Seattle’s iconic Freeway Park opened to the public 50 years ago this month on July 4, 1976. To celebrate this milestone, we’ve created a new online exhibit tracing the history of the park from conception to opening. The exhibit was researched using records in the archives and is illustrated with photos, moving images, and documents from SMA’s holdings. 

Freeway Park, built on top of a “lid” covering a section of I-5 in central Seattle between downtown and First Hill, was the first ever park to be built above a freeway. The idea for the park grew from efforts to create an innovative and much-needed green space in the city’s downtown core that would also reconnect neighborhoods separated by the construction of I-5 in the 1960s. Although the concept was first raised as early as the mid-1950s, it wasn’t until 1968 with the passage of the Forward Thrust bond initiatives that the possibility of building a park over Seattle’s central freeway became real.

Planning and building the park was a massive, complex project that required the close cooperation of city, state, federal, and private agencies over several years. Designed by San Francisco-based firm Lawrence Halprin and Associates, the park incorporates a dramatic mixture of concrete steps and plazas, plantings, and water elements (as seen in the scale models pictured above). Also part of the design is the privately-owned Park Place office building and the city-owned East Plaza Parking Garage. Construction was done in phases and the entire project was completed in 1976, just in time for Seattle’s U.S. Bicentennial celebrations on July 4^th of that year. In 2008, the park was officially renamed for civic leader Jim Ellis who led the Forward Thrust effort and championed the creation of the park.

Learn much more at the exhibit (and browse many other exhibits and resources!) under the Exhibits & Education section of our website. And be sure to check out the Freeway Park Association’s website for upcoming events celebrating this year’s 50^th anniversary!