Ell Alley

Friday, May 10, 2013

4 Walls & No Roof

Ell Alley on the left end of Building 8. May 2013

Ell Alley's fairly blank north wall. May 2013

Looking through the living room window to the kitchen door. May 2013

By early May the exterior walls were up for all the units in Building 8. Framing of the interior walls on the 2nd floor had started, the interior stairs were built & the porches were visible. The rooms were all clearly distinguishable. There were no surprises here. It was just as we had expected. This was probably the most dramatic phase of the project, the surge upward from foundation to 2-story walls. Ell Alley had started to look like a home.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Construction Continues

Garage. April 2013

Completed foundation & crawl space. April 2013

Site of future stairs to the garage door. April 2013

Concrete-block wall & site of future parking pad. April 2013

Top of wall & terrace. April 2013

The foundation was finished in early April 2013. Much of what we hoped would be a large crawl space beneath the house was filled with dirt. The sales agent had told us that access to the crawl space would be through a trap door in a closet. That seemed an unappealing place to store things.

By the middle of April, the concrete floor of the garage had been poured. The most interesting new feature was a concrete-block wall behind the house which formed a terrace about 6 feet above the level of the rear alley. The wall has 2 tiers, with 2 feet of planting space in the lower tier & more planting space planned in the upper tier, between the wall & a concrete pad, which has not yet been poured. This additional garden space was very exciting for Jordan, who started thinking of potential plants immediately.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Cheasty Greenspace at Mt View

Cheasty Greenspace at Mt View April 2013

Western Wake-Robin (Trillium ovatum)

At the top on S Angeline Street. You can see the Cascade Mountains from up here.

At the bottom on S Mt View Drive.

The Cheasty Greenspace at Mt View is a small part of the Cheasty Greenspace which runs along the steep east slope of Beacon Hill. You can see the Cheasty Greenspace in the photos of Ell Alley. It forms the west edge of Rainier Vista. It is the horizon we will see from the west windows of our townhouse, above the roofs of Rainier Vista. Most of this greenspace does not have trails. But farther north, Cheasty Boulevard S runs through the greenspace with a path beside it. Many of the trees here are Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum) which turn vivid yellow in the fall. The woods here are filled with native plants. The trails here provide not only a pleasant place to walk, but a direct route for people who live at the top of the hill to get to the Columbia City Station.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Ell Alley Begins

Building 8 Site January 2013

Building 8 site January 2013

Ell Alley site at the north end of Building 8 January 2013

Ell Alley site at the north end of Building 8 March 2013

Garage site March 2013

Near the end of January 2013, preparation for construction began on the site. A sign was posted, 2 large trees were removed & the ground was smoothed. Then in March, holes were dug & concrete began to be poured for the foundation. From the height of the forms, it appeared the the crawl space beneath the townhome would be capacious: a good place for garden tools & camping gear. We were puzzled about the garage, which seemed to be well below the level of the house. Would there be stairs? The other buildings in the development were all on level ground.

About Ell Alley

Ell Alley is the home of Jetta, Jordan, Kitty, Rusty, Steve & Toby. It is named for the alley beside & behind the house that forms an ell: the shape of the letter L. It is located in the Rainier Vista development, in the Rainier Valley of Seattle, which extends 7 miles southeast from Downtown Seattle to Rainier Beach, between Beacon Hill & the lakeside ridges of Mt Baker, Lakewood & Seward Park. Ell Alley is 4 miles from Downtown Seattle, 0.4 miles from the Columbia City Station & 0.7 miles from the center of the Columbia City Landmark District.

Rainier Valley History

The first settlers arrived in the 1850s, but settlement was slow until the forest was cut down & milled, as it was throughout the city. Developers bought logged-off land toward the end of the 19th century. They laid out the communities of Genesee, Columbia City, Hillman City, Brighton & Dunlap.

Cheap land in the valley, just outside the City of Seattle, attracted Italians of rural origins & they planted large, productive gardens. The north end of the Rainier Valley became known as Garlic Gulch. Japanese immigrants also had farms in the valley. The produce filled local markets including Pike Place.

The Rainier Avenue Electric Railway opened the valley to greater development, reaching Columbia City in 1891 & Renton in 1896. In 1907, the City of Seattle annexed most of southeast Seattle, including the Rainier Valley.

At the start of World War II, Japanese residents were forced into internment camps east of the mountains. Tens of thousands of war workers came to Seattle to work at the Boeing Company, the shipyards & the port. The US government constructed thousands of temporary housing units at Rainier Vista, Stadium Homes (now Mt Baker Village) & Holly Park in the Rainier Valley.

After the war, the temporary housing became public, low-income housing. Suburban development took many white residents away from the valley. Blacks moved into the Rainier Valley from the over-crowded, nearby Central Area. Interracial couples found acceptance here. Filipinos arrived in large numbers.

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, refugees came from southeast Asia: Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Lao & Mien peoples. Many settled in the Rainier Valley. Chinese continued to arrive, although most settled on nearby Beacon Hill. There was a small influx of Mexicans. Somali immigration began after US involvement in Somalia in 1992.

Work on new housing at NewHolly (formerly Holly Park) began in 1997 & continued for a decade, with 1400 units sold to private owners. The rebuilding of Rainier Vista began in 2003 & still continues. Columbia City rapidly gentrified starting in the late 1990s. Many units of new housing were built in the form of townhouses, condos & apartments.

The current population of the Rainier Valley is about 41,000. The racial breakdown is 34.1% Asian, 26.9% Caucasian, 26% African American, 1.6% Pacific Islander, 6.5% Mixed Race, 1% Native American and 3.4% from other races. Hispanic or Latino of any race are 7.2% of the population.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.

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