Free previewStop 8 of Seattle Walking Tour: Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square
A Picnic That Became Seattle Pride
You're standing in Occidental Park, the open square in the middle of Pioneer Square, shaded by tall London plane trees with their patchy, peeling bark. Find the group of bronze firefighters. We'll come back to them. First, look at the ground under your feet.
For years this was a parking lot. Before that, part of this block held the Carrollton Hotel, run by a Japanese American family and remembered in Monica Sone's memoir, Nisei Daughter. Sone was a Seattle girl who grew up here, and her family was among the Japanese Americans forced out of the city in 1942. The hotel was torn down in 1956. Then, in 1971, the city used federal money to turn the lot into a public square, designed by a landscape architect named Ilze Jones.
The square was only three years old when it got its most important job.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 8 of Seattle Walking Tour: Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
