Small Town Queen Anne

Just in time for Thanksgiving. We live in a fascinating place. Geologically, geographically, and with all the fun and foibles that people bring to a region. Queen Anne has been home to persons of every walk of life. It has also been home to bears, cougars, rabbits, deer, squirrels, moles, voles, garter snakes and racers, and various other animals. It has been home to Senators, both state and Federal, and to Congressmen and Congresswoman, to doctors, educators, ministers, scientists, lawyers, meat packers, grocers, pharmacists, policemen and firemen, librarians and research specialists, to members of the acting community and to various dealers of collectibles, antiques and jewelers. Musicians and conductors have made their homes on the hill. In short, there are few occupations that have not had their practitioners living on Queen Anne Hill.

In the mid-1930s, Queen Anne was referred to in a news item which gave the fact that if lifted out of Seattle and placed community would be a good-sized town of from 30,000 to 40,000 people. The population has stayed fairly constant, even with the rise of major apartment buildings on the hill. As some areas became more commercial, others stayed much as they had for the better part of a century or more.

I have been going through some early issues of the KUAY, the Queen Anne High School weekly newspaper, a broken file which runs from the first years (1909-10) through 1950 and into January of 1951. There is a wealth of material about Queen Anne residents in it—including the notices of deaths of parents of students attending the school. There are sad stories, such as the young man who had just graduated from Queen Anne in 1919 or 1920, who was earning money to attend college by working in the logging industry, and who was killed, when crushed to death by a log. He was only 19. The list of visitors to speak at Queen Anne High School assemblies is noteworthy. Among others, the explorer Roald Amundsen came in the early 1920s.

With some of our great houses in jeopardy, it behooves us to remember to record all that we can of the contributions of each generation of Queen Anners, whether new to the Hill and its environs, or descended from a multi-generational family who still live on the Hill.