Seattle Now & Then: Gas Works Park – A Haag Landscape

Seattle Now & Then

(click to enlarge photos)

THEN: The 1906-07 Gas Works at the north end of Lake Union went idle in 1956 when natural gas first reached Seattle by pipeline. In this photo, taken about fifteen years later, the Wallingford Peninsula is still home to the plant’s abandoned and “hanging gardens of metal.” (Courtesy: Rich Haag)

NOW: While the city’s distant skyline has risen in the ensuing 45 or so years, the redeemed industrial sculpture of the Gas Works remains in place. The wasteland of polluted puddles and rusted pipes is now a public park.

This week’s ‘then’ appears on page 151 of author Thaisa Way’s new University of Washington Press book The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag: From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design. Seattle’s Gas Works Park is Haag’s best-known victory for innovative urban design.  Since 1964. when he founded the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of…

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