character. It seems every old-timer has a tale to tell about Ma Schudie, as she was widely known: how she preferred her eggs raw, permitted herself only one cigarette per hour, and rocked endlessly in a high-backed chair in the tavern's doorstep.

"I remember hearing that regulars would pour their own draft at Ma Schudie's," says David Albert, who opened the Maple Leaf Grill six years ago in the same storefront Ma Schudie made notorious.

The grill still looks like a "Casablanca" era bar, with the tavern's original row of low wooden booths and classic red vinyl bar stools. On any given evening, the stools are filled with late-comers to the Maple Leaf story, stopping in for a leisurely ale after work.

Today's regulars are somewhat more well-to-do than their working-class predecessors: an architect perches at the bar within arm's length of a filmmaker, a college administrator and a tugboat captain.

"There's a lot more folks who work for Microsoft these days rather than a foundry downtown," observed store owner Tom Stephenson.