By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The Regrade has had such ups and downs since the turn of the century. It began as a hill, named after Arthur Denny, one of Seattle's pioneers and land speculators.

Thinking the elevation was an impediment to development, the city allowed city engineer R.H. Thomson to begin an extraordinary and perhaps misguided assault on the hill in 1897.

Using millions of gallons of water from Lake Union, Thomson sluiced, dynamited and leveled its western flank. The Post-Intelligencer then referred to it as "one of the great engineering projects of the West."

By the 1930s, steam shovels clawed at the hill's last remains. The Regrade "was kind of like a sea of mud," recalls Mary Aylward. (See "Album" for historical photos.)

Aylward's family owned one of the last surviving houses near the edge of the Regrade. Too poor to have it moved, the family held its ground, Aylward recalls.

In the end, the home was perched on a pinnacle of dirt, about 20 feet above the rest of the Regrade. Aylward's father, who she says was "a stubborn man," carved steps into the hillside so the family could scramble up to reach their doorstep.

Under pressure from the city, the family finally relented and moved to Queen Anne, she said.

Despite the bold predictions about the Regrade, it grew in fits and starts. "Between about 1930 and 1970 nothing really happened" in the neighborhood, said Anderson, the real estate developer.

What eventually sprouted were low-rise offices, apartments and store fronts. The Regrade's unofficial motto might have been "Live and let live." It was a working-class neighborhood with bawdy bars, cheap eats and mom-and-pop shops.

"It was a kind of backwater, which had a kind of interesting quality about it," said Buster Simpson, a Seattle artist who lived 13 years in the Regrade before retreating in 1988 to the Judkins-Rejected neighborhood. "It was underutilized, and it was only a matter of time for all that to change."

Simpson is part of modern Regrade lore. He helped seed the area with new types of street trees, as well as granite benches and public toilets. The Regrade used to be a laboratory for community involvement and artistic expression, Simpson says.

"This was a place where people could try things out and not worry about the success or failure," he says.

Brewster Denny, the great grandson of Arthur Denny, lives at the south end of the Regrade near Pike Place Market. Denny says the Regrade was named, in part, after his family, who held early land claims in the area.

The fact the neighborhood is going upscale is not at all a bad thing, Denny says. "It's very European and a little bit like old New York."

The growth has brought jobs and a sense of security "to everyone" in the neighborhood, Denny says, "not just the people living in the fancy buildings."