Community Blogs
Rising 456 feet above downtown, Queen Anne Hill features historic “Queen Anne” style homes and spectacular views. Its Uptown area, below the slope, is a cultural nexus and home to Seattle Center. Nearby Magnolia, built on two hills and a valley, is a peninsula with three bridges. Its 530-acre Discovery Park offers a living laboratory of beaches, meadows and forest groves for UW biology students.
Some Neighborhood Notables
With offices on West Mercer Street in Queen Anne, Decide.com, developed by four UW alumni, is an on-line shopping tool that tracks the price cycles of popular consumer items.
Dr. Christopher Elias, former president and CEO of PATH, a Seattle non-profit dedicated to global health, is President for Global Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He holds a Master of Public Health in health services from the UW.
Juggling to run a small business with a full-time day job as a Boeing engineer, UW alum Steven Stone opened Sound Spirits in the Interbay neighborhood, Seattle’s first craft distillery since Prohibition, in fall 2010. “Rocket science by day and rocket fuel at night,” jokes Steven.
MFA graduate George Rodriguez spent nine months traveling through Asia, South America and Europe as a Bonderman Travel Fellow, an experience that has expanded his world view as a ceramicist. He is currently a resident artist at Pottery Northwest in Lower Queen Anne.
Shannon Nichol, ASLA, a graduate of the UW Bachelors of Landscape Architecture Program, designed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Campus in lower Queen Anne, where sustainable green spaces featuring native plants are used to connect the campus with the Seattle Center and the surrounding buildings.
The original Queen Anne Public Library was designed by Professor Harlan Thomas, director of the UW School of Architecture from 1926 to 1940.
Renovation of the Magnolia Public Library was led by a team of UW College of the Built Environment graduates, who received awards from AIA Washington and Historic Seattle for their design.
Gary Locke, who resided in Queen Anne while Governor of Washington, is currently US Ambassador to China. The Gary Locke Endowed Fellowship at the UW supports students pursuing careers in public service with special preference given to students of Pacific Islander backgrounds.
Robert Ronald Leisy, ’68, who grew up in Queen Anne, is one of eight University of Washington alumni who have received the Medal of Honor, in his case posthumously.
Hank Ketchum, the American cartoonist who created the Dennis the Menace comic strip, attended Queen Anne High School and the University of Washington.
Betty Bowen Viewpoint on Queen Anne is named for the the American journalist and art promoter who earned an English degree from the UW. Bowen helped to found Seattle Art Museum and worked to make Pike Place Market an historic site. She was also an original member of the Seattle Arts Commission, the Pacific Northwest Arts and Crafts Center, and the Allied Arts Historic Preservation Committee.
In 2006, students from the Green Futures Research & Design Lab of the UW Department of Landscape Architecture joined together with the Magnolia community and Seattle Public Utilities to explore possibilities for resource-conserving planting strips along 34th Ave. West.
The Mercer Corridor project in lower Queen Anne is part of The Green Roads Project, a rating system for roadway design and construction developed by UW Assistant Engineering Professor Steve Muench that is helping turn our highways and byways green with sustainable paving materials and recycling, roadway design, noise and pollution mitigation, and protection of environmentally sensitive areas and natural resources.
Boosting Local Economies
Magic Wheels, a company that produces wheelchair wheels that can climb hills and ramps without roll back, was founded by Queen Anne resident Steve Meginniss based on four mobility-improvement projects developed by the UW College of Engineering.
F5 Networks, a< technology company in lower Queen Anne that develops IT infrastructure, was founded by entrepreneurs with experience at the University of Washington.
Farecast (now Bing Travel) is an airfare prediction website founded by a UW entrepreneur was headquartered in West Queen Anne.
Geospiza in lower Queen Anne produces DNA sequencing software and was founded by entrepreneurs with experience at the University of Washington.