1949 Metsker City Plan or Map of Seattle, Washington

This is a 1949 Charles Metsker city plan or map of Seattle, Washington. Coverage extends from Haller Lake south to Foster and from the West Point Lighthouse and Shilshole Bay to the eastern shore of Lake Washington. Districts are identified throughout, and an alphabetic index is included in Lake Washington. Piers in Elliott Bay are identified by the operating company and numerous boathouses are marked. Parks and golf courses are illustrated as green spaces. The Lake Washington Floating Bridge (today known as the Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge and Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge) is depicted, and pontoons, anchor cables, and ship channels along the bridge are marked. The University of Washington, the U.S. Naval Air Base, and Fort Lawton are illustrated.

Land Reclamation?

Intriguingly, near Fort Lawton and the West Point Light House, streets are drawn in Ellicott Bay and Shilshole Bay. This suggests that land reclamation projects had been proposed and were sufficiently far along in the process for Metsker to want to include these projects on this map of Seattle - he wanted his map to be useful years after it was issued. Today, none of these are part of modern-day Seattle and we have been unable to unearth history about when they were proposed or why they were not undertaken.

Publication History and Census

This map was created and published by Charles Metsker and Metsker Maps in 1949. We note later examples of this map in OCLC, but this is the only cataloged example of the 1949 edition.