Volunteer Park - Seattle, WA - Olmsted Designed Parks on Waymarking.com

The National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form highlights the Olmsted Brothers Architectural Firm's plans for Volunteer Park. (*NOTE* This form was written in 1976 and so parts of it may now be obsolete from development within the park over the years). Parts of the Nomination Form which apply specifically to the Olmsted Brothers read:

Volunteer Park is the centerpiece of an extensive park and boulevard system laid out for the City of Seattle by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm of Brookline, Massachusetts in 1903-1904. Situated on the crown of Capitol Hill, the 40-acre park was specially designed by the firm to take advantage of its incomparable vistas. The principal view, to the southwest, is a panorama of Seattle harbor on Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountain Range on the far side of Puget Sound. Certain elements of the park design have been modified over the years in the interest of safety and in the course of meeting changing needs, but the park is essentially intact.

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The Olmsted Brothers design for Volunteer Park has a strong formal element in the principal axis created by the view concourse and two sets of stairs leading down the bedding terraces to the sunken reservoir. The orientation of this element in a southwesterly direction was dictated by the earlier placement of the reservoir and the contours of the site. Far from being rigidly geometric, however, the rest of the park is laid out in a studiously naturalistic fashion, with several major expanses of lawn circumscribed by footpaths and plantings. The lawns slope away from a ridge which traverses the property on a diagonal from south to north. It is the ridge which Olmsted Brothers used as the cross-axial element of the plan. The view concourse sweeps along it in an extended s-curve from the water tower aligned with the 14th Avenue East entrance on the south to the Seward Monument and its greenhouse backdrop on the north. Automobile traffic is confined to the concourse and a partial perimeter drive which, in the original plan, allowed ingress and egress from East Galer Street in the northeast corner, East Highland Drive on the west, and, on the east from 11th, 12th and 14th Avenue.

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Primary elements which pre-date implementation of the Olmsted Plan for Volunteer Park are the reservoir and the water tower constructed by the Water Department in 1901 and 1906, respectively. The reservoir takes the shape of a triangle with rounded corners, its apex pointed toward the ridge, and its base spreading in the direction of the principal vista. It was this established water feature on which the Olmsted Plan capitalized. In the southerly corner of its base is the valve house, a small, oblong masonry structure with classical exterior detail and shuttered, round-arched openings. The reservoir is presently outlined with a chain-link safety fence. The original fence had decorative iron cresting. A directive of the State Board of Health ultimately may require the City to cover this and all other open reservoirs, but to date no action other than some preliminary design work on a cover has been taken.

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With the exception of several stands of fir trees native to the site, and which were selectively thinned and cleared of underbrush, most of the material used in the planting scheme was nursery stock ordered by the Olmsted firm. The concourse, for example, is lined with horse chestnuts, and black locust, maple, and several varieties of cedar were used throughout. A few of the larger trees lost to storm damage over the years have been replaced, and peripheral rose beads have been replanted with azaleas. The original system of frosted globes on tapered column standards lights the concourse.

The primary architectural element of the Olmsted Plan was a rustic arcade and band stand aligned with the parterres and reservoir. Arranged along the easterly side of the view concourse, this lineal feature was composed of an oblong, open-air pavilion with a shingled, partially conical roof, the ridge of which was on axis with the principal vista. Extending from either side were long pergolas terminating in square frame pavilions with pyramidal roofs and smaller restroom wings, or extensions. Centered behind the band stand on the easterly side was a bayed area known as the concert grove. This culminating feature on the ridge was promptly augmented by a band shell with some acoustical qualities which was erected on the large lawn north of the reservoir as early as 1915. Popular for a variety of uses, including Easter Sunrise services and musical concerts, the band shell has twice been replaced and was most recently rebuilt this year with a concrete platform.

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The Olmsted Plan included two separate playground areas for children on the park periphery. On the east end of the conservatory is a play space into which all playground equipment has subsequently been consolidated. The original wading pool in this area has been upgraded. An area abutting residential properties between East Highland and East Prospect Streets on the west boundary of the park initially was set aside for a gravel playground with swings, climbing bars and other equipment. Tennis courts have been located discreetly in recent years between the perimeter drive and the northwest corner of the park.